We are not progressing very quickly through Romans 5, but maybe that’s because we are finding so much in the chapter! Yesterday, we still only made it to verse 11, and we certainly lingered on that verse!
“We also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” (Rom 5:11)
Garry encouraged us to list reasons that we can boast (or rejoice) in God. Firstly, we made lists of all that God has done for us (yes, that’s why it’s taking us so long!) and then we also listed all that God is, before looking at how our experience of God matches up with the Bible’s revelation of God.
So often, God works in our lives in a particular way and that reminds us of a particular attribute of God. For example, when we moved into St Mark’s, that was, for us as a congregation, a definite reminder of God’s faithfulness to keep His promises. We already knew that God is a faithful God from His word, but we saw that afresh in our experience.
There are times, however, when our experience may lead us into places where we feel we are NOT experiencing God in the way the Bible leads us to expect. There are times when we may feel forsaken, rejected, abandoned or lost. All the more reason, therefore, that we root ourselves in what we know to be true about God and can declare, like the psalmists, the truth about God, even if our hearts don’t seem to be experiencing that truth.
We looked at various psalms which give us good reason to find that God is our joy and our delight (Ps 43:4), but also at psalms of lament (eg Ps 10, Ps 13) where the psalmist may start from a position of desolation and loneliness, but ends by declaring – by faith; it’s all by faith, not by sight! – truth about God. We can trust in God’s unfailing love, even if we may feel forgotten (see Ps 13:1, 5). Rejoicing in God is a choice that we make.