God-is-sovereign - God Is Sovereign

‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ Jesus?’ Romans 8:35

Shall troubles separate us?  Never, no outward trouble can separate us from His love. We are never deserted. Jesus is ever at hand. When we call upon His name He intervenes, sometimes taking away the trouble, and at other times giving us the grace and strength to bear it, and at all times consoling us through His Spirit.

Paul mentions famine, hunger and all forms of deprivation that may hurt considerably, and test us sorely, but Christ will place His divine arms around us. Nakedness, poverty, peril, great dangers, war, disasters, the sword, violence , none of these things can possibly separate us from the love of Christ.

‘Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.’ No created being or power or force, angelic, demonic, earthly, animate or inanimate, have the power to separate us from the immeasurable love of God. This love is the inseparable bond between God and His people.

The Christian life is supposed to be one of death to self in order to live a life by faith. Paul told the Galatians “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

Being crucified with Christ means that our old nature has been nailed to the cross and has been replaced by a new nature which is Christ’s (1 Corinthians 5:17). He who loved us and died for us now lives in us and the life we live is by faith in Him. It means sacrificing our own desires, ambitions, and glories and replacing them with those of Christ. We can only do this by His power through the faith that He gives us by His grace.

Revelation 21:4 (NLT) - He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”

Rejoice in the Lord always. 

Philippians 4:4

Yesterday I told you that contentment comes when we rejoice in the Lord. 

You may ask, “How can I rejoice when everything is going against me, and I have been waiting endlessly for my situation to change?"

Paul writes these words from a Roman dungeon. He learnt from personal experience that our joy in the Lord does not depend on having things go our way, or on having everything we want, but on whether or not we are "in the Lord." He understood that God is the source of His joy and in Him is his sufficiency. Whether in lack or fullness he knew his Lord was enough for him. 

Prayer: Lord Jesus, sometimes it seems almost impossible for me to rejoice. Help me to understand that only in and through your Holy Spirit can I rejoice in You. Amen.