Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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If you're able to remain standing,
please do. And let's give our attention
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to Romans Chapter Eight, Verses Twenty
Eight, twenty nine, Romans Eight,
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twenty eight. And we know that
for those who love God, all things
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work together for good, for those
who are called according to his purpose,
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for those whom he fore knew,
he also predestined to be conformed to the
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image of his son, in order
that he might be the first born among
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many brothers. He may be seated. Well, we come now, in
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Romans Chapter Eight, to the third
of three major encouragements that Paul gives us,
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because he knows and his he tells
us that we are going to have
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to endure suffering and we're going to
have to endure it, we're going to
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have to be patient in it,
courageous in it. In other places of
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scripture we even hear about having joy. Paul talks about having overwhelming joy,
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even in his trials and in his
suffering. Back in Verse Eighteen, we
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read Paul says I, for I
consider that the sufferings of this present time
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are not worth comparing with the glory
that is to be very be revealed.
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And right before said eighteen, we
read in seventeen, that we are called
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to suffer with Christ in order that
we may be glorified in him. Well,
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having put this full for us,
that there is this period of time,
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this present age, in which we
are called to endure sufferings with our
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Lord Jesus in order that we may
be glorified with him, Paul has been
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giving us these encouragements on these places, these thoughts which we can go to,
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things which we can hide in our
hearts for difficult times of trial,
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that encourage us and strengthen us in
those trials. Well, this is the
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third of the three today. Will
I'll spend a little more time on it
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next week as we cover verse thirty, but today just versus twenty eight and
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twenty nine, and here we read
that God intends something in a way that
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we don't always recognize. He intends
our sufferings for blessing, and that's ultimately
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what I want to convince you of
this morning. It's that, if you're
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a Christian, your sufferings are actually
blessings, that what seems to be one
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thing is actually another. That's what
I want to convince you of, that
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your sufferings, if you're a Christian, are actually blessings, and I want
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to convince you of that, not
just in your your heads, but even
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persuade it in your hearts, so
that whatever trials you face, that you'll
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face them with boldness and with courage, knowing that this is for my good,
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this thing that I'm experiencing, this
painful thing, is actually a blessing
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of God, that God will use
it to bless me. Now, in
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saying that your sufferings are actually blessings, and in desiring to convince you of
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that, I realize I am facing
an uphill battle and and maybe even an
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impossible task to Su persuade you that
your sufferings are really blessings. I realize
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that there are all kinds of things
pointing both you and me in another direction.
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There are the aches and pains of
your body, some are fresh,
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some are decades old. These are
very powerful arguments that suffering is not good,
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that it is not a blessing,
that it doesn't feel right. Then
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there are the painful of consequences that
come from lacking things, the consequences of
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not having enough money, of not
having enough education, not having enough privilege
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or time, things which you know, if you had, your life would
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be so much better, or at
least significantly better, if I only had
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that other degree, if I only
had x amount of more dollars, if
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I only had a better relationship with
this friend or this boss or this spouse,
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then my suffering wouldn't be suffering anymore. These aren't blessings, these are
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painful. There are other arguments that
we feel pointing us in the other direction.
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Social and succept pains and society.
There are pains in the soul.
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There's grieving that won't go away.
