EXPAND TO READ: ROMANS 8 (HCSB)
PERSONAL JOURNAL:
SIN (verses 24-25): I often am a performance-driven person with the expectation of a return of some sort on my investment. When I do something at work, I expect to see improvement in what I’m working on or something like that. When I am building something out of wood at home, I expect to at some point see the finished product. If I clean the dishes, I expect to see an empty sink at some point. I have tried to live my faith in this way as well, which I see in these verses is not how I should be living. I should not be driving my faith with an expectation of something tangible in return. Please forgive me for my need to “see” in my faith, Father. Forgive me for always expecting a return on the things I do for my faith. Instead, help me to be patient in my faith, knowing that my return is eternal salvation through Jesus and that is far more than enough of a return. Help me to remember that my narrow-minded self cannot see what You can see, so I am not able to see all the fruit of my actions in my faith.
PROMISE (verses 14-15): This is a tough promise for me to truly accept and embrace because my earthly father was an angry, always drunk abuser. It’s hard for me to truly relate to You as my Father as You have promised us here. You promise us that we are Your children and dwell as Your child through the Spirit of adoption. You are my true Father and I need to be better at embracing that fact. I need to stop trying to think that You are ANYTHING like my earthly experience with my father, so that I can truly embrace and enjoy this Father-son relationship that You want to have with me. Help me to be better at embracing You as my Father, so that I can truly know what it means to have a Father who loves me properly and unconditionally.
ATTITUDE (verse 18): Yeah, You’re definitely speaking directly to me in this verse. I so often get hung up in my present sufferings that I fail to see the bigger picture of Your glory which You are trying to reveal to me in the moment. It’s so easy to dwell on the negative happenings in this life that I often get so stuck in those negative mindsets for a very long time. I find myself often sitting at the bottom of a pit of despair instead of grasping for Your hand that is always reaching out to me. Remind me in those negative moments that You are there with me through it all. Remind me that the glory You have yet to reveal to me is far greater than anything this life may put in front of me. Help me to be better at leaning on You to pull me out of the negative mindset quicker and sooner than I have been in the past, Father.
COMMAND (verse 6): Such a simple way of living that I often fail at since coming to faith. You tell us that the mind-set of the flesh is death, but the mind-set of the Spirit is life and peace. This is a command to me because it essentially is telling me that since I am a follower of Jesus, I should no longer live in the flesh as it will be the death of me. I need to embrace and live in the Spirit of life and peace. Peace is the resounding command to me, because this is probably my biggest struggle in this life. I struggle with living in Your peace quite often as I tend to default to living in an irritable and angry way. Help cleanse me of this horrible and fleshly way of living, Father, so that I can embrace the peace You command us to live in as Your followers. Help me to be better at allowing the Spirit of peace reside in me so that it overpowers any of these fleshly defaults I’ve been living in for so long.
EXAMPLE (verse 26): Thank You for giving this amazing example of how the Spirit intercedes for us in our lives, Father. I do often struggle with putting to prayer the many issues I have in this life. I do often struggle with simply going to prayer at times. Knowing that the Spirit is always there, interceding for me, even when I don’t recognize or know what I need to pray about in the moment is an amazing bit of knowledge. Without the Spirit interceding for me, I’m sure I would be far more “earthly” than I already am and far more lost as well. Thank You for giving me a Spirit who knows exactly what I need even when I do not. Thank You for giving me a Spirit that will fight on my behalf even when I feel like giving up.
*DAILY NOTE: What can I say about Romans 8 that hasn’t already been said in the rest of my journal. This is such a powerful chapter that has so much information to extract out of it on so many topics. The two things that stuck out to me the most are the Spirit of peace and that the Spirit intercedes for me in my prayer life. I am often lost on both of these topics since coming to faith but knowing that the Spirit dwells in me to fight for me on everything I feel I am struggling with fills me with great peace and joy. Knowing that even when I am struggling to come up with the words in my prayer life that the Spirit is communicating on my behalf what I am unable to say in the moment gives me hope that my faith can continue to mature no matter my struggles. Thank You so much for this peace and intercedence, Father. Thank You for always fighting for me even when I do not want to fight for myself in the moment.
EXPAND TO READ: GENERAL NOTE FOR MY QUIET TIMES
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