The Spirit, Suffering, and Prayer "I Am Who I Am" [9 of 12] Tim Mackie (The Bible Project) 6/1/2014

how are you guys good good to have you guys here welcome um we are uh continuing in this uh this series that uh we've been in for months now uh we're in this part of the series on exploring the the person and the reality and the the work of the holy spirit in our lives and in our world and uh this is all a part of a much larger series we've been doing that we're on the home stretch of by the way about the christian conception of of god and what what a christian means when they say the word god referring to who we believe is the one true god who is yet three father son and spirit so we've been camping out on the spirit and today what i i want us to do is explore uh the the work of the spirit and what the spirit is up to in seasons and moments of our lives when uh when we suffer and when there's real hardship and disappointment and difficulty in our lives so kind of light themes you know we should be able to wrap this up real uh real simply um i want you to grab your bibles i want you well i do want you but i invite you i won't force you to do anything so but i invite you grab a bible and turn with me to paul's letter of the rom to the romans chapter 8 book of romans chapter 8. and we we're going to see paul invite us into what i think is something of a paradox in how we process suffering and hardship and think about the spirit's role in our lives at those times uh i want to frame things first though give us an image that i think will help us i kind of see what paul's saying in in a new light i'd like to show you a picture it's actually a drawing by an artist who's most um well known for his paintings but he did a lot of drawings too he was a dutch painter he lived in the mid to late 1800s his name starts with v his name's on the painting if you look real close down it's uh vincent come on now vincent van gogh yeah van gogh now that's the american way of pronouncing it i had someone of dutch heritage correct me that's actually pronounced vincent then but we're we're americans we butcher everybody's names right so we say vincent van gogh um van gogh's really he's really curious figure i was kind of really interested in him a number of years ago and you know learned as much about him as i could he was an interesting figure he he he actually became his work became recognized and renowned after uh he died he was a pretty lonely miserable man for most of his life and nobody really paid attention to what he was doing but uh he's you know the father of numerous movements and kind of modern art and people have looked at him for inspiration for a long time what's interesting about his uh early life as a young man in his 20s um he was a devout christian and he uh went into christian ministry that was kind of his career track and he was actually the first kind of job he was ever given in ministry was he was assigned to become a pastor of a church in a small town in belgium and it was a cold coal mining town kind of poor lower income town with coal miners and their families and um if you ever whatever google or wikipedia or look up like a lot of his paintings the the art that he produced in those years of his life is mostly of people that he lived with and and worked around just simple people and uh one of his most famous paintings is actually a bunch of um uh belgius peasants sitting around a table nying on dirty potatoes do you guys know that image just go look it up it's really it's a famous painting for lots of reasons that i don't understand why but anyway it's a cool painting so uh this this drawing is from that same period of his life what's called the early van gogh and uh it's depicting uh a man you know from his community and this uh this drawing uh has always been interesting to me because it's really hard to really nail down what what is this guy experiencing like what am i supposed to think about what that guy is feeling right now you know is he the first you know thing that comes to most of us i think is that he's he's grieving it seems like he's in pain it could possibly be that he's just tired you know i look like that at the end of the day sometimes i think and uh indigestion i don't know he lost a scrabble game or something i have no idea you know but you begin the longer you stare at the more you realize like oh that could be actually capturing a lot of different moments what's interesting is that um it seems pretty clear that van gogh intended to to draw this man and depict him in prayer and if you look at the lower left there you can see that the title that van gogh gave to this drawing and the title of the drawing is at eternity's gate at eternity's gate and it's it's very difficult for me to not see any kind of anguish or grief it seems to me that this is a depiction of of a man in anguished prayer and this uh this this image has stuck with me for a lot of different years it's kind of given a visual image for me to attach to a feeling that i have sometimes and i think most most of us have had at some point and it's it's the experience of of anguished prayer as a christian and so and he he's depicting these moments in life and especially among you know think of the town and the people that he was among difficult circumstances life is hard what almost all the people at least the men are doing because they're going and doing this very difficult work in these minds life is challenging and it's difficult and yet he saw precisely that kind of life setting as the moment where even in anguish it's it's possible for us to stand at eternity's gate in other words it's moments of anguished prayer that become the possibility not to feel where is god and why is god left me hung me out to dry