There's clouds of depression that block out the
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light. There are stubborn sins,
deep rooted sins that you've gone out there
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with your weed whack or over and
over and over again and you're just starting
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to realize these roots go deep and
this is not going to be easy to
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get rid of and you're trying and
you're trying, but it's hurting and it's
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hurting and it's breaking you. It's
hurting others. Maybe it's lust or anger
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pride with these sufferings. When we
feel these, when we feel their intensity,
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when we feel their consequences, it's
hard to say, well, all
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things work together for good, as
it doesn't feel like it. It doesn't
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feel like it at all. It
hurts, and it hurts bad and it's
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hard and we fight and we cry
and we grow weary. These are powerful
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arguments against this thing. I want
to convince you of that your sufferings aren't
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really blessings. In fact, in
our less faithful moments, when the light
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of God seems to have ceased entirely
from shining in our world, it may
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be easy to say not just that
Paul is wrong in Romans eight hundred and
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twenty eight, but actually that the
opposite is true, that our sufferings aren't
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really blessings. It's that our blessings
are actually sufferings. But good things are
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ultimately vain and even evil. We
feel this way when we think about death
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as an ultimate force and Leveler,
when everything ends in death, a maxed
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out retirement fun feels like a cruel
joke. When death tears apart the most
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lovely and intimate of lovers, or
when death destroys a special child or a
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brilliant mind, even these best things, these blessings, these good things,
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begin to feel like a chasing after
the wind. So believe me when I
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say I understand, because these are
the thoughts that come into my own heart
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and my own mind like snakes in
the garden. These are the pains and
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punishing experiences that we feel in our
bodies and our souls and our relationships and
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all of our lives. These sufferings
that Paul is talking about our real sufferings,
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and we all know it. And
when times are at our worst and
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our hearts are weak, it feels
impossible to even pretend that we actually believe
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that all things work together for good
for those who are called according to his
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purpose. And yet these are the
words, are they not? These are
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the words from God, right here
where they are, saying what they always
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say and being where they always have
been, that he comes to us and
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he says this thing, and we
know, we Christians know, that for
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those who love God, all things
work together for good, for those who
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are called according to his purpose.
He even goes on to describe what that
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good is. He says, for
those whom he foreknew, he predestined to
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be conformed to the image of his
son. This is a quite an amazing
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thing. A some people forget that
these words for no predestined are even in
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the Bible, but here they are, and their beautiful words, their wonderful
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words, because they're saying that God
has a plan, that God, the
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goodness that God intends, the things
that he's orchestrating together are not accidental.
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They're not just happening. It's not
God just sort of stirring a bunch of
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letters around on a table hoping they'll
turn into a book. No, God
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has a plan, like an author, he writes things down, he has
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a will and he determines it and
he knows it even before it happens.
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God is not reacting to things in
time and in history. God is doing
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these things in time, in history, and this includes even our salvation.
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Some people like to interpret this word
for know, for those whom he fore
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knew, he also predestined as to
be saying, those whom he for knew
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that they would believe some day on
the basis of their choice. He then
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chose them for this good purpose.
Well, there's a number of problems with
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that. First of all, it
doesn't say that. All that extra language
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that's there simply isn't in the text. Doesn't say anything about God and for
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knowing faith. It's a people that
he knows. It says whom he knows.
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Also, God fore knows everything.
People's faith. They're non faith all
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the rest. God is not talking
about everyone here, is he? He's
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talking about a particular group of people, the people that love God, the
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people that are called according to his
purpose. So what does he mean by
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these words for no, if they
don't mean that God is looking down through
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the corridors of time and seeing something
in the future and then reacting to it
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somehow in eternity? What does it
mean? Well, this word is used
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in another sense. It's not the
only way, the only thing it means,
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like the word run for refrigerator runs, a person runs. Their words
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can have different meanings. In this
one too, one of the meanings that
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this word has is this kind of
electing, selective love. You see it
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in Romans Eleven, versus five and
six, for example, where he says
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so too. At the present time
there is a remnant chosen by grace.
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But if it is by grace,
it is no longer on the basis of
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works, otherwise grace would no longer
be grace. This is a spoken in
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a context where God says that he
knows his people from this is used over
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and over again in the scriptures.
Where God has said to know and to
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choose is his people. In this
way, there's a way in which knowing
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is used in this kind of intimate
way, even between people. Read in
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the Old Testament that various husbands know
their wives. And you know what happens
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when they know their wives babies are
born? They don't. They don't come
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away with a book and a chart
and a checklist. Hey, look at
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these things, I found out.
