REFLECTIONS ON "ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER FOR GOOD"

This past weekend pastor Dave spoke to us of Romans 8:28 where the apostle Paul writes, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (NIV).  He helped us see that, unfortunately, many people have spend-doctored this verse to mean that all things work together for good.  That’s simply not true, is it?  It sure sounds good and is a great sounding sales pitch for the Gospel; but it isn’t what Paul said and it isn’t the truth. 

The truth is that there are a lot of things in this world that work against us.  There is evil in this world and there are powers at work seeking our demise.  Bad things happen to good people and evil things happen to righteous people.  In Romans 8:22-23 Paul makes it clear,  “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.”  Have you ever groaned inwardly in a pain that would take you down if it were not for God?  Sure you have. 

Paul speaks to the church and lists some of the ways the enemy would take us down if he had the power to do so: “trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword…death, life, angels, demons, the present, the future, powers, height, depth” (Rom. 8:35-39).  In verse 25 he speaks of “our weakness.”  Verses 26 and 27 speak of how sometimes we are so overwhelmed in life that we don’t even know how to pray.  In this world life hits us all.  Righteous people around the world are dying every day because of starvation, filthy water, evil governments, and a world wide epidemic of man’s inhumanity to man.  What happened to “all things work together for good?”

God’s plan is bigger than any plan you or I might come up with.  God comes to us!  Did you hear it?  God comes to us in this world and establishes a stronghold in our lives that is so powerful that no force in all time or eternity can separate us from His love.  In this world “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Rom. 8:25).  How is that for good news?   Yes, sometimes we are hit so hard by the enemy we don’t even know how to pray.  In those times, though, “the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Rom. 8:27).  In Romans 8:31-32 Paul speaks of life in this world, right now, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

We are covered by a grace won for us on the cross of Calvary.  The empty tomb resounds through all time and eternity, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” 

In 2 Corinthians 4: 8-9 Paul speaks a painful yet wonderful truth.  He told the church, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”  Romans 8:28 does not keep us from being “Hard pressed… perplexed…persecuted… struck down.”  But God’s presence in our lives buoys us up in such away that no matter how hard life gets it doesn’t have to crush us or leave us in despair or cause God to abandon us or leave us destroyed.  Immanuel, God with us, is in us and His good, acceptable and perfect will (Romans 12:2) cannot be undone. 

How much is God with us?  Long before Jesus came, David said it well, “Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:6).  Life may take our lives from us, but it can’t take heaven from us.  Life may knock us down but it can’t separate us from the love of God that has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ.  Death has taken my mom and dad and two much-loved sisters-in-law but at their death Jesus ushered them home to the place He had gone away to prepare for them.  Romans 8:28 is so true that even at funerals we say, “O death, where is your victory? O death where is your sting? (I Corinthians 15:55).  Today, because of the amazing grace of an amazing God we live embraced by “goodness and lovingkindness,” and when the awesome opportunities of this temporal life are over we “will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Last weekend our worship team led us in some beautiful words to which I say, “Amen.” Because we know we are safe in the arms of Jesus come what may, we say with eyes wide open and fixed on Jesus,

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,


When sorrows like sea billows roll;


Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,


It is well, it is well, with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,


It is well, it is well, with my soul.

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE INCREDIBLE LAW OF CHRIST

Ever wonder what the law of Christ is?  Here it is simple and to the point.  It is found in Galatians 6:2.  Here are several translations of the verse:

v      New International Version--Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

v      New Living Translation--Share each other's burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ.

v      English Standard Version--Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

v      New American Standard Bible --Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.

v      King James Bible--Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

We are not lone ranger Christians, are we?  We are called to discover burdens that people have and to come alongside them and yoke ourselves to them so that we can “carry… share…bear” their burdens with them.

This past Sunday pastor Dave debunked the teaching that says God helps those who help themselves.  Why would he debunk it?  Because this thought is not in our sacred writings.  It is a spurious teaching that appeals to our egos and feeds the age old thinking that all we need to do is pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and carry on.  But what about all the folks in our world who can’t help themselves?  Are they excluded from grace?  And how about you and me who can’t do a thing to earn God’s mercy and grace.  Try to impress God all you want; He’s not buying it.  That’s a tough pill to swallow for some of us in North America who take pride in self-sufficiency.  And deep down inside your heart do you sometimes think the thought that “there ain’t no free lunch. If you can’t help yourself you’re in the way.”   

Our faith says NO to these things.  Those who can’t help themselves are invited to the table of Jesus.  All throughout the New Testament we see Jesus drawing near to the broken, the weak, the sick and infirmed, the outcast, the disenfranchised.  He draws near and treats them as if they are the most important people on the planet.  Now, we, the Church, carry on in this same spirit. 

Truth is, we are all broken.  You might be down and out or up and out, it doesn’t matter?  All the ground is level at the foot of the cross, and on that sacred soil we pray, “It’s me. It’s me, O Lord; standing in the need of prayer.”  We don’t have time to decide who’s in and who’s out.  We extend the right hand of fellowship to everyone who crosses our path.   We don’t categorize “us,” and “them.”  It’s all “us.” And, on a good day, don’t the best of us stand and testify, “Alas and did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die?  Would He devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?”   