or whatever but actually just the opposite to have a very profound experience of god's presence instead of his absence which is the feeling most of us get when we have moments like this what it makes me think of is is just seasons or moments in life where you you feel you feel like the train has gone off the tracks you know whether it's uh the moment of a tragedy that's hit your life or whether it's just kind of a whole season of your life and you're just you know whatever you're just disappointed with how everything is going in your life and you end up in that chair and if you can pray at all you know all you can pray is like where are you god you know are you listening to me like what's happening i don't understand why this is happening have you been in that chair before metaphorically right you know what i'm talking about right we've all been in that chair before god and if we can pray what do you pray and how do you pray and where is the spirit in moments like that right because because if the spirit of god is god's personal life-giving presence in and with the believer like where is the spirit when you sit in that chair in anguished prayer and that's what paul is going to invite us to to consider and and it's this is both a very deeply kind of theological and dense exploration of this idea in romans chapter eight but it's also an extremely personal and practical one at the same at the same time romans chapter eight we're going to keep the image up there just because i think it's helpful to remind us of the the real thing we're talking about here romans chapter 8 verse 18. uh paul paul wrote this letter to a church in rome he'd never been he'd never visited this church he knew lots of people there through connections but he says at the beginning at the end at the end that he it was a church he wanted to visit and paul knew what was going on in the life of this church and we know from other places in the new testament one it was a church that stood under the shadow of persecution it's mentioned both in the book of acts and also from other things that we know that the roman emperor actually expelled all of the jewish people from rome not long before paul wrote this letter some had begun to turn back and so the church was kind of fraught with with ethnic tensions of jewish christians and non-jewish christians under the shadow of persecution very difficult circumstances that paul's writing to and so one of the many themes that weaves throughout romans is exploring the meaning of suffering as a christian and this is one of them chapter 8 verse 18. we'll just read the first sentence here paul says i consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us let's pause let's pause for a moment um as paul we're just jumping by the way and just totally jumping in out of context here sorry but what can you do you know this is not a power lecture on the whole book of romans so so he's in a flow of thought but this is a new movement and he's summarizing a big point here that he's going to dive in to explore and what he's exploring this whole paragraph is what he calls our present suffering the christians experience of suffering and hardship and disappointment and what's really key in reading any of paul's letters is that he's he's got a story in his mind right here it's a background story that forms his whole way of thinking about the world and he got it from reading the hebrew scriptures and it's everywhere in the background and then sometimes it peaks to the surface here and it's his way of framing how you think about history and the meaning of your life and so on as as a christian and so it involves two moments at least we know here he talks about the present moment which is characterized by what what's the present moment suffering it's already off to a bright happy start here so suffering and he says that our suffering is real and should not be ignored but that it has to be put into the perspective of a bigger storyline of where our lives and where our world is going because of jesus and where is the story going what does he say just uses the word glory glory now this is really this is really important so paul doesn't believe the story begin here however in numerous places uh in his letters this is this whole paragraph as we're going to see is just is generated out of a reflection on on genesis one through three the early stories of genesis and how they help us understand what happened on the cross and who the spirit is to us so the story doesn't begin here however the story begins with god making a world that he declares to be what good how many times seven times it's really good and that uh our this good world was put under the the management or the stewardship of these very unique beings these beings created in the creator's image and made to reflect the creator's image out into the world and what these beings have done is that they've given in to the temptation to evil and to define good and evil for themselves apart from god that's what the early stories of genesis are about and so because of that human giving in to evil it's ushered our world into a time of of suffering and he's going to describe this in in more as we as we go forward here but does the story end here no no it's on a trajectory towards restoration and and what he's going to say is liberation and healing now this is just the basic shape of a christian view of the world and it's key to understanding anything in reading the bible and and key to understanding this passage too so let's let paul unpack the story here he's going to dive into it a little bit more look at verse 19. he says for creation is waiting an eager expectation for the children of god to be revealed for the creation was subjected to frustration or some of