I don't know what your problem is, but I know this - we all have different probs, but one solution. I was reminded of this today in a very real way...
1-2With
the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved.
Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live
under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation.
The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently
cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at
the hands of sin and death.
3-4God
went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the
problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he
personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of
struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law
code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never
have done that.
The law always ended up being used as a
Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law
code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead
of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing
in us.
5-8Those
who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring
their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real
life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in
them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is
a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a
spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing
on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up
thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and
what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored.
9-11But
if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be
thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not
welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ,
won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in
whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of
sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason,
doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the
dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did
in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in
you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from
that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as
alive as Christ's!
12-14So
don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red
cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to
do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's
Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
15-17This
resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending
life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike
"What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who
we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and
children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an
unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes
through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly
going to go through the good times with him!
18-21That's
why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times
and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for
what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held
back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are
ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times
ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
22-25All
around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain
throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around
us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also
feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are
yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish
us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged
in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the
longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our
expectancy.
26-28Meanwhile,
the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside
helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't
matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our
wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know
ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before
God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of
love for God is worked into something good.
29-30God
knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the
outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as
the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he
restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in
him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like,
he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by
name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after
getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously
completing what he had begun.
31-39So,
what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If
God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our
condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is
there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? And who
would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? Who
would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was
raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment
sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a
wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not
trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not
bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in
Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None
of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that
nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow,
high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get
between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has
embraced us.
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