All Things Work Together (Romans 8:28)

Tada. Why? I'm getting good at that. That over there. This over here so it's in front of me. Too much. Too far. Everybody have a good day yesterday? Yes, sir. All right. All right. Gosh, keep messing with it. this right here. There we go. Okay. All right. So, uh I was sitting on the couch last night and I was um and what I'm talking about is how the the process of of picking the scripture that that or scriptures that we'll talk about today comes up. And it's it's not always the same thing. I don't have I don't set a there's no alarm where I sit down and I go, "Hey, let me pick up my Bible and read this." And and so every day is a little bit different, but last night I just was just thinking Romans 8:28.

And then I go instantly as so as soon as it hits my head, I'm like, "Oh, come on. That's like one of the top 10 scriptures everybody quotes that's knitted on pillows." I'm like, and and then and I just kind of let it go. And then this morning, I was I was uh getting ready in the bathroom and it was still in my head. And I said the same thing to myself that man that's just it it almost I wanted to use the word cliche but I didn't want to describe God's text as cliche and it had dawned on me that this isn't this that what I'm hearing is the Holy Spirit and it's not for me.

It's for someone who's who's here today and maybe it's not cliche for them and maybe they haven't heard it 17,000 times and maybe they don't even really know how the scripture breaks out. And so I just said, "All right, Lord. I'm I'm I hear you and I'm going to cover Romans 8:28. So that's what we're going to do today. So a little backstory on how the scripture comes up and that's just me having a conversation with the Holy Spirit. And to some people that are on here, maybe that sounds strange. Maybe maybe you know right now you don't do that. And I honestly I didn't do that years ago either.

But today I do. And and I have that conversation and it can almost feel like having a talk with myself, but it's not. I'm I'm having a conversation with him and I'm listening. And so today we're going to cover Romans 8:28. And so this is a a letter written to the church at Rome. I'm very it's far away people from the from the epicenter of what Christianity is. And Paul writes this letter. And this is right in the middle of a heart of a of a big section in chapter 8 that Paul writes. And so I would urge you to go read the whole chapter. There's some doom and gloom in the beginning of it and hardship and pain and suffering.

And then there's some there's a promise and then there's some glory on the on the back side of that. So definitely go read all of chapter 8. But let's break down chapter uh uh excuse me verse 28. And so it says is that we that we know that in all things uh God works together for the good to them that love God and to them that are called according to his purpose. And so let's break it out. And so the first thing it says is Paul says and we know. He doesn't say I and we think or we hope or we wish. It's a comes from a place of absolute certainty and knowledge.

He's not guessing. He says we know this and and we know this because we walk in Christ's love. And so we know this. And so he's being there is no left or right to that statement. There's no there's no well maybe he really no. He says, "And we know he's there this an exclamation point. We know this." And he says that all things work together. And so what so some years ago when I thought about this verse, I thought, well, who's he talking about when he says works together? And I and I thought maybe he was thinking about is he working with us? Is he working with the, you know, with the Holy Spirit?

And I don't think that's it. And I think what he what he means by working together is all the things that we talk about, all the things that we have to go through in our life, right? The good and the bad. So listen, cancer is not good. Um, you know, uh, being betrayed by someone that you love or that you trust is not good. And and and Paul's not saying that we have to call those things good. That's not what he's saying. what he's saying is that God uses those things to weave in for his purpose. And we'll cover that in a second. Um, so as an example, and I'm not a cook, and I can't see if my wife's on here because the way we're recording this, and so she knows that I make a mean bowl of cereal.

That's about the extent of my culinary skills. Um, but but if you if you took a bottle of vanilla extract and you just decided you were going to just start drinking some vanilla extract, that would be nasty. That would not be good. That would not be flavorful. That would not be enjoyable. But when you take that bad thing and you add it to some other ingredients and you bake it, some heavenly stuff comes out. And I hope I said that right. And so I think when when Paul is talking about all things working together, uh I think that's what he means that God is going to use every circumstance that we run through to ultimately shape us.

