Day 24: Romans 5-10 Opening Reflection

FAITH…FAITH…Faith…faith

            Faith produces justification, faith produces accessibility to God, and Faith produces a certain level of boastfulness in all things

            Faith allows you to boast when you are going through that midnight hour, faith allows you to boast when you are just going through it, faith allows you to boast when things are not going your way, faith allows you to boast doing your trials and tribulation, faith allows you to boast doing times of anguish and bereavement, FAITH ALLOWS YOU TO BOAST EVEN IN YOUR OWN SUFFERING – because suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character hope. . .

            Hope and faith have from time to time have been used interchangeably – but hope in essence is the fruit of faith – for hope is the act of waiting in expectancy and you can’t wait in expectancy without faith.

            Today’s prescribed text speaks engagingly about sin and how it lurks around every corner, in dark places as well as in bright day light right in front of your face – looking to deceive, looking to kill, and looking to enslave us to devilish thoughts, words and actions, justifying and making it easier do what you don’t want to do and avoid doing what you want to do.  But because we are sinners by nature God thought kindly enough about us that while WE WERE YET SINNERS, God gave his son to die for our sins, ultimately buying us into slavery – we are slaves of God.

            Because of our status if we work for God, we can have faith to ask the semi-rhetorical question: if God is for us who can be against us?

            The hard thing about faith though is that it has to be disciplined and conditioned to endure for God is a sovereign God.  Do you have faith, however, to deal with the fact that God does not have to justify anything?  God can like and love whom God wants to like and love as well as hate who God wants to hate.  God can cause us to trip, stumble, and fall with out justification or explanation – How do you deal with the fact that you may feel that God may be picking on you?  

            The word tells us today, on the contrary, ANYONE who trusts in the Lord will not be put to shame – How many are willing to trust in God to the breaking point of humiliation?  DO YOU HAVE TRUE APPLICABLE FAITH or conditional faith?