Hi and welcome to the Via Zion Sermon podcast.
We are a local church based here in Chennai, India.
We are so glad you are with us and hope that this will
encourage, inspire and instill fresh faith in you.
We continue our series titled All Roads Lead to Rome, which is
a study in the book of Romans. As we study this letter written
to the Jewish and Gentile believers in the city of Rome,
we ask that you put yourself in their shoes, for our context is
not that different after all. Our hope is that through this
series, you would experience the fullness of knowing who God is,
what He did for you through Jesus, and how you can live a
life that honors Him and blesses others.
Hi Church. What a joy it is to bring gods.
What do you? We're looking at the book of
Romans and today we're looking at Romans 7 to 8.
And today's passages are a bit long winded, repetitive.
And so I just titled it something easier for us to look
at it titled it the good, the Bad and the beautiful.
I don't know if you watched the old Western, which was the good,
bad and the ugly, but today we're going to be looking at the
good, bad and the beautiful. Just this past week, I had an
experience of how I had to put what I'm going to preach today
into practice. So I have a couple of things in
the house which, you know, I curate and create just, you
know, it's like a lot of DIY stuff.
And then So what I did was I have a small wooden tray that I
bought and I have my glass water bottles on that.
And two days back, I came down in the morning and found
leftover lemongrass incense sticks, which we used to drive
away mosquitoes. My son had actually lit it to,
you know, drive away mosquitoes while he was studying.
And what had happened was one of those sticks had leaned over
onto the wooden tray, which was almost brand new, leaned over
onto the wooden tray and had burnt into it.
So in the morning, they were just ashes there.
But there was the indelible mark of, you know, the, the incense
stick on the wood. And for 5 minutes, I was, you
know, so upset about it. I was like, how can you do this?
You know, I was telling my son, because here's the thing.
There's a rule. The rule was that you would not
light these sticks anywhere near wood or plastic, that you would
light it near the sink or, you know, near the tiles.
And he had flouted the rule just so that he won't get bitten by
mosquitoes when he studies. And because of that, it had
caused damage to this piece of furniture.
But as I was, you know, correcting my son, I was doing
it in a rather loud voice. My other two children reminded
me and they said, ma, look at it.
It doesn't look that bad. It looks like, you know, it's
the pattern on a, it looks like the pattern on wood.
And when I looked at it, it was true.
It just looked like it was treated wood now.
And so I replaced, I kept it back in its old place, put the
bottles back on and it's there again.
And I was reminded that how so often, you know, we look at the
law, the word of God, as something that's too hard to
follow through on and inevitably break it.
And that's where sin is revealed.
But the beautiful thing is that we're going to look today in
Romans 8 and how all things work together for good.
Just like my children could see the good even in a tray having
burn marks on it. I believe God is calling us into
a place of looking at everything he has allowed in our lives
through the lens of a good God. That's, you know, no matter what
happens, he works everything out for good.
So today's our topic is basically divided into three.
We're going to be looking at the law, which is the word of God.
We're going to be looking at sin and we're going to be looking at
life in the spirit. We're going to be looking at the
Spirit of God so that that these three things and I just want to
look at different passages. We're now going to look at all
of it because it's a lot of content.
So we're just going to take pivotal passages.
We're going to look at it. We're going to understand what
Paul is writing to us right now. So Romans Chapter 7 verse one,
it says now dear brothers and sisters, you who are familiar
with the law, don't you know that the law applies only while
a person is living? Verse four.
So this is the point. You died to the power of the law
when you died with Christ and now you are united with the one
who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a
harvest of good deeds for God. And Paul was talking in this
about how he used the example of marriage.
He said while you are married to someone, you cannot leave that
person and go live with someone else.
That would be considered adultery and that would be
breaking the law. If one of the members in the
marriage passed away because of death, that marital law ended.
Then if one of them chose the one living, chose to get married
again, that would be completely OK.
And that's what he's trying to explain, that only as long as
someone is alive does the law apply.
Once they died, the law doesn't apply.
And he's bringing it now to us and saying those of us who have
actually chosen to put our trust in Jesus have basically
crucified ourselves with Christ as figurative because every day
we have to die to our flesh, die to ourselves, and live for
Christ. So my question to you right from
off the bat, I'm going to ask you is how dead are you?
