Romans 8 could be called the chapter of the Spirit. Out of the 31 references to the Spirit in Romans, 15 of them occur in this chapter. The Spirit heralds a new way of living, giving us the power to live in a different way, the power to choose God’s way above the way of sin and death which dominated Romans 7.

The law could instruct us and show us right from wrong, but that was the extent of its reach, rather like we might shout out warnings to someone walking too near the edge of a cliff but from a distance can’t actually prevent them from falling. God’s Spirit, living in us, making us children of God (Rom 8:9,14, gives us the power to live according to the Spirit. Our obligation is now not to the flesh, not to the sinful way of living, but to God’s way, since we were bought at a price and are not our own (1 Cor 6:19-20). There has to be cooperation with the Spirit: “if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” (Rom 8:13) The old saying ‘God helps those who help themselves’ will ultimately lead us into wrong thinking, believing that there are things we can do to save ourselves. Even the saying ‘Let go and let God’ only has elements of truth in it, for we need to work with the Spirit in these matters: we are the ones who ‘put to death the misdeeds of the body’, but we do so ‘by the Spirit’, not in our own strength.

Christ’s sinless life condemns us, for it shows us that it was possible to live in perfect submission and obedience to the Father. But His death and resurrection show us that God has made a way for us to know freedom from judgment and condemnation. We are free now to live according to the Spirit, free to choose rightly, and we can know also the sure hope of the resurrection of our mortal bodies because of the hope that the resurrection of Christ brings (Rom 8:11).

As a result of all that Christ has done, we are brought into this new relationship of adopted children of God where we also, amazingly by God’s grace, become heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ (Rom 8:17). That spirit of sonship does not lead us into the yoke of slavery but gives us a new relationship and standing. Praise be to God!

Stephen preached from 1 John 4:7-19 last night, a famous passage about love. Now love today has been misinterpreted and misconstrued; it’s not all about red love hearts and romantic love, as the card industry would perhaps have us believe. This passage talks about ‘perfect love’ and also tells us that ‘God is love’ (twice, in verses 8 and 16.)

From this passage, we learn that love ultimately comes from God. It’s ‘more than a feeling’ and involves a relationship between us and God. Love will always involve actions (God sent His Son) and God’s love is something we can both know and rely on (1 John 4:16), for God’s love brings security into our lives. So often, we have lost love in life and become, as a result, fearful, wary, mistrusting, but God’s love is perfect and, we are told, is the thing that can drive out fear.

God’s love reveals security, gives us peace within and helps us to have confidence (vs 17.) It can cast out the fear in our lives which makes us insecure (vs 18.) It prompts a response from us, to love God and to love others. God’s love can make the difference in our lives.

The challenge we then face is asking ourselves “Am I allowing God’s love to transform me so I do not fear?” Fear is a pervasive part of our lives, from phobias to that general anxiety that stops us from really trusting people and God. But God’s perfect love can drive out fear and enable us to be transformed.

For further reflection, listen to Matt Redman’s song ‘This Is How We Know’, taken from this passage in 1 John 4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRF378KqX5g

Failure is not a popular word. In our success-soaked society, failure is feared and shunned. There are so many things we are afraid of failing: exams, driving tests, failing in our careers, failing financially, failing in our marriages and as parents, failing to gain other people’s respect and perhaps, most worryingly of all, we fear failing God.

Failure is, however, something that will happen to us all at some point in our lives and we need to know how to get over our failures.

Mark looked at some of the causes of failure:
1) lack of effort
2) over-reaching, trying to do something which is actually always going to be beyond us
3) trying to do something which we should never have attempted in the first place, often resulting from disobedience
4) becoming distracted from what God has called us to do.

He reminded us that we have all sinned and fall short of God’s glory (Rom 3:23), so we need to come to terms with failure. It’s not something we can avoid or hide from. Moreoever, we need to understand God’s faithfulness: He will never fail us or forsake us (1 Chron 28:20) but even if we are faithless, He will remain faithful, for He cannot disown Himself (2 Tim 2:13). God’s love for us is never going to change, no matter what our failures.

When we fail, our tendency is to hide away. We hide from God, as Adam did in the Garden of Eden, that first failure in obedient living. We hide from each other. We stop reading the Bible and we will pray about anything except the thing we ought to bring to God in prayer! What we should do is draw near to God (James 4:8), secure in the fact that He will draw near to us.

We need also to read His Word, for there we learn the comforting truth that we are not the first to fail. The Bible is full of stories of people who have failed God… but that’s not the end of the story. There, in God’s Word (written “so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom 15:4)), we find examples of awesome men of God who failed Him (Abraham, David, Peter) and who yet learned to succeed. We need to bring things out in the open in prayer, lifting our eyes up to God (Ps 121:1-2), for He is our help.

God knows both how and when we will fail Him, but He loves us nonetheless. We can’t hide from His love anymore. He doesn’t want us to dwell in failure, but to draw near to Him so that we can move on. In some ways, God is so much more willing to forgive our failures than we are! May we learn to draw close to Him and bring all our fears and failures to Him.