your translations have subjected to what futility yeah futility not by its own choice but by the will of the one who subjected it in the hope that creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and the glory of the children of god all clear so it's like okay i think maybe probably most of us even are like i think i see the storyline here but there's a whole lot of stuff that's weird okay so he's here he's actually he's not he's not just talking about like human suffering and and future glory or something he's actually talking about the non-human created realm as well what we would call nature something like that what he's saying is that um god's good world the the non-human material world was also brought into a period of suffering and uses all kinds of word to describe the state of the world as you and i experience it what what are some of those words he uses here creation's waiting an eager expectation what was it subjected to right futility or frustration he says in verse 21 it's like the world is in slavery to decay and to and to corruption or death right so we're in we're in a part of the story where um there's bondage right where there's uh there's there's death and suffering as a result of of evil human evil and then powers of evil that are greater and more mysterious trust really understand and and he says that this is the part of the story that we have been in and that creation is in and he says it's eagerly waiting the move forward into the next part of the story here and so you could say this is a whole this is a whole part of the story of our world and we have we we know this world this is part of the world that we live in but something has happened something has happened because this is not the end of the story paul believes deeply and he says creation itself is even longing to be to be redeemed notice what he says here he says in verse 20 he says creation was subjected to this not by its own choice so in other words he's reflecting back on the story of the snake in the garden and so on notice what did the did the rocks and the trees and the birds rebel against god no what did they ever do they just exist they exist and they're beautiful you know but but but the rocks and the trees and the birds and so on have suffered the consequences of someone else's sin and stupid decisions and that would be us that would be us right and so this is he's reflecting on the fact that human beings were put in this in this place of of oversight and stewardship and managing god's good world on the creator's behalf and that when human beings rebelled and became compromised by evil that had drastic consequences on the created realm as well it's actually a really fascinating reflection that paul's that paul's making here so you know you have a herd of giraffes and you know they go into the forest and they eat all the fruit off of that section and then they move on or something like that but the fruit grows back so you know humans we move into an area and we like remove the forest and make a skyscraper or something like that you know it's just humans are unique we have a unique capacity to remake creation in a way that that other species don't and if human beings are humbly submitting to god's definition of good and evil and in right relationship with him then we'll be wisely guided as we go about doing that but the moment you break that relationship and sever the connection between each other because of sin and selfishness well there you go we live we live in that world that's the world we're living in i don't have to explain that to you and so paul says creation itself it's groaning excuse me no he didn't say that darn it jumped the gun stole my thunder right there he says he's waiting he says it's waiting it's waiting to be liberated when when when human beings are liberated right when when human beings are brought into the the freedom and the glory of the children of god this is the story he's getting at here is that in jesus and the moment of the cross is about god entering into humanity in the person of the son and actually taking into himself all of the sin and the evil and the consequences of that evil in the form of death into himself on the cross and he carried that burden for us and in jesus resurrection from the dead it actually opened up a whole new chapter in in world history that the end game is not suffering and bondage and death the end game is god's permanent commitment to the goodness of his world to rescue it and to redeem it that's what he's saying here creation will be liberated from its bondage into decay and brought into the glory of the new creation paul's conviction is is that what happened to jesus when he rose from the dead is a preview of what god has planned for the whole of creation and for those human beings who reach out in faith to jesus and allow his death to be for us and so that's that's the story that he's trying to to summarize right here and he says we if you're a christian we we live when what where are we located in the story right here so does anybody feel like they inhabit the new creation when they woke up this morning yeah not not so much although it is a really glorious world isn't it and there are really incredible beautiful moments that we have with each other but it's also one that it's deeply marred and and marked by bondage and death and sin and evil and so essentially paul's paul's saying we're located like right here in the story we're we have a foot in the world of suffering and we're after the cross which which is god's ultimate statement of binding himself to to a tragic sin compromised world and bending it back into right relationship with himself and making that potential for human beings who place their faith in jesus and so we're