How crucified are you? Have you crucified your sinful
nature with Christ and are you living in step with the Spirit
of God? That's the question.
That's a big question because the truth is this is not a one
off event. This is a lifelong practice.
This is a daily thing. Needing to crucify ourselves on
the daily is something that we have to be avid about.
We don't need to strive because the Holy Spirit is the one who
actually does that for us. But we do need to be pliable.
We do do need to be involved. We do need to be aware that we
are a work in progress, and it's so important that we keep coming
closer to God in this process of sanctification because, you
know, the God is compared to light, He's likened to light.
And the more we come into the light, the more darkness is
revealed, the more darkness is rooted out.
And I believe God is asking us to come near to Him so that He
can root out evil in us, so that He can help us see the sin in
ourselves, so that we expose it to the gracious presence of
Christ himself. Now the thing about the law is
the law bad? The law, the word of God, is so
good. It was given with the greatest
of intentions by the greatest of all deities.
He is the Almighty God, and He in His goodness gave his people
the law. So it's very important to see
that the law is good. But the thing about the law is
that it brings condemnation. What does that mean?
Well, the minute you read the law, you read the Old Testament.
There are some who say, I don't read the Old Testament.
I don't like it. I don't get it.
The point of the Old Testament is for us to actually hold it up
to us like a mirror and identify in our lives where we have
similar cycles of sin, similar patterns.
I'm right now going through one Chronicles and two Chronicles,
and I was reading about this king the other day and it just
resonated with me because it said he does things right, but
he was not wholehearted in love, in following the Lord.
And I felt so convicted because it is true.
We try to live right. We try to do all the things
right, but sometimes our passion dwindles.
Sometimes my devotion for God is not wholehearted.
The point of the law is that it reveals sin in US.
It convicts us. It brings us to this place of
saying, oh, I get that, that sin in David.
I have that sin that Moses had with anger.
I have it. It reveals sin in us.
It shows us similar tendencies that we have.
The law brings condemnation because the truth is, when you
look at the word of God, there's so much to absorb and none of us
on our own can actually, you know, obey everything in the
law. And should we try, we will fail
miserably. So that's one way in which it
brings condemnation. Of course, sometimes when we
look at ourselves in the light of the law, we see just how far
you know we fall. We fall short of it repeatedly,
and that again brings condemnation.
And then there's also the time when you read about a particular
law and then you wonder, why can't I just try it?
Why does God say this is bad? He says don't covet.
He first says, don't covet your neighbour's things or your
neighbour's wife because it all is.
It's a gradient. I start coveting things and then
I start eventually coveting what someone else has in a marriage
or in their family. And what Paul writes here is
that sin has this way of turning the good law into bad by
triggering up temptation. So had I not known what coveting
is, I would have not known it's a sin.
But the same law can sometimes evoke in me this thought of why
not try it? What's the worst that can
happen? And so that's why he says the
law brings condemnation. The problem, though, is not with
the law. The law is perfect, but the
problem is with us because we are inherently sinful.
Our condition is that of sinfulness.
We, each of us, every one of us all have sinned and fallen short
of the glory of God. None of us are above it.
And so before you knew Jesus, before you actively got into a
relationship with him, some of the things you indulged in may
may be so terrible you can't even mention it.
But Paul writes about that in Galatians chapter 5.
And I just want to read it because he talks about the acts
of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit.
What the Spirit does in US produces fruit.
What we do is, is basically the stuff that comes out of our
flesh. It's stuff that we indulge in
knowingly and unknowingly. It's tough that we make a choice
to be involved in. The acts of the flesh are
obvious. Galatians 519 to 21.
Sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and
witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish
ambition, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies
and the like. I warn you, as I did before,
that those who live like this will not inherit the Kingdom of
God. Once we come into the saving
knowledge of Jesus, once we step into a relationship, ideally our
lives should produce good fruit. Ideally, we should be doing the
things that please God and enrich his people, enrich the
world. But there is a struggle, a power
struggle, so to speak. And I'm sure you've experienced
this, but Paul articulates it so beautifully in Romans 7 verses
22 to 23. And this is what he says.
I love God's law with all my heart, but there is another
power within me that is at work with my mind.
This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.
Can you relate? We love God's word, we love
reading it, we love Bible study, we love community, you know,
outings where we're discussing what God is doing.