A civil war is a war between citizens of the same country, and you only have to watch the news to realise that the world is at war in many places. It can be frightening when the war is not with a hostile enemy from outside but an enemy within, so to speak.

And even more worrying at times can be the internal battle we face. Last night we looked at Romans 7:7-25, that famous passage where Paul talks about the struggle between the flesh and the new life, where we see how hard it can actually be to do the things we know we ought to do and even want to do: “What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise.” (Rom 7:15, The Message)

Or as Aaron Shust paraphrases these verses:
“I just don’t understand this life that I’ve been living,
I just don’t understand, I just don’t understand.
I just don’t understand the lies I’ve been believing,
I just don’t understand, I just don’t understand.” (Give Me Words To Speak)

Paul talks in these verses about the role of the law: it’s not that the law is bad in itself, for God’s law is holy, righteous and good, spiritual and true. Rather, we see from the law the right way to live, but this only highlights the key problem: we are ‘unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin’ (Rom 7:14). The problem isn’t with the law; the problem is with us. Try as we might (and many of us try very hard to live good lives), we lack the power to successfully live in a way that is wholly pleasing to God. No wonder Paul cries out, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” (Rom 7:24)

The answer, thankfully, is not far away, though we will have to wait for next week’s study on Romans 8 to explore fully how the ‘law of sin and death’ is overcome by the ‘law of the Spirit of life’. (Rom 8:2) Here, we are left with Paul’s words, that deliverance comes through the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 7:25). The battle may rage, but victory is available.

Birthdays are important. Our birth celebrates our entrance into this world and our birthdays are public acknowledgement of our progression through life. Some birthdays are deemed more important than others (‘significant’ birthdays like 16, 18, 21, 30, 40, 50, 60, 65, 70, 80 and so on…!), but all are crucial to our ongoing life.

Believe it or not, the ritual of the birthday box is not intended to humiliate or to publicly make a fool of anyone; it’s an acknowledgement of the value of each member of the congregation and a celebration of the fact that we live and worship together in community, not in isolation. So your birthday is important to me, because our lives are inextricably bound together in all Christ has done for us. As we sing ‘Happy Birthday’, including the verse ‘May the dear Lord bless you from the morning to the evening’, we are not just trying to prolong the agony of standing in front of people feeling ungainly or awkward. We are actually wanting to communicate that you matter to us, that you’re part of us, that we care about your ongoing existence, that you matter to God.

So, happy birthday, Karen!

“In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.” (Eph 1:11-12)

The Bible teaches not only that God is the creator of everything (Genesis 1, John 1, Colossians 1) but that we were chosen before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in God’s sight. That gives us tremendous purpose and destiny in life – which should counter the meaninglessness and lack of purpose which so often is the malaise of modern living. As Michael Card says, “God shapes every second of our little lives/ And minds every moment as the universe waits by.” (The Poem Of Your Life)

Joseph is perhaps the greatest example in the Bible of what it means to live with confidence in God’s purposes and plans, which nothing can thwart. Neither adverse family circumstances (hated by his jealous brothers so much they plotted to kill him and sold him into slavery!), nor difficult work circumstances (the victim, in modern parlance, of continued sexual harassment), nor wrongful imprisonment nor famine could stop God’s plans being worked out in his life. As we read his story from Genesis 37 through to Genesis 50, we see how difficult life can be, even when we are living godly lives. Yet we are told repeatedly that Joseph found favour with the Lord and it is evident that God was with him in it all. It took years of patient waiting before that childhood dream became reality; Joseph had to learn what it meant to walk by faith and not by sight even when forgotten by the cupbearer and left to languish in prison.

Foresight, the ability to see what is going to happen, is what we’d all like. God is able to see what will happen in the future, because He does not inhabit time. The rest of us muddle along in the now, seeing with our eyes only what is immediately visible. Occasionally, through prophecy or through visions or dreams, God gives us a glimpse into the future, as he did with Joseph back in Genesis 37, but we then have to go through this long process of life whereby we are refined and we have to wait for God’s timing – which is always perfect, but rarely seems so to us as we wait! Hindsight helps us to see the story in perspective. Hindsight is the understanding of a situation or event only after it has happened. At the end of this long narrative, we see how Joseph’s position in Egypt is key to Israel’s survival, for Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to get food, since that is the only place which has food, thanks to God’s providence and preparation. Nothing has been wasted in this long journey from seventeen to thirty; Joseph has learnt to see not with foresight or hindsight but with God’s sight:

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Gen 50:20)

Others may intend to harm us, but God intends everything to work together for good so that we become like Christ (Rom 8:28), so that we may be for the praise of His glory (Eph 1:12). We truly do have great purpose and meaning in our lives; we truly do have a great destiny. Whether our destiny is to ‘just be’ whatever we are called to be in a small-town location or whether God has other plans for us, may we be faithful to God in the small things, never doubting that He is able to work all things out in conformity with the purpose of His will. And while we’re waiting? What do we do in the meantime?

“While I’m waiting
I will serve You
While I’m waiting
I will worship
While I’m waiting
I will not faint
I’ll be running the race
Even while I wait.”
(John Waller, ‘While I’m Waiting’)

Listen to the song here & make it your prayer:
http://vimeo.com/3768562