One Baptism, One Father: Spirit's Work and Love

He works through all things, sickness, bankruptcy, health, struggle, strife, evil. God is sovereign overall and the father works through every single circumstance. And if we don't understand that, then our life sometimes will crash and burn because we don't realize that there's not a moment of our life that we are alone. He is always with us. So not only is he overall, he is through all and he is in all. [01:15:57] (38 seconds)  #GodThroughItAll

I could leave things, and this happens in our lives, that are unfinished and out of my control and just leave them with Him and go to bed at night knowing that he's not going to sleep or slumber and that the problems will be there tomorrow. But there's enough grace to get me through tomorrow because he will be with me tomorrow just as he was with me on this day. And because of Christ, we have the hope that we will never be forsaken. [01:24:29] (33 seconds)  #NeverForsakenHope

At noon each day, I would know that God is in all. And so I would pause and take a breath before responding in frustration to the morning's realities because sometimes the morning's got some realities, doesn't it? And they're frustrating. And we're wondering how do we get through the rest of this day. We would resist temptation because God is near and he sees. We would lean on the spirit when we are weak. We would pray silently amid certain situations that come. We would choose self control over impulse knowing that God's nearness should shape our response to the experiences of the day. [01:22:00] (38 seconds)  #NearnessShapesAction

We would know each morning that as we wake up that God already is overall and he's been overall while we slept last night. The day would start with us submitting and trusting and not being anxious. As we awaken, we would entrust the day to him rather than immediately recalling. I don't know about you, but sometimes I do this. I wanna recall yesterday's problems instead of entrusting him that he can handle yesterday's problems today because he's already been it today for forever because he's bound by he's not bound by time. [01:19:56] (38 seconds)  #StartBySurrender

And I wonder if there's anybody in the room this morning as we finish that for years of your life you strayed from God and you've come back to church, but you've not come back to your loving heavenly father who has invited you to come back to be kissed and loved and hugged and to be told, you're not what you did, You belong to me, and let's now work on cleaning things up. [01:33:33] (29 seconds)  #ComeHomeToFather

We would delay certain situations to give ourselves time to pray. We would quit trying to control every situation and restfully trust that our God can handle whatever it is that we are dealing with. We would learn that God's sovereignty removes panic and that his presence can remove fear. And then when I get home at night, I could release the results of the day instead of replaying them. I could thank God for his enduring faithfulness into my life. [01:23:56] (33 seconds)  #TrustNotControl

This is important. The world doesn't have hope. Paul writes about that in chapter two of Ephesians. The world is without hope. We have hope. We have hope demonstrated in three ways. We look back to the cross. So we look back to the death of Jesus, and because he paid the penalty for our sin, he died in our place, he bore our sin, we look back on that event knowing that it now gives us hope. We have hope today, this Sunday morning, because in salvation, the Bible affirms that we are now indwelt by the Holy Spirit. So this power, this presence of God is now in our lives, And then we look forward to hope that Christ is going to return, set up his kingdom, and we will live in his presence in a place of holiness and righteousness and goodness for the rest of eternity. [00:41:25] (62 seconds)