But privately I'm still struggling with certain old sins
or some new sins that have crept in.
No one knows. But I'm privately struggling.
And the beautiful thing is we can be real about it.
This is real. The the struggle is real.
So what actually happened is when Jesus died on the cross,
his perfect body was the sacrifice.
And so he paid the price for our sin.
So the penalty of sin was sorted out.
It's over. There is no more penalty for sin
for you and me who have chosen Jesus.
And the beautiful thing is in his resurrection from the dead,
he triumphed over sin and death. So the penalty is removed.
The sting of sin and death are removed.
And So what happens now is we are every single day going from
a place of less power to more power over sin.
So sin no longer has the upper hand.
Is sin still present? Yes, But sin doesn't have the
upper hand in the life of a spirit filled believer.
And it's so important to say that because it's not like you
and I will not have temptations When we're at office.
It's easy to lie to our boss that you're not feeling well,
just to head home when you really have an outing with
friends planned. It's so easy to fall into old
patterns or just, you know, giving that that cash under the
table and getting your job done rather than saying, I'll wait it
out, I'll wait it out. I'll not give that.
I will wait. Or maybe there are those moments
when your anger just hits the roof.
You say all kinds of things to your spouse, leaving them in in
a mess and you won't walk out. Even after you know Jesus, that
still happens. And maybe you're thinking, when
will this end? But the truth is, the struggle
is real. The struggle is real for every
human. But we Christians have the edge.
You know how we have the Holy Spirit in US and he calls us
into relationship with Jesus by saying, you know what?
You live with my help. You don't live anymore alone.
Before Jesus, we were just running on our flesh.
It was a fuel of the flesh that drove us.
I feel like doing this, I should do this.
I thought I should eat this. I ate it.
I, I felt that, you know, I should go and connect, reconnect
with that old person. I did it.
But now that I'm living the life that Jesus has called me into a
relationship with him, the Spirit of God is now in me.
This temple now has the Holy Spirit in it.
And he is telling me, hey, why not pause?
I know you're feeling like you need to do this, but have you
thought to ask me what I feel you need to be doing?
The solution to the struggle is that you would live by the
Spirit. That's the solution that Paul
brings to us, and that is what we're going to look at.
Romans Chapter 7, verses five to six, says when we were
controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work
within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced
a harvest of sinful deeds resulting in death.
But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it
and are no longer captive to its power.
Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of
the Law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit, the old
way, the old way before Jesus was just looking at the law and
by wrote, knowing it and obeying it.
Wash your hands. Do these things, you know, offer
these sacrifices, you know, have these the way of worship
worshippers, you know, they articulated how it has to be
done. But in the new covenant where we
are living with the help of the Spirit, when I look at the Word,
I'm asking the Holy Spirit to open it up to me.
And I no longer am obeying it just because I have to, but
because now I have a living relationship with the One who is
the Word. It changes everything.
It changes how I look at the Word.
I'm not trying to memorize all of the scripture.
I'm trying to live it out. So each day what I take is a
bite size input. I'm allowing God to actually
translate that into action in my life.
And that is what it looks like to live in the Spirit, in the
new nature, the Spirit LED nature, not the fleshly nature,
not the old sinful nature, but living in the Spirit.
Now I want to just, you know, lay some ground rules.
When we say living by the Spirit, many people twist that
and turn it to their advantage. Living by the Spirit does not
discount the Word of God. So it doesn't mean that because
he says, you know, the law and all the law causes condemnation,
but this living by the Spirit is above it.
It doesn't discount the need for the word of God in our lives.
Roman 8, Romans 8 verses 7 to 8 says this.
For the sinful nature is always hostile to God.
It never did obey God's laws and it never will.
That's why those who are still under the control of their
sinful nature can never please God.
So what are you under the control of?
If it's a sinful nature, the Word of God will make no sense
to you. You will just look at it as
something you have to do because you were taught that from, you
know, the time you were a child. Or maybe you do it because your
pastor has been encouraging you to do it.
But if you are truly living by the Spirit, the Word of God will
become your compass. That is your God's love letter
to you every single day and He's directing you.
Living by the Spirit requires the word of God.
The law doesn't get obsolete. It doesn't become null and void.
