Category: Today’s Truth

Romans 8:29-30 takes us through a study of what the Christian life looks like. These verses explain that “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” It is miraculous that from the beginning of time, God knew which people would choose them, and He chose them to be like His Son. He made them heirs along with His firstborn Son: Jesus. It then goes on to say that since He chose them, He called them to Him and He imparted His glory to His sons and daughters!

These verses show us the work God does on His part. The only thing He requires of us is to accept His great gift of salvation. But His work was much greater than anything we could ever do. He foreknew us from the beginning of time. He predestined us as His children. He called us to live a life according to His purpose. And those He called He justified (or made right), and those He justified, He glorified! We will receive an eternal glory because of the work God has done! What a beautiful process!

God’s gift is free for His people. It didn’t cost us anything. But it cost Him everything. He gave up His only Son to rescue us from our sins. His Son gave up His Sonship in heaven. It cost them so much, but it was worth it. It was the plan- what God wanted to do.

Romans 8:28 tends to be a verse that Christians know very well. “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.” However, to understand verse 28, we must first read verse 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.” This verse is so encouraging! God knows all hearts- He knows YOUR heart! He created you, so of course He knows you! Not only that, but He also knows what the Holy Spirit is saying when He is groaning for you. So if you put those two things together, you get a pretty powerful God who knows His people and intercedes for His people!

This thought makes verse 28 a little easier to understand. God, who knows our hearts, intercedes for us through the Holy Spirit, and since He is God three-in-one, He knows what the Holy Spirit is saying and can plead for us in accordance with His will. So He causes all things to work together for the good of us when we love God. That good is in accordance with His will! So He will not work for good outside of His will (and really, is there any good outside of His will)!

These verses are misinterpreted so often to fit the needs of the person who reads it. But we should take hope in knowing that God knows our hearts AND His will and knows what we need. And that is good!

Romans 8:26 tells us that the Holy Spirit will help us in our weakness. When we do not know what God wants us to pray, the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. God helps us in our weaknesses. As Christians we will still experience weakness. We will struggle with sin, and we will struggle with our own selfish desires from time to time. We will need God‘s intervention and the help of the Holy Spirit.

Paul wrote about this in 2 Corinthians 12 as he was dealing with his weakness. He begged the Lord to take it away from him. But he learned an important lesson. God told him that His grace is all Paul needed. His power works best in weakness. Paul’s attitude toward his weakness changed. He said in verse 9 that he was glad to boast about his weaknesses so that the power of Christ could work through him. In verse 10 he said, “For when I am weak, then I am strong. Paul understood that through his weakness, God‘s strength would shine.

Have you given over your weaknesses to the Lord? Have you understood that in your weakness, God’s strength will shine and be a testimony to others? Give your weaknesses over to Him today and watch Him work in amazing ways. His strength is the only strength that can carry us through. Rather than telling someone they can accomplish something because of their strength, try telling them to lean on God and His strength!

What is it that you are hoping? Do you hope that your children will grow, have successful jobs, settle down and raise a family? Do you hope that your spouse will love you all of your days? Do you hope that you will advance in your job ? Do you hope you will get a raise?

Many of our hopes and dreams tend to focus on ourselves and our families. They focus on a temporary time and worldly things. As Christians, we have a greater hope. Psalms 130 is a cry to the God of hope. The writer says in verse 5 that he is counting on the Lord. He puts his hope in God’s Word and longs for the Lord. The writer goes on to say in verse 7 that he is urging the people of Israel to hope in the Lord. It says that with the Lord there is unfailing love. His redemption overflows.

The hope we find in the Lord is redemption. He rescues us from our former lives, our selfishness, and things that are not good for us. With God there is always hope: the hope of the future, the hope of what God is already doing, and the hope of a changed life. There is the hope of restored relationships. There is the hope of unfailing love. All of these are eternal hopes and not temporary hopes like we tend to have when we only think of ourselves. His hope never fails. So hope in the things of God today and find a future with Him.

Look around you. What do you see? Do you see the hustle and bustle of the seasons coming and going? Do you see the pain and suffering of people living without God? Do you see hardships? Or do you see a world that God created and its beauty? Look up and you will see a different sky every single day. Some days the clouds stretch across the sky like cotton balls. Other days there is not a cloud to be found, just a sea of blue. The sunrise is new every morning and the sunset is never the same as it closes out the day. The night sky shows the handiwork of our God. The cry of a newborn baby shows the DNA at work. He created all of this in unison, in one accord, crying out to God their king.

Yet we still see death and decay. Just as Romans 8:20 and 21 say, the world is still subject to God’s curse. And so it groans along with the rest of us for the day when our salvation will be fulfilled. One day Christ will return and restore what was broken. What a great hope we have in His creation as this evidence of the great love of God. We know that as beautiful as His creation is now, it is nothing like what is to come. The Bible says there will be a new heaven and a new earth. However, this will be for believers to live in perfect harmony with His creation. Imagine the beauty and splendor! All of creation will praise His name forever!

What a great hope we have as believers. We have so much to look forward to. We should be living every day like we are longing for His new kingdom. It should give us a sense of urgency for those we love to know Him and a sense of peace knowing that He is in control.