No, they they have children, they
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have love. God knows us,
he for knows us. It's this kind
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of way in which a husband,
or let's say a man or a woman,
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choose each other to marry. Out
of all of these people that they
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see, they set their minds on
this person and they say that's the one
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I want, it's her, it's
she's the one I love. That's what
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God means here and that's what he's
doing here, which means this is consistent
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with the rest of excuse me,
this is consistent with the rest of the
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things he's sang here. Notice that
the actions all throughout this passage are God's
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actions. It is God who forenows, God who predestines. I'm God who
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calls in Verse Thirty, God who
justifies God, who glorifies. Having thought
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about this word and these verbs,
remember the basic point. What is God
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saying here? He's saying I'm working
all things together for good, for this
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people, these people whom I've loved, and I'm not going to just start
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that process and then drop it.
I'm going to continue it to the very
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end, from the very beginnings of
us, in of God's love for us,
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in his will, to our actual
glorification on the last day when Jesus
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returns. God is working things together
for good. Well, we read not
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only of his purpose but also the
good that he desires. He says in
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Verse Twenty Nine that we are to
be conformed to the image of his son.
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This is quite a remarkable thing,
having fallen and Adam to now be
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brought in under Christ. You remember
Jesus as he comes to us in the
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Gospels, don't you? You remember
her Jesus and his meekness, His mercy,
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his power, His grace, he's
Greatt wisdom. Everything that he does
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he does perfectly and wonderfully, and
it's to his image that we are being
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conformed. Paul goes on to say
it's not only for this, but it's
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an order that Jesus might be the
firstborn among many brothers. So you see,
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it's not just God's good or God
or are good that God is after,
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but it's his glory. God is
working all things together for good in
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order that Jesus might be glorified,
in order that he might receive this first
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the status as firstborn among many brothers. So here we have another thought.
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If God has purposed our salvation from
the beginning and intends to keep it to
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the end, and it's on the
basis of his own desire to glorify his
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son, do you think he's going
to drop that ball? Do you think
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he's going to let your sufferings overtake
you and not let Christ be glorified as
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a result? Of course not.
When God intends to glorify himself, he's
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not going to fail at that.
If he wants to uplift his son to
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the highest of places, that he
might be glorified as the firstborn among many
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brothers, he's not going to let
your knee pain or your marriage that's having
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trouble or a problem at work thwart
that plan. He is working all things
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together for these particular goods. That's
what Paul says here. That's how we
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are to begin to frame in our
minds and in our hearts are sufferings and
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our trials. And so we come
to this point of decision. Are we
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going to believe what he says,
what God says here, or not?
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That is the decision that each of
us have to make, and the answer
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to this question, of course,
will turn on faith. God does not
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tell us this. He does not
tell us once you see for yourself that
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this is true, once you are
able to connect the dots and say well,
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because I'm suffering, this thing,
this good thing, will happen and
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therefore I can see us good.
God doesn't say once you connect the dots,
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then you can relax, then you
can have joy in your suffering.
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No, he says trust me even
when you can't connect the dots. It's
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not your job to believe him only
when you see it all working out.
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We are called to believe him even
when it doesn't seem right to us.
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In this hymn that we saying right
before the sermon, there were various verses
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that spoke about this. I'm like
verse FRY at First Five. In this
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William Cowper him his purposes will ripen
fast, unfolding every hour. The Bud
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may have a bitter taste, but
sweet will be the flower. That's is
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gross. I hate this, we
say, but there is this promise.
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Wait, hang on, God is
doing something good, well pre and this
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is and this of course, requires
faith. But perhaps that leap of faith
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won't be quite so difficult if you
remember two things, two things in addition
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to what I've said already. The
first is also spoken about in this hymn.
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It's in verse four. It's a
command to our own hearts and to
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one another. It says judge not
the Lord by feeble sense, but trust
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him for His grace. Behind a
frowning providence hides a smiling face. And
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it's that first part I want you
to focus on. Judge, not the
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Lord by Feeble Sense. If you
want to have confidence in these promises that
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God is working all things together for
good, you first have to remember your
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own inability. You need to be
humbled, because as long as you think
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that you can connect all the dots, that you can get everything right,
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that you know the master plan,
you're always going to be frustrated. You're
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always going to be saying to God, how come things aren't the way they
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should be. But be humbled,
take a moment and reflect on your own
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powerlessness to make things happen or to
even see the picture itself. Some of
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US struggle to trace the simple plot
in a novel or to draw of the
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face of someone that we know very
well. What makes we think, and
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that makes us think that if we
can't do these simple things like following an
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argument, a plot, a line, staying in the lines on the roads,
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if we can't trace these basic things, what makes us think that we
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can trace out God's providence in this
world? What makes us think that we
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can look at all the but Jillions
of variables and say, ah, I
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can see what's going on here?