In fact, it comes alive. The second thing you should
remember, when we say living by the Spirit, it means that it
doesn't mean that we're just controlled by our feelings and
our thoughts. A lot of people will say, I feel
like, you know, I should tell you this.
I feel like we should do such and such, but it's not about
being led by feelings. It's being led by the Spirit of
God who was a being who is God himself.
And so it really means that we not that we discount our
thoughts, attitudes and emotions.
Not at all. Our thoughts matter.
Our feelings matter, but they don't become what we lead by.
Instead, they do come under the lordship of Christ, which is why
he talks about in verse six, letting your sinful nature
control your mind leads to death, but letting the Spirit
control your mind leads leads to life and peace is very simple.
You just have to in a moment when you're about to explode in
anger or you're about to say that lie to your boss.
It might just require you saying I know I feel like that's the
easy way Lord, but what must I do in this moment?
How do you expect me to respond? I remember that morning when I
was berating my son for burning my tray.
After about 5 minutes, there was just this nudge as to explain to
him why I was upset. So I told him, you know, while
of course it spoiled it a bit and I, I feel bad that you
spoiled, it's just a thing at the end of it.
But there's a bigger issue where it could be a fire hazard, you
know. So I had to explain to him my
heart for him as a mother as well.
And that was a spirit move. That was because that was in my
head. It was in my heart because I was
so worried that he was studying alone downstairs and I was not
there. But when I spoke that to him, he
was able to understand where I was coming from.
And also the Spirit of God moved in me to remind me that this was
just a thing. It's OK.
And I wonder how many of us would allow us, our feelings and
our emotions to be led by the Spirit rather than us being led
by those. When we live by the Spirit
doesn't mean that sin just magically disappears.
It actually doesn't. We live in a fallen world.
The only consolation is that when I live in the Spirit, the
power of sin begins to diminish. The control sin has over me
diminishes. Am I still tempted?
Yes, but can I beat the temptation?
With God's help I can. With the Spirit of God in me, I
can. Romans 8 verse 10 says Christ
lives within you. So even though your body will
die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have
been right mean, made right with God.
Which means I am mortal. I'm going to have life maybe
till about 80, I don't know how long, but for whatever long,
however long God has instituted my life for.
But I will still be vitally alive and vibrant till the day I
close my eyes because the Spirit of God moving within me.
So sin, Will it stay in the world?
Yes. Will still sin still touch me?
Yes. Will the fallenness of the world
still touch me? Possibly could, but I will never
really be brought down and held down by it anymore because I am
moving from one place of powerlessness to greater power
over sin. And that's what the Holy Spirit
does. And you know, the truth is all
of this is really up to us. Many people assume that when we
say, you know you should be led by the Holy Spirit, that you
know, he just takes over you and he moves your hands and legs.
He tells you what to speak, He moves your mouth.
It isn't that It's a beautiful place where the Spirit of God
is. When we give Him room, He leads
us as a Father leads a child by the hand.
Just taking you step by step. That's what it looks like.
You can choose whether you yield to Him.
You can choose whether you submit to Him.
You can choose whether you listen to me.
It's all on you because the best part of humanity, every human,
is that we have free will. I can choose if I submit to the
Holy Spirit. I can choose if I want to be led
by. If I still want to be led by my
feelings, it's on me. And God's not going to say
anything about it. It's important to understand
this is a choice. Living by the Spirit is a
choice. It's a choice you and I have.
And so I want to ask you, what do you think living life in the
Spirit looks like in today's life, in our world today?
What does it look like? And I just put this into two big
subtopics. I believe that in the present,
right, where we're living the life and the Spirit makes us
fully alive in the present, What does that look like?
We're going to be looking at Romans 8, verses 11 to 17 as we
read it. I want you to understand that
this is a present condition. This is the place we're at.
We were saved by God through Jesus, right?
And now we're in this intermediate period where we
have not yet reached eternity. We're in the now and not yet.
So we have not yet reached eternity.
We are not where we used to be. We're in the middle, right?
And in the middle is where it seems like so much is happening.
Ever since I said yes to Jesus, He's put me in the situations
where my I need to love more, where I need to be more patient,
where I'm enduring more. I feel like it's one battle
after the other. I feel like the victories are
very sweet, but the battles are hard.
