Song: Blessed Assurance
Dear Father in Heaven,
Thank you for your steadfastness and continual presence in our lives. Sometimes, we can feel you right next to us. But sometimes, it is hard to know that you are there at all. Sometimes life gets so difficult that our hearts just cannot feel you through the pain. Sometimes you take away those feelings so that we may seek you even more fervently.
I pray today, Father, that I may rely not on my own feelings but rather on your love for me. May I rely on your Word to be the truth that rules my life over my own understanding.
Help me to see you and believe in your character even though my feelings may tell me otherwise. You are kind, you are good, and you are gracious. You are both all-powerful and all-loving. You care deeply for me and for my loved ones. Be with me as I live out these truths no matter what my circumstances are today, Lord, as we walk forward together.
I love you and pray all of these things in your Son’s amazing name,
Amen.
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Song: Jesu, lover of my soul
ABERYSTWYTH-JESU, LOVER OF MY SOUL - YouTube
Reading:
Letter to the Romans, chapter 7, verses 7 to 21.
Letter to the Romans, chapter 5.
Song: Rock of ages
Why is there sin?
Sin has always been a problem for the inquiring mind. If God created a perfect world, why was there such evidence of imperfection?
In chapter 7, Paul details the problem, the problems of breaking the law of God.
In chapter 5, he had already explained the problem. Sin had entered God’s perfect creation through the disobedience of Adam. Placed in an idyllic setting, with only one restriction, Adam was tempted and submitted to that temptation. The sin was not in the temptation, we know that Jesus himself was tempted. The sin was in the action, the doing that which had tempted him.
Following on from this weakness, God had presented humanity with rules for living. First listed in the ten commandments, and subsequently expanded in the law.
Paul however, states that the existence of this body of law had become the problem rather than the solution. Once there are rules, there is the temptation to break those rules. The more attention is drawn to the rules, the more people will want to break those rules.
Paul states that God has provided the solution to this problem. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection have paved the way for us to be made right with God. The power of our sin has been over come. We have been justified, which is to say that God will treat us as if we had not sinned.
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.”
Song: Crown him with many crowns
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