And that's this next section for good. I think we misinterpret what Paul is saying here when he says for good. It's not the answer to your prayer. It's not that I got the job. I won the bid. Um uh our offer on the house came in. Yeah. That's that's not what for good is. Ultimately for good is so that you can be Christlike. It's so that you can have righteousness with God. And so that's what the for good is. It doesn't mean you're going to he's going to answer your request the way you wanted it to. He has a bigger purpose and a bigger plan for you.

And he goes on now to state who this promise is for because it's not for everyone. It's for to them that love God. That's who this promise is for. Paul's not saying this is for everybody. This is for those who call him Lord and that's it. And so he's very specific about this. And he goes on and he ends it with to them that are called according to his purpose. And so as we think about the together, the the good and the bad that he's weaving and making these ingredients come together so that you can walk Christlike, so that you can you can have the the embodiment of what that looks like and feels like, but that's not for you.

That's going to be for his purpose. And he needs for that to happen because you might be the reason that someone else gets saved. You might be the reason that you prayed for something for someone and they received healing because you did that. That's for his purposes, not for yours. So, I'll repeat the fra the the scripture Romans 8:28. And we know that in all things that all things work together for the good uh to them that love God and that are called according to his purpose. and and I'm looking over to the right because I have it written out because what I'm reading to you is the King James version and it's a little bit different than the NIV and it's a little bit different than the ESV and I have all of them in my head and I just want to make sure I'm reading this text in the right way.

I'm not combining King James version with ESV with NIV. All right. So, thoughts, comments, suggestions, mic drop. Well, one thing I I would think is kind of like how we are here at at the office. It's um you know, the roof doesn't get put on if everybody isn't doing their role and and operating the way they're supposed to. something something's going to mess up if we don't all pitch in our little bits of ingredients to get that job done. Okay, that that's that's a long that's inside the channels. I'll go with that. Somebody else. Uh the pastor on Sunday made a a joke about people saying that I'm blessed and highly favored.

Um and it's so true. We are favored. Um, and we should be very grateful that we have the Holy Spirit inside of us and to have that conviction when we do things wrong from the Holy Spirit because there's people that don't have that. Amen. Amen. Yeah. We don't There are people who don't have that correction. They don't they don't have that fatherly love, right? I mean, you you get you get corrected because he loves you. Not if he didn't love you, he wouldn't correct he wouldn't care. Anybody else? All right. Well, let's bow our heads. Let's pray out.

Father, thank you so much for today. Uh thank you that you do care. Thank you that you do love us. Thank you that that uh that we know that no matter what the circumstance, uh that's just one piece. That's one ingredient, Lord. And that you've got probably many other that you're going to add to that. And for what purpose? so that we can be Christlike and so that that we can be closer to you. And so Lord, we just thank you for that. We thank you for loving and caring enough uh that you do exactly that. Lord, I know that we have to have our part of this is faith.

We have to we have to understand we have to remember that although our natural eye sees something that's not great at the moment that that's only a piece and it may be a small piece of what ultimately that you have planned for us. And so uh that kind of ties into our verse yesterday right rejoice always and I say again rejoice. And so Lord, let's not let us dwell on the things that are pain and because they are and there are things that are that are that are not good. Cancer there there things that are just not great. And we don't have to call them great.

But we do call you great. And we know that even in those things that you will work to make us Christlike. And so Father, we just thank you for that. We love you for this particular scripture and this text that it's although it's something that we know we embroider on our pillows that there is a deep deep meaning to what Paul wrote here for us. Father walk with us today. Guide us, direct us. Uh remind us of who you are. Remind us of that and what we see around us whether it be good or bad. Watch over us. Guide us. Direct us. Allow us to uh to to be Christlike for someone else today.

Father, we love you. We praise you and as always in your son's name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right guys, see you guys tomorrow. Have a blessed Tim. Tim Tim I don't believe there we have no Bible study this week. It is a it's a it's an off week for Fourth of July. So we'll be back next Wednesday. We'll be here tomorrow. He's he for everybody doesn't go to our church. He's talking about our church's Wednesday night Bible study. You guys have a great great day. We'll see you tomorrow. You too. Be blessed. Tomorrow. Thanks. Have a good day. All right.

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly edited for readability.