All Work Out - April 22, 2014

Scripture: Romans 7-8

18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. 19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are.20 Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.24 We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. 25 But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.) 

26 And 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.27 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.28 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. - Romans 8

Message:

Our sufferings now can only remind us of our Hope for a glorious Future.

Observation/Promise:

We may have sufferings and troubles on earth, but they are only to mold us into better persons, shaping us to be a people of great character, one that GOD is working to be worthy of the paradise He has prepared for us. Yes we are all saved from our sins and condemnation when we accept the Lord Yeshua as our GOD but acceptance is not the end but only the start of our transformation. We can not stop pursuing GOD just because we are already sure of our salvation. The Word says we need to work out our salvation. When GOD saves us, He starts molding us into people with golden characters. And the process of molding and transformation may not be a pleasant experience because it is usually painful most of the time. 

Application/Command:

We need to only trust GOD in our troubles and suffering. When we trust GOD, we are letting go of our human ways of getting things done, we simply trust that the hardship and difficult circumstance is only making us hope more on the glorious future He has in store for us and that what we are going through now will bear into such a fruit that will make good use in the tasks and roles we will be responsible for in the future. And even in our failures, we can be confident that GOD will use our mistakes for His glory and our greater good. With GOD, no experience could ever be a waste, when we follow GOD, everything will all work out in the end and only GOD knows how. 

Glory in Sufferings

1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

- Romans 5:1-5

Justice is the quality of being fair and right. It is hard to comprehend that even when we are proven wrong because we are sinners, we will be judged as right because we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is just one of the great privileges that followers of Jesus can be assured of because this is the promise of GOD. When we have Jesus, we have everything that human eyes cannot see in the natural world. We look forward to the future even thought the world is falling apart. We can rejoice because the more we know this world is coming to an end, the greater the hope in our hearts that Jesus soon return is getting closer. But it is not easy to be a follower of Jesus in this present world. GOD never promised an easy life but a victorious one if we continue to trust, follow and remain in HIM. 

Everyone in this world goes through trials and hardships, both the wicked and righteous alike. But the righteous, the one's who have Jesus can suffer with purpose when they go through trials and hardship because the word of GOD says we can glory in our sufferings. Sufferings will produce within us the capacity to endure trials, forming within us a character that is patterned after Jesus and because we know that our sufferings are with purpose, we have hope. Hope that the world can never understand unless they too will receive GOD's gracious gift of salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the light we we shine, this is how we become different from the world because we can glory in our sufferings. We are not hopeless in sufferings, we are glorious even in our sufferings through the Spirit of GOD that is working within us.