What's In The Sky

Circling overhead, buzzards wait for our demise, but God is for us. If God is for us who can be against us? I know I’m plagiarize God’s word, and I don’t claim those words as my original; in fact most of my original thoughts usually just get corrupted by the world anyway, so, I would rather use His. Back to my though, I was reading through Romans 8 (which I’ll post at the end) and I was basking in the fullness of living in the hope of our future redemption and knowing the deposit Christ has left in me.

That deposit of Christ’s love is His Spirit, the Holy Spirit. We live in an era that seems to over indulge in the craziness of strange expressions in worship that grieve God’s Spirit (Barking in the Spirit? Gold dust placed in air ducts to emulate a glory cloud?). Or on the other hand the other extreme denies that Christ’s gifts to the Church are in operation today or give them no place for operation. I grew up in the Pentecostal tradition of the church, so, I need not explain where I’m coming from. Lately, for the last 20 years  I have worshipped in the Calvary Chapel way. The differences between the two are minimal (but distinct) and really I’m just a believer trying to find believers who love God and keep to His word. Sometimes though, my roots call out because there is a certain freedom of expression in Pentecostal churches that I miss.

Sorry, I often go down the rabbit trails of life (in thought). So, back on my first thought in reading Romans 8. It makes me ponder life. Paul in spreading the Gospel opened the door do the work of God as few have. But it also kicked in overdrive the fight of the enemy against the work of God. God is always working, but often we just refuse to get in the ring and go for it. We avoid, rather than embrace the battle for the souls of men. Yet, whether we engage or not, the battle rages on. Our enemy seeks to steal, kill, and destroy our life. While Jesus came to give life, for He is life. There I go plagiarizing again.

Paul at one point in his letters shared all the things he went through. He  suffered greatly for the Gospel. In middle class America, I don’t suffer much at all. I mean life here is easy compared to most of the world. Oh yeah, I hurt everyday and it overwhelms me at times. I get stuck somewhere between depression and a hard place. But, at anytime I could say uncle, and doctors would give me license to take anything needed. But, for now I choose not to. I know my redeemer lives and one day all this sorrow will be wiped away. So, I choose to suffer. I choose to take up my cross and bear it. Perhaps as our burden of weight presses down, that’s when the Holy Spirit speaks through us with sighs and groaning too deep for words. Perhaps at moments like this our light may shine the brightest and our focus on the eternal is set in stone.

We know our joy comes in the morning. So, ignore the buzzards and get on with it.

Romans 8

Be Ruled by the Spirit

 ¹ So now, those who are in Christ Jesus are not judged guilty.^[a] 2 Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit that brings life made you^[b] free from the law that brings sin and death. ³ The law was without power, because the law was made weak by our sinful selves. But God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son to earth with the same human life that others use for sin. By sending his Son to be an offering for sin, God used a human life to destroy sin.⁴ He did this so that we could be the kind of people the law correctly wants us to be. Now we do not live following our sinful selves, but we live following the Spirit.

 ⁵ Those who live following their sinful selves think only about things that their sinful selves want. But those who live following the Spirit are thinking about the things the Spirit wants them to do.⁶ If people's thinking is controlled by the sinful self, there is death. But if their thinking is controlled by the Spirit, there is life and peace.⁷ When people's thinking is controlled by the sinful self, they are against God, because they refuse to obey God's law and really are not even able to obey God's law.⁸Those people who are ruled by their sinful selves cannot please God.

 ⁹ But you are not ruled by your sinful selves. You are ruled by the Spirit, if that Spirit of God really lives in you. But the person who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Christ.¹⁰ Your body will always be dead because of sin. But if Christ is in you, then the Spirit gives you life, because Christ made you right with God. ¹¹ God raised Jesus from the dead, and if God's Spirit is living in you, he will also give life to your bodies that die. God is the One who raised Christ from the dead, and he will give life through^[c] his Spirit that lives in you.

 ¹² So, my brothers and sisters, we must not be ruled by our sinful selves or live the way our sinful selves want.¹³ If you use your lives to do the wrong things your sinful selves want, you will die spiritually. But if you use the Spirit's help to stop doing the wrong things you do with your body, you will have true life.

 ¹⁴ The true children of God are those who let God's Spirit lead them.¹⁵ The Spirit we received does not make us slaves again to fear; it makes us children of God. With that Spirit we cry out, "Father."^[d]16 And the Spirit himself joins with our spirits to say we are God's children.¹⁷ If we are God's children, we will receive blessings from God together with Christ. But we must suffer as Christ suffered so that we will have glory as Christ has glory.

Our Future Glory

 ¹⁸ The sufferings we have now are nothing compared to the great glory that will be shown to us.¹⁹Everything God made is waiting with excitement for God to show his children's glory completely.²⁰Everything God made was changed to become useless, not by its own wish but because God wanted it and because all along there was this hope:²¹ that everything God made would be set free from ruin to have the freedom and glory that belong to God's children.

 ²² We know that everything God made has been waiting until now in pain, like a woman ready to give birth.²³ Not only the world, but we also have been waiting with pain inside us. We have the Spirit as the first part of God's promise. So we are waiting for God to finish making us his own children, which means our bodies will be made free.²⁴ We were saved, and we have this hope. If we see what we are waiting for, that is not really hope. People do not hope for something they already have.²⁵ But we are hoping for something we do not have yet, and we are waiting for it patiently.

 ²⁶ Also, the Spirit helps us with our weakness. We do not know how to pray as we should. But the Spirit himself speaks to God for us, even begs God for us with deep feelings that words cannot explain.²⁷ God can see what is in people's hearts. And he knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit speaks to God for his people in the way God wants.

 ²⁸ We know that in everything God works for the good of those who love him.^[e] They are the people he called, because that was his plan. ²⁹ God knew them before he made the world, and he chose them to be like his Son so that Jesus would be the firstborn^[f] of many brothers and sisters. ³⁰ God planned for them to be like his Son; and those he planned to be like his Son, he also called; and those he called, he also made right with him; and those he made right, he also glorified.

God's Love in Christ Jesus

 ³¹ So what should we say about this? If God is for us, no one can defeat us. ³² He did not spare his own Son but gave him for us all. So with Jesus, God will surely give us all things.³³ Who can accuse the people God has chosen? No one, because God is the One who makes them right. ³⁴ Who can say God's people are guilty? No one, because Christ Jesus died, but he was also raised from the dead, and now he is on God's right side, appealing to God for us. ³⁵ Can anything separate us from the love Christ has for us? Can troubles or problems or sufferings or hunger or nakedness or danger or violent death? ³⁶ As it is written in the Scriptures:
    "For you we are in danger of death all the time.
       People think we are worth no more than sheep to be killed." — Psalm 44:22

 ³⁷ But in all these things we are completely victorious through God who showed his love for us. ³⁸Yes, I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor ruling spirits, nothing now, nothing in the future, no powers,³⁹ nothing above us, nothing below us, nor anything else in the whole world will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8 NCV