You know, that's an intervening period and it it is a hard
period. And and Paul speaks to that in
Romans chapter 8. He says, therefore, dear
brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your
sinful nature urges you to do. But if you live by it's
dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the
Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you
will live. For all who are led by the
Spirit of God are children of God.
So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful
slaves. Instead, you received God's
spirit when he adopted you as his own children.
Now we call him ABBA Father, for his Spirit joins with our spirit
to affirm that we are God's children.
And since we are his children, we are his heirs.
In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God's glory.
But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his
suffering. So much fact in just a few
verses. And what the gist of it is this?
OK, this is the gist. We are in the process of being
sanctified, of being consecrated.
Like we said, this whole year has been about set apart, being
set apart. And this season for most of us,
whether you are in your teens, you're in your 20s, your 30s,
forties, fifties, 60s, till you reach eternity, we are in this
process of being sanctified on a daily basis.
And the Holy Spirit makes it endure bearable because he's the
one who mediates it. The Holy Spirit works in us
through situations that we encounter through the people
that we encounter, through our jobs, through our health issues.
He is working to sanctify us and make us more like Jesus.
That's the point of the season. And the important thing in this
time, in, you know, living fully alive in the present is
remembering our identity as children of God.
You and I cannot live fully alive in this moment of time in
history if we are not sure of who we are in Christ.
And the truth is, we are children of God.
That's what the Holy Spirit does when the Holy Spirit is given to
us. He affirms and establishes that
you and I are sons and daughters of the Most High God.
And what does that imply? It implies an inheritance.
The Holy Spirit himself is the first, you know, he's the the
first bit of that inheritance. He's the, you know, just that,
that sweet first taste of the big inheritance that we have in
Jesus. We are Co heirs with Christ.
But there's this small subtext. It says if you want to share in
God's glory, you have to share in his suffering.
So a lot of us walk through seasons or have walked through
or walking through or will walk through seasons of hardship.
You will have grief, you will have loss, you will have health
issues. You'll have setbacks at work.
You'll have relational fallouts. You will be heartbroken.
You could have moments when you've had a set back
emotionally, whatever it looks back looks like.
I want to encourage you this, that as children of God, the
discipline of God comes in as well.
Because who? Which father who doesn't love
his child doesn't discipline the child?
It's essential because in the book of Hebrews he talks about
this. He says that a father who, the
Heavenly Father, loves us and so disciplines us in love so that
we will be partakers of His Holiness and that we would be
righteous. There is a reason for what we
walk through today. What you are walking through,
there is a reason for it. Don't think that you are just in
the middle of a cosmic blitz where you know just everything
bad in the universe is happening to you.
You are seen, you are identified by the God of the universe, the
Father, the Heavenly Father who is your Father knows exactly
what you're walking through and you know, in fact, he's he's got
you in the palm of his hand. He knows exactly what's
happening. And so it needs us to come to a
place of accepting that discipline is painful.
We state the facts. This is hard.
What I'm going through is too painful for words.
Lord has been prolonged. It's been protracted.
What do I do? But the beautiful thing is that
I need my struggles and my setbacks need to move me towards
Jesus and not away from Him. And that's what the Holy Spirit
does in sanctification. As much as he's working, he's
not doing it. Removed in such a way that you
know what, you just figure this out.
I'm working on you, but you know I'm working on you from a
distance. The Holy Spirit is intimately
working in our lives through every situation, through every
circumstance, because you are a child of God.
You are loved, and He is shaping you.
He is removing the things of the flesh that need to be removed
from you so that you will live on in a greater dependence on
the Holy Spirit. And so it requires that we move
closer to God. Some of you have moved away from
God because you said, you know what, God?
I don't know if I ever understand what you're doing.
This doesn't seem like your hand.
I said yes to you, but it seems like you've said no to a bunch
of things in my life. I believe that God is asking us
to move from asking these questions of why me or why now
to what are you teaching me, Lord?
What are you doing in me? What are you accomplishing in my
life? Because those are the questions
that get him to really speak back.
It's important that to be fully alive in the present, you allow
the Holy Spirit to establish your identity.
You are a child of God. In the times that the Romans,
the book of Romans was written, anyone who was adopted into a
Roman family got all the rights of a full of a fully, you know,
legal original son. And they didn't have to be born
into that home to get it. The minute they were adopted,
they got all of the inheritance just like any other natural
childhood. And you and I are no different.
