Basic Training 05 Series

Welcome back to Basic Training! We are halfway through our training today.

Last week we looked at three items that are provided for us through the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ.; they are justification, sanctification, and assurance.

To be justiified means to be shown as right. You are cleared of all blame and guilt. Justification is a legal declaration issued by God when He pronounces that a person is free from any guilt or fault and that the person is now acceptable in His sight. Paul says, "There is now no condemnation for those who turn their faith to Christ."

To be sanctified means to be made holy. We are sanctified through Jesus Christ. His act on the cross made it possible for our sins to be forgiven. All we have to do is aske for it and we receive it.

We must be justified before we can be sanctified.

And the we looked at 4 assurances that we have through the righteousness of God. The first was God’s righteousness in our lives, the second was the Holy Spirit in our lives, the third was the fact that we are joint heirs with Jesus, and the fourth was the fact that the Holy Spirit is interceding on our behalf with God.

Today we are going to look at 2 more assurances that we have through God’s righteousness that are found in Romans 8.

Let’s pray,

Father,

Open my eyes so I can see Your truth.

Open my ears so I can hear Your voice.

Open my mind so I can understand Your Word.

And open my heart so I may receive all that You want me to receive.

AMEN

Today we are going to look at the assurance of God’s purpose in our lives and the assurance of God’s presence in our lives.

Let’s look at Romans 8:28-39.

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

More Than Conquerors

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;

we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I cannot stress enough how powerful the book of Romans is! It gives us some of the greatest Biblical truths we can know so that we can live a right life for God.

This portion of Scriptures gives us the assurance that nothing can separate us from God’s presence in our lives and that His purpose for our lives is nothing but good.

The only thing that can separate us from these assurances is our own choices. The prophet Isaiah stated this in Isaiah 59:1-2. 1 Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save,

nor his ear too dull to hear. 2 But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.

Our choices to sin separate us from God that is why I say we should always run away from temptation.

Paul tells is that nothing else can separate us from God’s love and God’s presence and God’s purpose in our lives.

In the midst of all that goes on in our lives, all the good and all the bad things, all the happy times and all the sad times, through the times we feel great to the times we feel pain, Paul gives us the assurance that if we stay focused on our relationship with God through Jesus Christ, that God will work our ever detail of our lives according to His purpose.