26Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray it doesn't matter, He does our praying in us and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, and our aching groans.
27He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God.
28That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. Even in the midst of our pregnant conditions, when some of us see and feel the enlarging and don’t know how to pray, that’s when Holy Spirit can interpret our grunts and groans into meaningful conversations with the Father!
I have to share verse 32 out of this same chapter with you because it’s become my favorite of all the promises of the Word God gave to us!!
32If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing Himself to our worst by sending His own Son, is there anything else He wouldn't gladly and freely do for us?
I know how painful being delayed and being forced to wait can be… but I also know delays don’t mean we’re being denied that thing God has promised will come to pass in our lives!!! These words of Paul from the 5th chapter of Romans become important to us as well if we find ourselves in the midst of a delay…
Romans 5:3-5
3There's more to come: we continue to shout our praise even when we're hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us,
4And how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next.
5In alert expectancy such as this, we're never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary, we can't round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through Holy Spirit!
I can’t get bent out of shape every time I feel like I’m experiencing some type of delay. Every time I feel hemmed in with troubles, there’s a passionate patience being developed in me that requires my participation with what God is doing in the earth…!
Delays Don’t Mean Denial!!!
There is nothing about passionate patience being developed in us that makes us delight in our flesh, but it will definitely make our spirit soar if we give way to it…
Passionate patience is that quality of stick-to-it-ness that is essential to our lives in Christ if we’re to rise to another level…
Much like a pregnant woman… we can’t see what’s causing us to be enlarged… we just know we are…
We can’t see what’s causing us to increase… we just know we are…
We can’t see the process of maturation in progress… we just know something inside us is growing…
And often times, right in the middle of moments of enlarging, increasing, and growing up, something of great significance and/or something of minute significance happens and we get distracted…
Whether it’s of great or minute importance from our perspective, He is in the middle of our lives, working all things together for our good because we love Him and are called according to His purpose…!
If God would do for us what He did when we were at our worst, now that we’ve been awakened to His love and grace and mercy, He’s going to do even more!!!
How many times have I come into the presence of God without a word to muster up in my natural mind of communication, when it really doesn’t matter… He knows the heart of my wordless condition and speaks up for me…
How many times have I come to Him with a grunt and a groan and it didn’t faze Him… He’s in the business of interpreting grunts and groans…
I don’t know about you, but when it seems like I’m hemmed in by the troubles of life, my prayer times are mostly grunts and groans… yet that is not bothersome to Him… He knows me… He created me… He fashioned my grunts and groans… He really does understand me…
Back to Romans 8…
31So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose?
32If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing Himself to the worst by sending His own Son, is there anything else He wouldn't gladly and freely do for us?
33And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen?
34Who would dare even to point a finger? The One Who died for us… Who was raised to life for us… is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us.
35Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us?
36There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
37None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us.
38I'm absolutely convinced that nothing, nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, events of today or events of tomorrow,
39High or low, thinkable or unthinkable… absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way Jesus our Master has embraced us.
Delay Doesn’t Mean Denial…
Delays are simply God moving all things in place, so that when the manifestation of the vision manifests, it will fulfill His purpose…
And in the meantime,
passionate patience will be developed in us…