after the cross but we're before jesus's return to bring final justice and to set everything right and so we're it's like we're in this in between time i draw these circles a lot don't i maybe i draw them too much but they're so stinking helpful for me and actually someone asked me the other day i was like where did you get the circles and i i actually can't remember i actually don't know if i thought of them or if i read them in a book somewhere so if you and i've looked in the books on my shelf i'm like i don't see it anywhere i don't think i'm smart enough to think up this circle's been so i'm sure somebody did if you know who used it first please come and remind me anyway so um he says where we live at this this overlap period where we we have a conviction that the end of the story is not in question but at the same time we live in a world and in bodies and in relationships that are still broken and and screwed up and so what does it mean to live in this time period after the rescue but before the completion of god's god's redemption of this world and where is the spirit in our lives when we have moments of being so affected and overwhelmed by the evil and the tragedy that's in our world and by the messed up stuff that happens in our lives and that's what he's going to go on to to explore how you guys doing that's kind of dense i know it's kind of dense but paul paul is dense so look at verse 22 he says we know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time talk about a loaded metaphor right labor pain and no he's not talking about humans here he's going to talk about humans in a second he's saying i mean just close your eyes and think of an image that brings this to your mind of a world shuddering in pain like like a woman in labor i've only had personal experience of being with a woman in labor and um with my wife and what made it even more intense of an experience of course is that i i was like the partial cause of it and so i was like i'm sorry i'm so sorry i did this to you i'm so sorry so i mean i it's it's an unparalleled experience and i i should not be the one up here talking about this you know i'm saying i'm a dude so it's an unparalleled experience of emotion and and physical and psychological pain and anguish ladies in the room i don't who've given birth i don't know i don't know i can't you know i can't speak to it but i have been there for all of it on two different occasions and so it's it's this why did paul choose this metaphor like really think about this so he could have just saying like creation is groaning because it got socked in the stomach or something right so that would have a totally different meaning because you get socked in the stomach and then you bruise and maybe throw up a little bit and then it just that that was lame that that happened but child child right labor is probably one of the most painful experiences as a human being can undergo but it's also the unique most painful experience that actually i ideally tragically not always but ideally gives birth to new life and it's for sure why he picked this metaphor here he invites us to to look out at our world as a world in labor that god is somehow actually birthing a whole new creation into being out of the womb of this old broken one and it's going to be a very painful anguish-filled process i mean look at how it was initially redeemed on the cross and so he says the whole creation it's groaning as in the pains of childbirth it's painful but there's also hope there's also hope and and the non-human creation is not the only thing groaning look at how he develops the thought look at verse 23. he says not only so but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit we're groaning inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption to sonship the redemption of of our bodies this is very dense but the point he's making is really is really clear in the story here so he's saying so creation itself is is suffering and groaning and within that broken groaning creation are broken and and groaning christians right and and he says we we christians who have the first fruits of the spirit now again the metaphors trip over if you and i ever talked like this people would make fun of you you know of if you like all these metaphors but it's really profound when he does it so he has he has this this image of our experience of the spirit that we've been talking about in this in this series so paul's and just the the scriptures depiction remember the spirit was right here remember in the verse two of the bible that we looked at the spirit was right there as the personal presence of the creator hovering in the midst of the darkness and the chaos and bringing out a good creation and so right here in this new creation the spirit is that work hovering in the midst of the suffering broken world helping give birth to the new creation and jesus was raised by the power of the spirit our bodies will be raised like jesus's according to the power of the spirit the spirit is always pulling us in the direction of new creation and of life so a couple weeks ago we talked about again in paul's letter to the galatians about the sinful nature and the flesh and the world of the spirit and life it's the same it's just the same thing in in a different topic and so he says the spirit we have the first fruits of the spirit it's like the spirit who will heal and restore all of god's new world has invaded backwards into the world of suffering and bondage and death in the heart as he dwells in the hearts and minds of of christians of believers and so he says we have the first fruits of the spirit such an interesting metaphor if you grew up on a farm this might resonate with you i did not so it doesn't resonate with