Of course we can't. We can barely
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manage to get our clothes on in
the morning half the time. We cannot
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go out into the world with this
kind of cocky attitude and say I got
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this, Lord, I can figure
this out, I'll tell you what you
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need to do and how to evaluate
things between what's right and what's not.
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We can't do this. We are
like a little kids. There are these
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big floor puzzles that we have in
our house. There twenty four pieces.
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Some of them are even smaller.
The pieces certain you know, really big.
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Sometimes there are even twelve pieces or
something like this. When I dump
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them out on the floor, I
know immediately how they go together. This
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is not hard, but the little
ones right they look at it. I
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can't do this. Help me.
We're just like that. To God,
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this is not a big deal.
The millions and millions of variables that are
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going on in your life, the
interconnectedness of events, contingencies and secondary causes
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and all these this is not a
big deal for God. He is the
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one who established things in this way. It's all fouling falling out according to
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his will. Just because you are
struggling, just because you're looking at the
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puzzle and saying I don't even see
what this is supposed to be, doesn't
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mean that God doesn't. Let's not
make God in our image, but instead
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see him for who he is,
see him for the one who establish these
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these things, and trust him for
that. Some people say, I believe
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it was John Flavel, said this, a puritan author who wrote a book
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about Providence. He said Providence is
best read backwards, like Hebrew. Actually,
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I think he says you read providence
like Hebrew. Backwards. In other
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words, you don't see the connections
usually going forward. You see them in
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the rearview mirror. You say,
AH, now I know why I had
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to take that job so that I
can meet my wife. But you know,
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even then, even in those instances, even in the places where we
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can with relatively relative certainty, connect
the dots, how much do we still
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not know? A man turns on
the road and slightly crosses the line,
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and what happens? You have no
idea. The the windows are tinted,
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you don't know who was in the
car. You don't know got who got
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scared. You don't know what happened
and what all the fallout was from that.
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We drive down the roads, we
walk in our lives, constantly reacting
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and bumping into each other in a
thousand ways, thousands upon thousands of ways.
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You simply do not know. So
stop trying to know. You get
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it. Humble yourselves before the Lord. God has worked everything in a perfect
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way. Let us not. Let
us, who has so little knowledge of
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even the most basic things and so
little influence and power over the things that
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are then seek to evaluate God.
We are unable. But, and here's
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the second thing, God is amazingly
able in every way in which we have
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described our weaknesses. God is strong, God is capable. There's a whole
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book in the Bible devoted this,
by the way. It's the book of
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Job. Job Comes under this intense
amount of suffering and his friends come to
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him and say, no problem,
job, we can connect the dots.
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You sinned, your God is God
is unpunishing you, obviously because you sinned.
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And job says that doesn't make sense. And job goes the Lord and
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there's all this dialog back and forth, and you know what the Lord says?
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Shot Up, stop talking. And
eventually that's what job does. After
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enough dialog back and forth, he
says, I put my hand over my
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mouth, I don't want to say
anything anymore. And God humbles him by
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reminding him of all of these details
of which God is in control over,
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from the birth of wild animals way
out in the forest where no one sees,
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to the planetary movements in the sky, to the waves and the ocean,
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to the birth and growth in the
womb, many, many things.
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God says, I am in control, and he is. He not only
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says it, but he demonstrates it. They're great examples of this in scripture.
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Some of the most famous are the
Joseph. It's brothers try to kill
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him, they throw him in a
pit, they sell him to say,
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slave traitors, and he ends up
number two in Egypt, saving all of
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God's people and all many who aren't
God's people from famine and devastation. And
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Joseph says to his brothers, what
you meant for Evil, God has made
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good. This wasn't just Joseph's story. This is all our stories. Or
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you can think of Paul sitting in
prison. I once had a pastor tell
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me he talked about the inefficiency of
God. This is he used that term
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from a kind of human perspective.