When we accepted Jesus, when the Spirit of God dwelt in US, he
brought us into that inheritance.
He brought us into that family, sealed us.
And so today I want to ask you, how alive are you living?
You're dead in Christ, but you're alive in the Spirit.
You died with him. You crew were crucified.
Your flesh had to be crucified and is getting crucified on a
daily basis. But you are being made alive by
the Spirit. And that's how by acknowledging
who you are in Christ, that's how you live fully alive in the
present. The second thing I believe is
Paul continues from that passage talking about how we need to
share in the glory of God. We also have to share in his
suffering. And he talks about the future,
OK. He talks about the end times,
What's going to happen when we close our eyes in death.
We meet our Savior and the glorious, a future that lies in
wait for every believer. And that's what he's writing
about in verses 18 to 21. This is what he says.
Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he
will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting
eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children
really are. Against its will, all creation
was subjected to God's curse. But with eager hope, the
creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's
children in glorious freedom from death and decay.
This is so exciting for me because I just recently had to
do a root canal because I had a decayed tooth.
And just going through that process made me realize that I
look forward to heaven, where I'll have a good set of teeth,
hopefully, and no decays and no fillings.
And you know what an assurance we have?
We have a future where there's no death or decay, there's no
suffering, there's no corruption, there's no pain.
But until then, that's where we're at.
And so I believe that when we live in the Spirit, he makes us
fully prepared for the future. How does he do that?
He prepares us now, right? And this process of
glorification is what happens when we meet Jesus, when our
bodies are transformed to the resurrection body that Jesus had
when he was resurrected. But The thing is, we're not.
We're not there yet, right? And so how do we prepare better
for it right now? Well, the wait is long.
If you've gone through a long chronic ailment, you know that
the wait is unending. Twists and turns, but no end
insight. Maybe you're going through a
divorce and the process is so long.
You're so traumatized just by every visit to the court.
Maybe you're walking through a season of barrenness.
You've been waiting for that promised child, and you're
going. I don't know how long I can do
this. Lord, I'm at the end of my rope.
The wait is hard when we're preparing for this future, this
glorious future. Until then, the wait is so long.
The wait is hard. When will I get my breakthrough?
Lord? When will I find that spouse?
When will I get that dream job that I've dreamt of and wished
for? Romans 8 verses 26 to 28 says
this. The Holy Spirit helps us in our
weakness. For example, we don't know what
God wants us to pray for, but the Holy Spirit prays for us
with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.
And the Father, who knows all hearts, knows what the Spirit is
saying. For the Spirit pleads for us
believers in harmony with God's own will.
And we know that God causes everything to work together for
the good of those who love God and are called according to His
purpose for them. God has given us the Holy Spirit
to help us in the wait. Because most of us, we're
miserable waiters. We don't know how to wait.
In another translation, it says wait confidently and
expectantly, both of which are adjectives that don't epitomize
most of us Confident. The minute we get that other
closed door, we're just like, I can't do this anymore.
I'm done expectantly, Lord, half the time we're bracing ourselves
with some kind of negative impact.
But God is saying, I want you to wait.
And the one you wait with is the Holy Spirit who is interceding
for you. So maybe all you have are tears.
The Holy Spirit will use that. He'll translate that.
Maybe all that you have is so much pent up anger and
frustration that what you prayed for has not happened yet.
He will intercede for you. I want to ask you this, does
your waiting involve praying and abiding or has it been involving
ranting and raving? There's a difference because
when I am abiding and praying it changes the way I wait.
I found that while we are in the, all of us are in different
seasons of waiting. The one thing that has helped me
has just opened the Bible and reading it till God speaks to
me. I just read.
I can read the Psalms. I would read Nehemiah.
I would just read something and I'd say, Lord, I don't know what
to do. Can you please speak to me?
Sometimes He'll speak to me in the first chapter, sometimes He
speaks to me after the 30th chapter.
But can I encourage you that you will abide and pray rather than
ranting and raving because that is what this wait does, is
preparing us for a glorious future.
If I don't know how to wait now, I will not value what I'm
waiting for when I receive it. I need to come into a place and
in the abiding, in the praying, I find that my connection with
Jesus tightens and the Holy Spirit is so beautiful because
the Holy Spirit is pleading with the will of God in mind.