me i have to think about little house on the prairie that's my in terms of like how my mind got shaped about like the pioneer life and farming and agriculture i'm not joking was shaped by little house on on the prayer when i would get home from school it was this battle between my sister and i as to what like tv program we could turn on and so my parents declared these rules that i got to determine the first half hour and she got to term in the second half hour after we got home anyway and so on so she would always turn on a little house on the prairie so i was subjected subjected to it so you have uh so let's say you have a little scene or whatever it's late summer and laura hi laura comes running in the house and uh uh and paw you know pause there whatever you're chiseling a wood axe handle or something like that i don't know whatever and she has uh she has all these stocks of full-grown wheat in her hands and she comes running in and she's like paw you know paw the wheat harvest look here it is or something and pause like yes laura that's great or something look at this look out the windows oh there it is you know something that's that's the idea it's the it what's in her hand what is it it's the first fruits in other words it's not like you just get a little written notice that just says like oh the wheat harvest is arriving in a week it's actually holding in your hand a small bit of the real thing itself and paul says that's what the gift of the spirit is right now in the life of the believer it's right here in the midst of this suffering groaning world it's the the spirit who actually begins to work and shape and grow fruit in our lives and so on and so you know you you have these moments as a christian where you actually like did the right thing for the right reason because you love jesus and you were like that just happened that just happened i just like said a loving thing and and i could have said the horrible thing something like holy cow like and paul would say yeah dude like put your thumb on that that's new little bit of new creation right there like celebrate that that's the spirit making you into a new human being and so we have these tastes the first fruits of the spirit and so paul will often talk about how in the spirit we can have peace and joy no matter what the circumstances and we can live the victorious christian life and that's awesome right and but at the same time never forget that this is the victorious christian life written by a man who was shipwrecked and beaten and imprisoned and so on right and so like paul is no stranger to anguish and suffering and so he knows that that you and i are going to spend a lot of time in that chair in the in the time that you're that you're a christian and so he he wants to give us a category for that like the victorious spirit-filled christian life does not mean that you don't spend a lot of time in sitting in that chair groaning along with creation over the the tragedy of our world and the tragedies that happen in our in our lives and in the lives of people that we love and so it raises the question then well where is the spirit in those moments then what is the spirit doing when i don't feel the victorious new creation in my life and paul's response to that is that being a christian is learning to to live in hope live in hope look what he goes on to say look at verse 24. he says it's in this hope that we were all saved in the hope of the resurrection and the new creation because of what jesus did for us and so he says in this hope we were saved but hope that is seen it's no hope at all i mean who hopes for what they already have it seems rather silly that he has to say it but i think it's kind of important to say it right so i hope i have a piece of chalk in my hand oh nope there it is like i have it so obvious we get that hope by its very nature means that you don't possess in full reality the thing that you're setting your hope on and what it is to be a christian is to be a person who is hoping full of hope hope doesn't mean you ignore tragedy and suffering and bondage and death but it does mean this firm commitment that this is not the end of the story it's living in hope and so it's what he says here he says but if we hope for something we don't have yet what where do we sit we sit there waiting patiently which means we sit in the chair of of anguished prayer over the groaning world as we as we ourselves groan and this is a normal actually really important part of what it means to live the spirit-filled life is pain-filled prayer because the spirit has a key role to play when we're sitting in that chair we don't even know what to pray like and whether it's just again it's the cloud of disappointment over your life it's these moments of tragedy you know that hit your life or the life of people that you love and you're just there and you're going like why and what's happening and where are you god paul says those are crucial moments crucial moments for you and for the world because of the spirit's role look at what he goes on to say we've got the whole world groaning creation we've got believers groaning verse 26 in the same way the spirit helps us in our weakness i mean we don't know what we ought to pray for but the spirit himself intercedes for us through what what does he say more more groaning what through grounds that words cannot express or some of your translations might have through wordless grounds now just this is really a dense passage and i tried to think about 10 different ways to draw it but i can't i'm just not even going to try so i just really encourage you this is theologically very profound but intensely personal and practical he's saying in the midst of a groaning and suffering world our suffering are