The Diamond in the Paper Cup By David Wood

And as tough as that is for us to understand, he's painting for us an accurate picture of just how much God has in store for his beloved. This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. That is an amazing way to say it. The weight of glory, the power, the gravity, just how good God is. So robust and powerful, indestructively so. [00:28:47] (36 seconds)  #WeightOfGlory

Our bodies fail us, and that's what verse 16 says. Though our our outer self is wasting away, we're getting older and older. Our inner self is being renewed day by day. Even though our bodies get older and older day by day, God is working inside us, in our souls, in our minds, in our hearts. He is making us newer and newer every day. Can you believe that? The outside is getting older, inside is getting newer. That is that's an amazing thing. God is at work in that way. [00:26:36] (38 seconds)  #RenewedInside

So I wanna encourage everyone in this place, I wanna encourage you. Let's display God's power to the people around us as we admit our own weakness. The people in our lives who don't know Jesus yet do not need you to come to them and tell them that you got it all together now because you don't. That time will come when we go home to be with the Lord and and we're made perfect so we can be in his presence like that. People in our lives need us to point us to the only one who has it together, and that's God himself. [00:34:22] (32 seconds)  #PowerInWeakness

We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not us. When you look at this, you're not thinking, wow, that cup is so amazing to be able to hold that diamond. No, you're thinking, wow, Why is David putting something so expensive in something that could end up in the garbage? So for each one of us, that's what this verse says, is to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. [00:09:39] (29 seconds)  #TreasureInClay

And Paul says that we bear in our bodies the death of Jesus that same sacrificial nature, and as we're doing that with faithfulness, the next half of the verse says this. Verse 10, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our bodies. This is an absolutely astonishing theological truth. [00:16:13] (24 seconds)  #JesusLifeManifested

And for each thing that we go through in this life, they're painful. They're very, very hard. But everything that we go through in this life, as hard as it can get, allows us to see more and more of our God's presence and love for us. Amen? Amen. God is allowing us to see the weight of his glory that is beyond all comparison. And as we walk through this life, whether it's the failures of our bodies, the failures of people around us, God is showing us more and more of himself. [00:33:43] (40 seconds)  #SufferingRevealsGod

It's called union with Christ, that we have been made one with Christ. We are now one with him. We have been joined with him, adopted into his family. We have received the good news, and now we are joined with him in this powerful way. So each day, it's important for us to live our lives knowing that we're called to live like Jesus, sacrificially, not clinging so hard to this life because we know that God has something better for us. [00:16:37] (31 seconds)  #UnitedWithChrist

We need endurance. I used to do a lot of running and and I discovered later on, some of the runners, they've got these little packets of honey or sugar and they basically, every half hour or so, they'll take another packet. They'll have these different things helping them with endurance along the way. And God wants to sustain our endurance in this life by fixing our eyes on eternity. [00:21:18] (23 seconds)  #EnduranceForEternity