Message: We have hope; we can persevere in trials, being devoted to prayer and serving one another.
Time: Written in AD 57 from Greece, to the Christians, both Gentile and Jewish in Rome.
What the Lord is Saying:
Background
And the life of the Christian continues. But remember, this chapter begins with me presenting myself to God, as holy. And this presentation, I am deemed acceptable. And my life presented to Him is a life of being transformed by the renewing of My mind. It is the life of the Christian, before God, that has a transformed mind. In Christ, I am to be renewed. And I need this daily renewal in my life for the ways of the world are contrary to the ways of God. The way of the world is the way of man. I must remember always that my focus is not to be on myself and what I want, but it is to be focused on others and their needs. I am to have the right perspective in life and that is a perspective of seeing myself the way the Lord sees me.
I am to be a member of the Body of Christ and be focused on using the Gift the God has given me.
Thus far, I am encouraged to
- Have a love without hypocrisy. My love is not to be two-faced or self-seeking.
- I am to hate what is evil. I am to abhor it and to have a rotten taste in my mouth from it.
- I am to cling to what is good.
- I am to think more of others, loving my fellow man, and honoring that person.
- I am to be a servant
I have hope. God promises that we will have hope. I think the great thing about hope is realizing that God has a plan for my life. He sees beyond my circumstances. One of the challenges of raising children that I see more and more is that our children live each moment, in the moment. They struggle with any foresight. They don't see nor understand consequences. They only know "right now." It is a challenge each day to help them see beyond the moment. My youngest son, Derek, has such great difficulty with this. All that he can see is right now and whatever "right now" is presenting to himself, that is what he wants. Right now could be a friend calling and wanting him around, even though he has a school assignment due. Right now could be church that we as a family have committed to go to, but he had some late nights and wants to just sleep. Right now can at times be a school project or assignment that is due tomorrow and so everything must be put aside to complete it tonight. His world is so focused on the now and he can't see beyond that. What a comfort it is that God sees beyond our circumstances. We may be caught up in the momentary problems of "now," and in the trials that we are facing that seem larger than life, but he wants us to rejoice in Hope.
[My one big concern with my children right now is how much of their life is focused on themselves and pleasing their own needs. There lives are lived more and more as "me-focused" people. There seems to be an even greater of focus in their lives of entertaining themselves and that life is simply about having fun.]
This is interesting about these commandments or life instructions that Paul is giving. So far, the focus of them has been about not thinking about me and my needs and my current circumstances, but to focus on others. I am to love others with a love that is focused on them. I am to think more high highly of other people and to serve them.
Hope is the lifeline of the Christian..
Persevering in Tribulation
Trials are often longer than momentary. Trials often have tenure. And so we need perseverance. Once again, we can look at the world and we can see how we are trained now to end trials as soon as they happen. When we have a hurt, we go to urgent care or we go the emergency room. When I was a kid, going to the emergency room never happened. If we had a serious problem, we would just go to the doctor or wait for our doctor appointment, but now we go to the emergency room or urgent care for immediate response. No longer can we wait to be seen the next morning or next day, if something occurs in the middle of the night we can be seen immediately.
In addition, we have medicines to care for any sort of ailment that may come our way. We take these medicines in large quantities so that we can continue on in our lives and in our normal routines. We have become completely adverse to experiencing trials and if they come, we try to get them to end ASAP.
But trials are still inevitable. They still come our way. And Paul lets us know that we need to persevere through those trials. Here in these verses Paul links our rejoicing in hope with our persevering in trials. The way we make it through the trial is by having hope. It is to rejoice in our future. See, even here, in the trials we experience, we are being trained by the world to instead have self-reliance. That we make it through these times through self-effort. We are obsessed with diagnosing problems now so that life can continue uninterrupted.
It really makes me thing what are the trials that I am experiencing right now in my life. What am I doing right now that would allow me to have hope and focus me on perseverance?
- There are financial woes at the moment. It seems we go from expense to expense. Right now, it is medical expenses and ACT prep. We aren't giving nor saving right now. And I'm working hard to make sure we spend a small amount of money each week on groceries.
- Work is a constant trial. I feel so overloaded with all the work I have to do. And with Dawn's status being uncertain, it is creating further stress.
Devoted to Prayer
This is obviously a believer's continual ambition to have this attitude. Can anyone say they are completely satisfied with their prayer life? The more it is done, the more it is seen it needs to be done. This is one of those disciplines where I have no idea what it means to have success. I guess you could say I am committed to prayer and devoted to the notion that prayer changes lives. But, I cannot say my life mirrors a lot of praying.
I know there are evenings when I think that we could be praying as a family or as a couple. I have tried this at times and it meant other things in the evening had to be temporarily set aside. But that time of praying didn't remain a part of our evenings. I get discouraged when I think I am the only one that wants it to happen. I get discouraged because urgent matters are always arising and taking the place of that time.
I took a moment to pray today as I drove in to work. I didn't cover a lot of subjects, but I did take the time to pray. So, it just seems that there is a move from taking time to praying being a continual attitude and part of my lifestyle.
I think the reason prayer is important is it gets our focus off of ourselves and the belief that our plans or how we spend our time daily is what is most important and it shifts our life over to God so that we can begin to see that He is most important. It is a time of surrendering to God and recognizing that only He can help.
And maybe the real focus here is that tribulation should drive me to prayer. I do hear this from a lot of people. I hear often from people that when they are experiencing something difficult they say, "Would you pray for me?" I hope this means that we believe God will help and not simply be one of many assists in the ordeal. God should be it.
Hope, Perseverance and Prayer
Paul once again shows a link between these three disciplines of our lives. Romans 5:3-5, "And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us." I remember this passage and Paul reminding us that the Christian actually has a sort of privilege in life for being about to have tribulations. It is actually a special thing and not something we are to run or flee from in our life. In trials, we have perseverance, which builds our character and focuses us on hope.
And then he groups these three together again in Romans 8:24-26, "For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." Hope and perseverance and once again inter-woven. They work together and this also moves us to pray with the Spirit interceding for us.
Contributing to the Needs of the Saints
Galatians 6:10 expresses, "So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of faith." The cry of my heart is to be crying out for others in my life. Recently, I have been spending time helping out with the meals at home. My wife feels bad though I remind her she has done it for the last 23 years and now I am just doing it for the last 2 weeks. I am getting into it. It takes time. And I guess it takes time from other things, but it is enjoyable because there is the knowledge that I am serving others.
I was reminded of this yesterday in the message I heard. How are we opening our lives to others? Are we having people over to eat? Who are we including in our lives? I notice how Pete and Schea do this with international students. We have opportunities. We need to make opportunities. We are too focused on just surviving.
Practicing Hospitality
This is literally the love of strangers. This one really stretches the comfort zone because we often, or at least I often, flee from strangers. I have people in my circle of influence that I may give the time of day, but reaching out to strangers and then thinking about the extra step of practicing hospitality and having warmth and love for them is something quite different. Yet, this is my calling. As I spoke to friends about earlier this morning, we are to look for opportunities to share God's truth with others. Lord, I need your help. Show me these opportunities and give me the strength to talk to people and then take the extra step of showing them love.
Promise: God will give me the strength to persevere through trials and show me how I can be an encouragement to others and show hospitality to friends and strangers.
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