here we are these human beings who are being made known and so we have hope but at the same time we are still in this world of suffering and death and so we within that groaning world are also groaning ourselves and as we sit in that chair of anguish prayer paul invites us to consider the fact that right when you feel like god is most absent because it seems like the train has got off the tracks and right when you feel like things are going so horribly horribly wrong paul invites you to see that moment of feeling god's absence as actually one of the most profound experiences of god's presence you might ever have because the spirit is actually not a million miles away and that's why you're suffering right we're in a world of suffering because of human evil and spiritual evil and we live in a broken and follow world that's why it's happening and so so the spirit is actually not far away the spirit is right there present within us and what is the spirit doing as the world grounds and as we grounds what's the spirit within us doing what does he say it's groaning too it's groaning too it's doing some other things but first repeat the re why is he repeat this word groaning as in the pains of childbirth all the time the world creation's groaning we're groaning the spirit's groaning so he's he wants us to see that when we're sitting in that chair the spirit is is as it were pulling up a chair alongside us and and full of anguish with us now some people have wondered if paul here is alluding to the practice of some kind of prayer or spirit-filled prayer that's connected to what he talks about in corinthians about speaking in tongues or languages that you don't know or something i don't think that's the case it seems to me he's depicting this right here and it's it's moments where because of the tragedy of god's of god's good world being ruined and the screwed up stuff that happens inside of us and in our lives you end up with emotions of disappointment and pain that you cannot put words to anybody and and and if you actually haven't had these emotions i would highly encourage you to go talk to a professional because those emotions are really an important part of you being a human being you're constantly stuffing them that you're actually cutting off a whole part of you that god made and that's good that's my little tangent on why i should go see therapists so and become a healthy human being so so he's what he's saying is you're those those emotions like what do you do with those and he invites us to see that in the midst of our our wordless groaning as it were of of pain and anguish and grief that the spirit is in that actually the spirit is the one animating and energizing that and as he says right here i i don't know what to pray for you're sitting there in your spot of weakness and we i don't know how to pray or what to pray and we're we're groaning and paul says the spirit is right there groaning within you and alongside you and here's the thing about the spirit is that the spirit actually knows what to pray you don't all you do is you watch the news and you see a tsunami on an earthquake or you have friends and there's some tragedy in their family or there's some situation and you don't know all you know is the the the pain and the anguish and the longing for god to somehow make it right and it's like the spirit is within you going okay i can work with that because here's a human being who actually cares and who actually has hope that god can do something and birth hope and and and and new creation out of the tragedy of this world and so the spirit can translate our not knowing what to say in our own groanings into effective intercessory prayer to the father isn't this a strange passage i mean strange and that it's i think it's surprising like i would have never thought up this like idea about prayer you know it's just and and look at what he says here he says the spirits within within us interceding and what look at verse 27 how he closes the thought he says and the one who searches our hearts this is paul's way of uh referring to god the father right who's depicted in this place of kind of sovereign knowledge and can discern and know our heart motivations and what's going on in our hearts and our minds and so he says here's an anguished christian who's looking out as a part of something in the world and he's and he or she is they're groaning and they're praying and they don't know what to pray and the spirit can animate that longing and that hope and translate it into an effective prayer to god the father and the only language you could use to describe this is the is the word that christians later came to use is is trinity right and it's just a word that we're using to describe what we see going on here in the new testament it's like there's one god it's the god who's father but it's the god whose spirit within us sent by the sun both to enter into and to begin to redeem his his broken world i was just talking with a woman after the last service and she it was really cool she was saying that this morning she she texted her kids and was just saying i don't i don't know what i need to pray for you guys this morning but i'm praying for you and uh you know i trust that you know that will have the effect it's supposed to have and she came up to me and we're talking about that that's what's going on here it's this care and longing for others for the well-being of the world or something and we just trust that just we're just supposed to take that emotion that arises within us and to not like stuff it and to not ignore it but to actually do something with that anguish and to use that as an invitation to go and pray even if you don't know what to pray it doesn't matter one of the roles of the spirit