Question of the Day:
We are finishing up chapter 8, and I am soooo sad that I am not there this morning. This passage contains my favorite all time bible verse. One that has encouraged me in my darkest moment and given me courage to keep going when fear is reigning in my life. This passage isn't easy but it is rich! It is filled with strength giving power.
READ: Romans 8:17-30
Present Suffering and Future Glory
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
1. In Verses 18-20 Paul lets us know that because of sin we are not who we were supposed to be. We were created for so much more. That so much more is what we long for. You were meant for so much more!
This week the dean here at Pisgah brought a young girl to me who had been crying and just needed someone to comfort her. I didn't know this girl at all, other than occasionally seeing her around campus. She sat down on the couch next to me and then fell into me as she cried. I just held her and waited. After a while she slowly and with great caution shared some of her story. As I listened my heart broke for her. Fighting tears I thought of this passage of scripture. This girl was not meant for this life! As I listened all I could think about was what this precious child of God will be after complete restoration. After He is able to take her and restore her to His original masterpiece. Oh what a day that will be! What a day it will be when she is liberated from the bondage of decay! What a day that will be!
What about you?
Are you yearning for liberation from decay?
Do you long for the day when you are free indeed?
In verses 22-25 Paul writes more about that hope. The hope of transformation.
I would like us to read verse 26-28 in the message.
"Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good."
There have been countless times in my life where I see direct answers to prayer that I never prayed! Times when I know God heard my heart and answered it!
He understands your grunts! Do you get how huge that is?
At one point I remember a family member talking about a certain way we needed to pray. A certain formula for a prayer that would bring change. You had to say certain things in a certain way. Is that all really necessary? I am not saying there aren't things we can learn about what to pray for etc, but seriously, this passage let's us know that God is so much bigger than that!
God knows my heart, he knows my sighs, He knows my grunting and He answers them all!
What brings more comfort knowing that God is a God who needs us to learn certain way of praying before He can hear us or...
a God who knows you so well that He will understand your sigh and grunts and answer?
It is because He is that kind of God that we can have the assurance of verse 28!
Verse 28 can be believed because our God is so personable.
Verse 28 can be a verse that we live and believe because He is a God knows you better than you know yourself!
When Chris and I were dating, and even after we were engaged, I questioned whether or not he was right for me. I wasn't sure he met my list...
Oh, I am so thankful I listened to God and trusted in him and not in my list. God knew my "real heart". He knows my originally designed heart and knows what I need far better than I.
What in your life do you need to trust with Him?
What do you need to surrender to Him, knowing that He knows you so much better than you even know yourself and He will work it all out for the good?
I can't complete this lesson without focusing on just verse 28 for a moment. This verse has been accused of being the Polly Anna verse. We like to qualify it. We create long explanations of it. I don't want this to get too much into a theological discussion about this verse, but I do want to make a couple points.
1. You need the verses leading up to verse 28. They give us the confidence that God knows "our good".
2. He doesn't say that all things are good but that all things will be worked to our good. He isn't saying that the young girl I comforted this week needs to believe that the horrific things that have happened to her are good. It just means he can and will take the worst of what this world has dealt us and he will obliterate what needs it and polish what needs polishing and he will transform pain into hope and hope into joy.
Verse 29 and 30 can be tricky or confusing. So I would like us to also read it in the Message.
"God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun." Message Bible.
God designed you, God crafted you! God knows you, not just the sin ridden, wounded you. God knows the restored you! God knows the original design you! He knows you and He isn't done with you and He won't stop until you are gloriously restore to who He created you to be!
Will you trust Him to scrape off the barnacles of sin that encrust you?
Will you trust Him to know your grunts?
Will you trust Him to take ALL of you, the good, the bad, the ugly, and restore you?
I love a good home improvement show. It is especially fun when it features a home that is falling apart and it is difficult to find anything redeeming about it. Then in the course of 30 minutes to an hour I can see a complete and total transformation. The once falling apart home is now standing beautiful, functional and restore to it's former glory.
Will you let Jesus do that with you?
In closing this week I am going to let Paul write the closing. He did it so beautifully!
More Than Conquerors
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us,who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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