Sometimes when people come to know the saving grace of Jesus Christ, they think that everything will change in an instant and their life will be good with no suffering. They think that immediately God will take away their pain. Maybe they think that because of the way we as Christians present it to them. Maybe the better way to present it is that even though you will experience pain and suffering at various points in your life, God promises you will not walk alone.

Unfortunately, everyone will experience some sort of suffering at some point in their lives. Whether that is losing a loved one too soon, a broken relationship with a friend or family member, or even just standing up for your beliefs and experiencing strife in the Christian life. Suffering is all around us because we live in a broken world.

God never promised us that there would be no suffering, but He does promise that we will not go through it alone. We will have His Word to guide us, His heart to comfort us, and His people to walk with us. The other thing he promises is that we will attain a future glory. Romans 8:18 says that what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory He will reveal to us later. We are waiting for the day when our faith shall be revealed. And as verse 20 says, we wait with eager hope. Someday there will be no more pain. There will be no more suffering. There will just be God and his people forever.

When Christ went to the cross, He took on the power of sin and its hold on His people. He took on all of the sins of the world. They were on His shoulders. When He died and rose again, He defeated death. No other “god” had ever accomplished resurrection. He defeated death and sin. That means He defeated the hold sin had- its grip- on the people. When He crushed Satan, just as the Bible had foretold, He also crushed the chains and bondage sin had on the people of God. Just like that He won the victory. Romans 6:9 said that death no longer had a power over Christ.

Not only does sin have no power, but it can no longer be your master. In verse 14, it says that sin is no longer your master, and you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live in the freedom of Christ’s grace. When you make a mistake, sin has no hold on you. You can delight in the grace of God, knowing His forgiveness will pour over you. You can live in the hope of His salvation.

Romans 6:17 says that we are no longer slaves to sin! We can now serve God wholeheartedly. There is nothing weighing us down. He is a good Father who rescued His children, and we can live in His love, grace, and forgiveness!

Knowing Jesus is the best gift we can give our children. It is the best thing we can offer them. Living our lives with God as our Father and guide is the best way to find peace and happiness. Romans 8:14 says, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” Think about that for a moment. If you have found God and have been rescued by the blood of Jesus Christ, then you are a child of God! You are a child with a new family. A new life. A new legacy. Galatians 3:26 says that you are a child of God through Jesus Christ. When He died on the cross, He gave us adoption into the family of God. We became heirs with Christ!

This is why His Word says He is a father to the fatherless. He is a hope for the hopeless. Since we are His children and He is our Father, we can trust that He can take care of us and that He knows what is best for us. Just as a good parent makes decisions for their children with their well-being and future in mind, so does God the Father! Except He can see the future and knows what it will bring. This should make us want to teach our children about Him. He is the best one to care for our children, so we should seek Him for advice and wisdom when it comes to parenting. We can parent as a child of God!

Why wouldn’t we want to share the greatest story ever told with our children? Why wouldn’t we want to share the gift we have been given? Take some time today to think about how you can share Christ with your children on a daily basis.

According to Dictionary.com the word obligation has several meanings. It can mean something by which a person is bound or obliged to do certain things. It can mean a binding promise, contract, or sense of duty. Or it can simply mean law. Romans 8:12 tells us that we do not have any obligation to do what our sinful nature urges us to do. If we live by the Spirit, then we are not bound by the law. However, some people live as though their sinful nature is law. They live as though they are under its obligation and will suffer consequences if they do not do what their nature tells them. But Romans 8 goes on to say that if you live by the flesh’s dictates, you will die, and through the power of the Spirit, the deeds of the sinful nature were put to death. So we can truly live. Basically living by the flesh equals death and living by the Spirit equals life.

It is not surprising that someone that is lost will live by their flesh and its rules and laws. But when a Christian lives as though they are bound by their flesh, it is almost as if they have forgotten the freedom that they found in Christ. So to find Christ is to find freedom from sin and the obligation it desires. To stay with Christ means to continuously live in light of His freedom and the gift of salvation.

Is this something you struggle with? Fill your mind with the things of God and the Holy Spirit and ask God to continuously give you strength and power over your flesh so that you may serve God. We cannot serve the pleasures of the flesh and God. We have to live by God’s Word. When we delight in His Word, we will want to serve Him and live in His freedom.

Satan has always been at war with God. Even though God won the victory over man when He sent Jesus to the cross to be a sacrifice for man’s sins, Satan is still at work all the time to try and win as many little battles as He can. He is constantly trying to entice man away from the Lord with his temporary joys and momentary pleasures.

John 10:10a says, “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy.” He is a thief. He tries to take away anything that can give lasting joy. He is not just a thief that finds happiness in taking things away, but this verse also says he kills and destroys. He will stop at nothing until it is all gone. There is hope in the second part of John 10:10, “My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.” While the thief comes to destroy, the Savior comes to give us life. Not just any life, but a rich and satisfying life. An abundant life. Satan is the destroyer and the thief, and God is the giver of life. He wants us to truly live! We find life when we surrender our life over to Him. We find hope when we trust Him with our future instead of taking things into our own hands.

Do you live in your abundant life every single day? Or do you find yourself giving into the thief, allowing him to destroy the good in your life. Every time you choose momentary pleasures and sins, you are allowing the enemy to win battles in your life. Pray to God today and ask Him to help you live in light of eternity everyday.