It's All For Our Good Series

IT’S ALL FOR OUR GOOD

Romans 8:28

My brothers and sisters, there are times when some verses in God’s word to the believers does not make good sense. For example, in one scripture alone it gives us four things to do that appear to not make good sense. Matthew 5:44 tell us to; love our enemies, to bless them that curse us, to do good to them that hates us, and to pray for those who despitefully uses and persecute us. Now there are some super Christians that finds this easy to do. But if the truth be told, it is contingent on what day that you might catch them and they too will agree with the rest of us, that sometimes some verses in God’s word does not make sense. For further review let’s look into the Old Testament we would see Joseph’s brothers plotting to kill him, because of a dream that the Lord gave him concerning the submittion of his family and others. So instead of killing him they sold him for twenty pieces of silver. And he said to his brother when they came to Egypt after being enslaved, “What you meant for evil, God meant for good.” Then we witness Job suffering afflictions in his flesh and being falsely accused by his so called friends. He went through this simply because in Job first chapter, God testified about Job before Satan, then allowed Satan to afflict his flesh but not his soul. Then I looked at the text that is before us and realized that if the text would have said “And we know that things work together for the good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.” I would not have a problem, but it didn’t say that because I left out one key word that is important to the church and that word is (all). Now if the late Rev. David Durham Pastor of Mt Sinai Baptist Church was here, and we would asked him for the definition of all, he would tell us that all means...all.

Last week we talked about the “Spirit Within”. We found out that in times of distress and joyful situations, we do not know what to pray for. But glory be to our God, we have the Spirit, the Holy Spirit within us that intercedes for us with moaning and groaning that cannot be uttered. And He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

This week we will search verse 28. In this text we will see how the Lord works in every situation whether good or bad. We might not fully understand what God is doing in every situation, but regardless of what we are going through God is in full control, in other words in all things God works for the good of us who loves Him. Everything might not feel good or the situation might not look good, but God harmonizes them together for our ultimate good. So let’s take a look at the benefits of all the things that works for our good.

First of all this is a free standing point that runs in conjunction with the text. . .

1. GOD WORKS AHEAD OF OUR PRESENT SITUATION

We must understand that although God knows all of our problems, He does not just dabble in our problems, He resolves them. Yet, while we are occupied with the problems that we are facing right now, The Lord has straighten that out and is now working on tomorrow’s and next week’s problems and blessings through His sovereign power. This why we must learn to take our problems to the Lord and leave them there. Now that does not mean for us to give it to Him then worry about them, but it means to give them to Him and trust Him for the answer. I’ve said this before our biggest problem, is not that we don’t believe in the Lord, our biggest problem is trusting Him for what He promises. So we must realize that God works ahead of our present situation and it is up to us to believe that the answer to our right now problem is awaiting us for delivery. Let me help you. I told Alonzo that if he wanted a learners permit that he would have to (1) act responsibly and (2) he would have to make the effort to get the necessary papers to get it done. Now if he would ask I will take him to get the papers, but I will not stand in a line to get them. I hope you understand this illustration. You see the papers are waiting on him to pick them up but he has not taken the steps to get them. Now he have to do something to receive delivery. I hope you get that. The same with us. We must first put our faith into action and we must have enough faith to believe that the Lord has heard us because we asked according to His will as found in 1 John 5:14. The problem with many of us is that we can talk faith, but when the rubber meets the road we will discover that we do not walk faith. That is why every leader in the church should be able to enthusiastically share the vision that God has set before the church. The other thing is that we must act upon that faith. I learned this lesson from Sis. Hart. When we were searching for a house, we look at many and I basically wanted what Cheryl felt was enough house to clean without tiring her out. All I wanted was a yard to work in regardless of its size. But the lesson I learned from Sis. Hart was that once we found that house, she immediately started packing for the move. Now although we were pre-qualified for the house we still needed a thorough credit check and a settlement date. But Sis Hart kept bringing in the boxes and she kept on packing. Her secret was that we had prayed and asked the Lord for the house and we both claimed the house as ours, so she had enough faith at first for the both of us. Then I realized that we did not ask amiss. She knew that the Lord had answer our prayers before the settlement company had reviewed our application. So in this case the Lord was working ahead of our situation.