Does it make any sense? He says
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to me. He said to me, to take this man, this great
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persecutor of the Church, endow him
with such a great salvation, all kinds
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of gifts and revelation, to empower
him and call him to be a preacher
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to all the gentiles, and then
to put him in jail for a couple
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years, again in again and again. What kind of plan is that?
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Why? What benefit could there possibly
be from having such a powerful, brilliant,
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spirit equipped person in prison? Why
wouldn't God have him out on the
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streets planting churches, doing good works
for the Lord. And yet we see
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Paul rejoicing and we see letters that
we have in our bibles written by Paul
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from jail and he tells us that
in these prisons people were converted and came
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to know the Lord Jesus. But
even when we don't know the plans,
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even when we can't say I'm going
to be number two in Egypt at the
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end, we still trust the Lord
because the end is ultimately not the things
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here on earth, or Ethel's death
would just wipe all that out. The
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end is the glorification of the son
of God and us in him. That's
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the end. That's why we can
look death in the face and we say
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go ahead, take my riches,
take my family, take anything you want,
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because I have everything I could ever
need in Jesus, all the good
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that I could ever need, beyond
my wildest dreams, vast amounts of riches
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and beauty and wealth, eternal life
itself has been given to me in Christ
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and death won't stop that. It
doesn't stop that and we know that because
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of Jesus's own death. Remember back
in verse Seventeen provided we suffer with him
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in order that we may also be
glorified with him. That's what happened with
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Jesus. He didn't die and stay
dead. He rose again from the dead,
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victoriously, gloriously ascended into heaven and
promises to come again to bring to
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an end all of these sufferings,
to turn them ultimately finally into a good
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so these are the things that I'm
calling you to remember. Your inability,
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God's ability and the promises of God
that he has made to you, that
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he has secured for you. In
Jesus, God's will will be done,
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all things will work together for good, for those who call are called according
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to his purpose. So will you
trust him? Yes, the answer is
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yes, we will trust him.
We do trust him. We love him
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with all of our hearts. He's
saved us from great wrath and Sin and
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death. He's brought us into eternal
life. Of course we love him,
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of course will trust him. If
you don't love him, if you don't
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trust him, then there is not
an ounce of comfort in this verse.
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In fact, it's just the opposite. Those who refuse to love God,
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those who refuse to trust him,
those who stake their flag on their own
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plans, their own wills, their
own abilities, will not find that all
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things work together for their good.
You'll find that, in rejecting the grace
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and mercy offered to sinners in Christ, that all things will not work together
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for your good but for your destruction, that the great blessings that you have
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will end in death, not just
in this life but in the life to
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come. If you do not love
the Lord, if you do not trust
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the Lord, then I plead with
you turn from these sins here, the
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word of God as it is spoken
to us here, the goodness of his
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promises, the consolations of them,
the sweetness of His grace, and turned
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to him who offers peace to you
and good to you, while there is
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still time, and for those who
have turned to him, those who do
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love to him, let us commit
ourselves to trust in him and in his
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word, that the God who predestined
and called us and die for us will
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not neglect us in this life,
that, like gold, he puts us
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into the fire so that we may
be purified. So let's put aside misery,
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put aside discontent and instead face our
trials with patience and joy because of
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the hope that is set before us, the hope that is grounded in Christ,
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secured in him. Let us commit
ourselves to walking by faith, and
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not just in general, but in
the specific things that you hate, the
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things that you fear, the things
right now that you wish God would simply
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take away, or the things that
you lack and you wish he would give
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you. What are those things?
Think about it. Walk by faith in
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those things. Trust the Lord,
for those things call out to him,
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not just the he would remove it
or give it to you, for we're
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always going to have trials. Call
out to him, not just because he
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not that he will tell you how
it's all going to work out, but
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because he's already told you how it's
all going to work out. He's already
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connected the dots for us. So
let's see the puzzle that he has made
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for us and to trust in his
plan. Let us pray,
