I used these verses in a brief message at my mom’s funeral in 2001.

 John 3.16 is probably the most famous gospel Bible verse ever.  One Halloween when the kids were young, my costume was a rainbow wig and a white sign with black letters: John 3.16.  Everyone recognized the zealot who managed to get his message broadcast at every big sporting event.  You don’t see that guy so much anymore. I don’t know if he quit or was refused admittance or the TV people stopped showing him like they stopped showing streakers, but he was famous for a time.  The verse is still famous – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

 It turns out that John 3.14-15 gives a vibrant answer to the question of whether you believe or not.  “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”  The context is the episode in Numbers 21.4-9, where God punished the whining and complaining Israelites with “fiery” poisonous snakes. After the people repented, God told Moses the remedy – Moses would attach a bronze serpent to a pole and whoever looked at it would live. For the bitten Israelites, they had to believe enough – in what Moses told them that God had told him – to look at the snake on the pole.  Some looked and lived; some didn’t and died.

 Your “Do I believe?” test is not as simple as gazing at a specific relic, but it is clear there will be some action involved;  you need to be doing something.   A good start is making use of the “means of grace”:

–        Read the Bible regularly

–        Pray

–        Worship with other believers

–        Take Communion

–        Confess sins

 If these are unclear, identify a Christian and talk to him/her about who Jesus is and what all these actions are about.