We are in this thing called “life” together.  We need each other.  We are one in the bond of Christ’s love.  We are family, so we “Carry…Share…Bear (pick the translation that best works for you) each other's burdens,” and when we do so we “ fulfill the law of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 

Want to make God look good?  Find a person in need and help her or him carry their burden.  Draw near to someone struggling and share the burden.  Embrace someone who is fighting to stay afloat and bear the burden with him or her. 

In the coming months we are launching forward with intentional commitment to our “Because You Matter” ministry.  We are committing with new intention and zeal our efforts with “Special Olympics.”  Hopefully we’ll all move forward with our eyes focused on folks around us who do desperately need the love God to show up for them in flesh and blood. 

Somebody once said, “Find a need and meet it.”  Maybe that’s what it means to “carry and share and bear” someone’s burden.  I’ll leave that to others for clarification.  I do know, however, that when I see brokenness and sickness and poverty and deep need and overwhelming disenfranchisement and the categorizing of people into the “haves” and “have nots,” I am drawn to the God who “emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race,” realizing that when He could have written me off, He didn’t. Who would have thought it?  And, as I am a part of “Adam’s helpless race,” I really do find myself praying, “It’s me; It’s me, O Lord; standing in the need of prayer.”   

GOD WANTS ME TO PROSPER

Pastor Dave Roberts calls it “Bumper Sticker Theology,” pithy one-liners that condense “truth” about God down to bite size chunks.  The only problem is that usually these one-liners aren’t truthful; catchy but not truthful. One of those bumper stickers reads, “God wants me to proper.”

Some folks quickly jump to Jeremiah 29:11 for their defense, “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Many people read these words and conclude that God is here to make our lives easier, to increase our status materially, and to be our personal “blessings ATM machine.” This is not what Jeremiah is saying, however.

In Jeremiah God tells His people that they were going into captivity.  It would be a most difficult time.  They would be away from their holy land.  They wouldn’t be able to come near Jerusalem. Their homeland would be devastated.  The coming years were going to be tought. Doesn’t sound like Prosperity, does it? 

Down in a foreign place, Babylon, they would live and move and have their being.  Jeremiah tells them to adjust and make peace with it.  They were to go about their days, however, always remembering that their lives and times were in the hands of God.  In the captivity they were to go about the business of living.  They were to set up homes, raise their children, allow their children to marry and have children of their own.  He called them never to give up, to look forward, to hang tough, and to remember their God.  This captivity was not to be the final chapter in their lives.  God was in their midst, and no matter what they might experience they were to live with their eyes fixed on God and to pursue the hope that always comes when God is present.

The problem with a bumper sticker theology that says, “God wants me to prosper,” is that it lays aside what God means by prosper and replaces it with the good old thinking that generally is western, monetary, and fully expressed in the realization of the American dream.  We want God to prospers us so that we become healthy and wealthy.  Therefore, surely, that’s what God must mean when He seeks to prosper His people.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it tends to reduce God down to our understanding and we being to think that what we think is what God thinks. From this comes the bad theology that if you are not healthy and wealthy, you’re not “in” God.  You have a spiritual problem.  If you are really spiritual God becomes “Johnny-on-the-spot” with His prosperous blessings.

What if God has bigger plans for you than health and wealth?  What if God wants to enter down into your story and walk with you everyday as you live in the realities of your life?  What if God doesn’t keep you from facing tribulation but establishes Himself as your God in it?  What if God doesn’t keep you from dying at the end of your days but promises to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with you so much so that He prepares a feast before you in the presence of your enemies?  What if in this very real and dangerous world we are invited to walk by faith in a God who is holy and faithful and truthful and gracious and compassionate, a God who meets us right where we are and who “emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race”? 

What if there is more to life than wealth, more to life than health, more to life than dying with the most toys in hand? What if God wants to prosper us with the abiding presence of His own Holy Spirit, to walk with us into our days, covering us with the reality of His own divine life, and embracing us in the majesty of His divine grace and peace and mercy and love?

What if God were to so establish His life in our lives that the truthful testimony of our lives would be that even though we are “afflicted in every way” we are “not crushed, perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; stuck down, but not destroyed” (See 2 Corinthians 4:8-9).

What if God’s prosperity was so powerful that we could truthfully say, “We do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.  For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison… (See 2 Cor. 4: 16-17)?

What if God’s prosperity was so powerful that we could truthfully say, “Thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place” (2 Cor. 2:14).

What if God’s prosperity was so powerful that the foundation upon which we live and move and have our being will never give way so that even if the rains fall and the floods come and the winds blow and slam against us we won’t fall because we have been founded on the Rock of Jesus Christ (See Matthew 7:24-25)?   

Isn’t it true that we don’t need God’s money; we need God?  We don’t need God to give us the American dream; we need God. We don’t need perfect health; we need God.  God has promised to be with us day-by-day.  Isn’t that enough?  And, if it isn’t, can we at least concede that there are untold millions of people on the planet who don’t live in America, don’t know what the American dream is, who don’t know what a health insurance plan looks like, don’t have a bank account and who are looking to find where their next meal is coming from, and that millions of these people live and move and have their being in Jesus with a faith that makes ours pale in comparison.  

May God meet your needs, embrace you in His love, forgive you of your sins, fill you with His Spirit, empower you for life, and take you home to heaven when you die.  Now, that’s prosperity. With this is mind, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (Ephesians 3:16).