Romans 8:28 - And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
Paul read this scripture this past Sunday and I think it’s one that, if you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you’ve heard before and probably thought about quite a bit at times. I would imagine that we all have wrestled with, or maybe are wrestling with, this scripture at a time when our lives have turned to crap – I know I have. You may have experienced a death in the family, lost your job, gotten sick, gone thru divorce, or any number of other difficult ordeals, and in a confused or angry state of mind thought, “how is THIS going to ‘work for my good’?”
I think the key to understanding, and really believing, this verse is grasping the meaning of the word “good”. There’s a vast difference between our definition of “good” and the Lord’s definition. It’s perfectly natural for us to wonder: “How can the death of my father/mother/son/daughter be good?” “What good can come from getting a divorce?” We look at things in the natural, Jesus sees things in the spiritual. We can only see things in the here-and-now, He operates outside of time and knows what the future holds. So while we are looking for “good” things that are tangible, things that we can see now, God’s “good” almost always refers to building eternal things in each one of us. He is concerned with building character in us, making us more like Him, and causing us to grow in ways that we never could’ve without going thru something very difficult. Make no mistake, going thru this stuff is not fun and I’m not trying to tell you it is. But by God’s definition, these things wind up working together for our good! He uses them to cause us to grow up in Him, to become more compassionate, to mature us so that we can help others who might be struggling with the same things. The Lord uses our difficult experiences to produce eternal results ------ and that’s good!!! Keep that in mind the next time you’re going thru a rough stretch. His Word is true and if we’re doing our best to walk with Him, He will bring something good out of your struggles.
By Dave Thompson
3 comments:
Thank you that really helped me, I am going thru a very tough time right now and it lifted me up.
Thanks for that Dave. Yeah, it's really tough to get in that mindset in certain parts of your life, but it's so rewarding if you do. I'm reading through Screwtape Letters again, and one of my favorite quotes is from a section where the demon Screwtape is talking about troughs and peaks in people's likes. In reference to God using the throughs the demon tells his apprentice, "He relies on troughs even more than the peaks; some of his special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself –creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because he has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself; the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him, but still distinct." Sorry for the long quote, but I couldn't bear to remove any of that.
- Jesse
Post a Comment