is to translate our own groaning into effective prayer to the father and the father who knows our motivations and our hearts will translate that into effective intercessory prayer isn't this a fantastic passage this is so and this again is very dense theology but it's so personal because who has not been there you know what i'm saying who's not sat in that chair and wondered where god is and paul says god's right there in the heart of it he's not a million miles away he's right there with you in fact we're invited the christian conception of god is so strange in that way because it's not like the aloof stoic you know wound up the world and then just let it go it's the it's the wise generous creator who wants to share and he gives the dignity of real freedom of choice to these creatures things go horribly wrong and instead of being aloof he actually enters into it and binds himself to it personally in in jesus and not only that he begins to redeem other human beings who put their arms around jesus and faith and he sends his own personal presence within them so that they in their longing and their anguish can actually become the place where the spirit prays for the world on their behalf through them how do i draw that i need a three-dimensional chalkboard where i can be like the father and the spirit and something like like that so i'm doing my best to explain it but i'm not even sure i really still understand it but you guys with me at least because i can only bring you so far so here we are so so what is what does this mean what does this mean for us what it means for us is is about disciplining our minds as christians that precisely those moments where we're tempted to actually create distance because of this thing that's gone horribly wrong in our lives or we see something in the world and we'd be like where's god why would god allow this where and we're invited to to consider the good news about the suffering god whose response to that tragedy is to actually bind himself to it in the person of jesus and to absorb its most powerful weapon into himself death and overcoming it with his love and so that all those who look to him in faith and have his spirit within them have this law this hopeful longing for new creation and it transforms your experience of sitting into that sitting in that chair all of a sudden you used to sit in that chair and feel like god's a million miles away and paul invites you to see that actually the fact that you're feeling that anguish is the sign of the spirit agitating you drawing you towards towards prayer i used to the best experience i could think of as an analogy to this would be i um i really hated school i was actually quite terrible at school right up up until through my first year of college and then jesus turned my brain on and and i'm i still remember in in my uh sixth grade six or eight classroom there was a clock i could totally see the clock all day long right in the room above the door and somehow like the the first six seven hours of the day were never as terrible as that last 15 minutes before you have freedom you guys know what i'm talking about somehow those last 15 minutes before freedom of you know skateboarding and watching transformers or whatever with my friends after school somehow that last 15 minutes is full of much more turmoil and agitation anxiety than like the six hours that came before it there's something about knowing what's right ahead that makes the present suffering even worse the suffering of the sixth grade classroom but i think that's what paul is describing here if you have the first fruits of the spirit you know that the way the world is isn't the way it's always going to be and and so the more you you steep yourself in that truth the more the how screwed up things are in our world and in our hearts and our minds will bother you and it'll really agitate you and it's this longing i think it's what jesus calls this hungering for righteousness those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and so and so we need to recognize that these are moments actually where the spirit is most closely present within us interceding on our behalf through our prayers that we don't know what to pray but the spirit takes that longing and that anguish and turns it into effective prayer on our behalf this is a real it seems to me this is a very important work of the spirit in our lives because we spend a lot of time in that chair it's a way that the gospel redeems our moments of anguished prayer and turns them into into hopeful prayer because of the work of the spirit so here's what i'd like us to do let's just practice right now let's practice right now all right we're all growing as disciples of jesus we're different places but we have a gathering here and we always have a time where we can sing and pray and be quiet and reflect and take the bread and the cup together and so let's just practice what maybe you came maybe you were sitting in the chair this morning right before you came maybe you've been sitting in that chair for a long time now i just invite you to consider whatever part of your life where you're feeling like god is distant or absent or there's something painful there's some tragedy that's a result of just living in a screwed up world and i just invite you to take those that emotion and that anguish and allow this spirit to transform it into effective intercessory prayer on behalf of the people that you're feeling that for and on behalf of god's broken world you guys with me okay let me close into word of prayer you

Channel: Bible Nerds & Tim Mackie Fans

Views: 2,038

Rating: 4.9506173 out of 5

Keywords: Tim Mackie, Bible Project

Id: F7UN2AuiML0

Length: 45min 36sec (2736 seconds)

Published: Mon May 03 2021