So the more I'm in touch with the Holy Spirit, I start to
understand God's will for me. And it's been amazing because we
have actually lived this way. My husband and I have prayed for
certain things and then we started we started praying in
the Spirit and we said, Lord, our words are not doing it.
So we're going to pray in the Spirit.
And as we started praying in the Spirit, we found that God was
explaining certain situations to us.
So we started praying not what we wanted, but what he wanted.
And I would encourage you to do that because intercession is
really coming to this place of understanding God's heart and
then pleading with him in alignment with his way rather
than just saying these are the things that I want.
Lord, do it now it changes. So it's really requires that we
live in the spirit and order that we'll be fully alive in the
present and fully prepared for the future.
And even as we close, I just feel like someone needs this
reminder. You may have been going through
a season of hardship, persecution, suffering, worry,
anxiety. Whatever it is, I want to
encourage you that to remember this.
Maybe you're thinking God's forgotten about you or you're
not in favor with God. God doesn't love you.
I want to close with this passage, Romans 8, 35 to 39, and
it is for you specifically if you've been saying I feel
unloved by God. I feel forgotten.
I feel like I have made some choices which has made me take
10 steps away from him and I feel lost.
I don't think God knows where I'm at.
This is for you. Can anything ever separate us
from Christ's love? Does it mean He no longer loves
us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted or
hungry or destitute or in danger or threatened with death?
No, despite all these things overwhelming victories, ours
through Christ who loved us. And I'm convinced that nothing
can ever separate us from God's love.
Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our
fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow, not even the
powers of hell can separate us from God's love.
No power in the sky above, on the earth below.
Indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us
from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our
Lord. Isn't that amazing?
Nothing. What you are going through, what
you have gone through, the decisions you made, nothing can
separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
And so I want to just remind you that you are more than a
conqueror. Whatever you're fighting
through, remember he fights with you.
He fights for you. So you are more than a conqueror
in Christ Jesus. And your victory is evidence
that he loves you. Even if you're on the wait for
your victory, He loves you right there.
He sees those of you who are waiting.
He sees those of you who are suffering.
He feels with you. He he grieves with those who are
grieving for those of you who are wrestling with your sinful
nature, you know the things all of us are wrestling in some
aspect. Would you just throw up your
hands and defeat and say, Holy Spirit come in.
I want to live fully alive. I want to live fully prepared.
And so as we close, I just want to play this scripture over each
of you that you would live completely aware of the
resurrection power that is alive in you because we are not living
with a spirit that is powerless. We have the the mighty power of
God living within us because the same spirit that raised Jesus
from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies
through His Spirit who dwells in new Romans 811.
I'm praying that over you right now.
Father in Heaven. I just pray for everyone who is
listening in that God, they will experience this resurrection
power in their minds, in their bodies.
I pray God they will experience it in their wombs.
I pray they will experience it in their heart.
Father, I pray that you will bring life to mortal bodies.
Spirits will be resurrected. Souls will be resurrected.
Lord, we pray that bodies will be resurrected.
We pray God, your power will course through.
If anyone's having circulatory system disorders that your power
will just go through that those blood cells and heal them.
Father, if anyone is having Lord back problems, the God you will
resurrect that spine. You will change things that are
broken into something of worth or father, I pray for those who
are having life situations that are like ashes, that God, you
will breathe life into it. You are the God Lord who showed
Ezekiel that you breathe life into dead bones.
God, for you nothing is impossible, nothing.
And so we praise you for that magnificent God, and we ask that
you would come in your power. You come in your power.
I pray for those marriages which are on the brink of separation,
that God, you will breathe your resurrection power into those
homes, that you will bring about reconciliation, that your love
will envelope these families and these couples.
Father, I pray where the doctors have given up hope that your
power would course through these bodies and resurrect them back
to life. We love you, we honor you.
Spirit of God, we ask that you would take control of our lives.
Lead us, guide us, hold our hands, guide the things that we
think about this, that we speak about.
Help us. We cannot do this alone.
Intercede for us as you already do.
We love you. We thank you in Jesus name,
Amen, Amen. God bless you.
Have a spirit filled week. Thanks for listening to this
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