Romans 8:28 “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” This episode talks about how God works all things together for our good. It also talks about relying on God more and ourselves less. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
All Things Work Together For Good
Romans 8:28 “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
This is a verse that may be taken out of context sometimes. It is also a verse that may be used too often to try and cheer people up when they are having a really tough time. The verse says that we know that for those who love God all things work together for good. Does this mean that everything happens for a reason, I don’t think so. I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason. I do believe that God can use anything that happens for our good. I also believe that you can learn something from every situation or circumstance. I am not sure why god permits bad things to happen to us. However, I do know that He uses those moments for His Glory.
I wonder if we would all have such a strong faith if we did not ever have anything go wrong in our lives. If we never had the chance to rely on God for help, would we still believe as strongly as we do? There have been several time throughout our marriage that I have wished that we struggled more with finances. This may sound silly, but growing up we did not have enough money to pay our bills. There were 11 children in our family and my mom stayed home to take care of us and my dad worked. He had a good job and still we struggled to pay all the bills, as it is expensive to have a house big enough for 11 children, food for all those children, clothes, shoes, heat, electricity, water, you get it.
There were many times when my parents did not know how they were going to pay the bills. There were many tough decisions like, do we pay the electricity bill this month or the heating bill. I am sure it was a lot of stress and I am sure my parents don’t want to ever have to struggle like that again. The reason I say that I have wished for that stress at times is because when you don’t have enough you have to rely on the Lord. We tend to pray more and rely more on the Lord when we are in need. I know this is not the case for everyone, but I bet is it the case for many of us.
Take a minute and think about when you rely on God the most. When do you do your most praying? Is it when all is going well in your life and you have everything that you want? Is it when someone you love is sick and needs healing? Is it when you have no where else to turn? Do you see what I am saying? It is not that I wanted the stress of financial burdens, but I did want to rely on the Lord more. And now that I am thinking about it we did have plenty of problems. They weren’t financial, but we struggled with the best way to parent our children. We struggled in our marriage and with communication. There were plenty of ways that I have had to rely on the Lord, and I did my best.
I guess what I was missing was witnessing all of the miracles that my parents got to witness. When you are in need for something God provides it. It says that all over the place in the bible. God will provide, ask and you shall receive, God promises to give you all that you need. However, if you aren’t lacking anything then you don’t get to see miracles in the same way. Or, maybe you would, but you just aren’t looking for them. I don’t know. I do believe that my faith was made a whole lot stronger by watching my parents faith. I do think witnessing or hearing my parents stories about the miracles they have experienced helped me have a deeper faith. I wish my children would have gotten to witness more miracles like that when they were growing up.
I struggle with how anyone can not believe in Jesus, or God. It just doesn’t make sense to me when I can see Him everywhere. I especially don’t understand when they have gone through a really hard time and are now in a better place. Also, when they have witnessed miracles and yet, somehow couldn’t see them. Then I think about how you can have two children raised by the same parents and yet they can be completely different. As I mentioned earlier I have 10 siblings. Our parents have been married for 58 years now. We were all raised in the same house, with the same parents. We all heard the same stories and lived through the same events. One might thing that because of this that all my siblings have a really strong faith. However, there are not very many of us that still attend church.
There are definitely some similarities and some things that were passed down to all of us. The one that comes to mind the most is the willingness to give to someone in need, even if we means we may go without. Another one is that if we have met you once, you are considered part of our family. I’m not just talking about saying hello as we pass by, I am talking about come over for dinner, move in if you don’t have somewhere to stay, part of our family. We tend to love easily and I think that is because we were loved. The thing I find most interesting though is everyone’s take on how our life growing up was. I said earlier that the struggles my parents had deepened my faith because I could see how God came through for them time and time again.
However, for some of my siblings, I think that weakened their faith. I think they saw how much my parents prayed, how much they gave to others, how much they gave to the church and did not understand why God would let them struggle so much. I think they couldn’t see the miracles that were happening because my parents still struggled. Yes, they had food for that day, or they were able to pay that bill, but what about tomorrow, what about the next bill. God did not promise us an easy life. He did promise us that He would provide for us what we need for each day. In the Our Father prayer it states, “Give us this day our daily bread.” He did not ever leave my parent hanging. If they needed something He provided it. On some occasions He provided food to last a week, sometimes maybe just for the day. But He always provided what they needed for the day.
An example of God providing food for the day is found Exodus 16:4-5 “The Lord said to Moses, “I’m going to send you food from heaven like rain. Each day the people should go out and gather only what they need for that day. In this way I will test them to see whether or not they will follow my instructions. But on the sixth day when they prepare what they bring home, it should be twice as much as they gather on other days.” God was providing them manna, every single day, but only one days worth. If they tried to take more than a days worth it would be eaten by worms when they woke up. The Israelites were forced to trust in the Lord and He came through for them every morning. I am sure that relying on Him to provide food for them, and then God providing it built up their faith. If they could have just gone to the store and picked up their own food, they would not have felt like they needed to rely on Him.
This is the trap that I think many of us can fall into. We think because we aren’t struggling in some area of our life that we don’t need to rely on God or ask God for help in that area. We can start to think that we don’t need God because we are doing fine on our own. We start to pray less and less because it doesn’t occur to us to pray because we don’t need anything. We find ourselves relying on ourselves more than our Lord. If we do run into a problem, we do all we can on our own to fix it before we turn to prayer. I know I have felt like God has told me this on numerous occasions. Times when I thought I was turning to Him, He showed me all the ways that although I was asking Him for help, I was still trying to rely on myself to fix it.
Whether or not we feel like we need the Lord, we should continue to pray. If we are doing well and we don’t feel as though we need the Lord to provide for us, then this is a great time to turn our prayers more into praise. We may not think that we need the Lord, but who do you think got you your job, house, car, etc. You may be the one going to work, but God is the one orchestrating all of the behind the scenes work in our lives. We only have all that we have because God gave it to us. We must never forget that.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord I ask that you help us to understand what you mean when you say you use all things for our good. Lord, help us to know you are with us all the time. Lord, open our eyes to the miracles that you creating in our lives every single day. Use these miracles to strengthen our faith. Christ Jesus, we thank You that You use all things for our good. We ask that you help us to have faith that you will provide us with what we need for each day. Help us to not worry or be anxious about tomorrow as you will provide us with what we need when we need it. We love you Lord and we are so grateful for all that you do for us. You are awesome and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.