Heavenly Father it is hard for us to imagine being a people who follow Jesus who call ourselves Christians Lord without standing firmly on the truth that you are a miracle working God lord cuz cuz Lord what what else is there than the miracle of the Resurrection what else is there than the miracle of the Incarnation of of of God becoming flesh and making his dwelling Among Us revealing to us the fullness of your grace and the fullness of your truth Lord Lord to think that you do not work miracles Lord would be for us to abandon our

faith father and I'm not ready to do that because I do believe that you heal and I do believe that you are a miracle working God lord and we do trust you and we do believe in you and we do Express Faith Lord that you will bring healing to these men and many others in Jesus name amen good morning everyone uh I'm Luke I'm one of the pastors here and it's my privilege and honor this morning to open the word of the Lord and uh hear what he has for us this morning I truly think he does have something important for each and every one of us this morning um and I think it's even going to be very timely I was um gathered here the last several weeks there's been a group of people who have been Gathering here at 8:00 in the sanctuary up here to just pray over the service before we even start getting ready um and that's open to anybody who wants to come if you want to get here at 8:00 with us and and pray over the service and um Ellen was sharing a devotional reminder in the act of listening sometimes we we do think that listening is this kind of passive thing it's it's listening is the thing I do when I don't do anything else but it's it really it is a very active thing it takes work and it takes effort and it's also a act of worship in its own way not because anything I have to say this morning morning is particularly fascinating it's because what we're listening to is truly God's word as I open this for you and that's my prayer this morning is that you guys would hear a word from the Lord and not a word from me so we've been going through the book of Romans and we've kind of said again and again that Romans is this long indepth argumentation or explanation of the the gospel in Romans 1:16 it says for I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes first to the Jew then to the Gentile for in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed a righteousness that is by faith From First to Last just as it is written the righteous will live by faith and Paul has been saying this over and over again he's like been bringing up a topic and he's like guess what it's about Jesus right he's been bringing up and he's like look at all the sin in the world he's like well guess what that's all going to be taken care of in faith in Jesus Christ look at all the hypocrisy in religious life well guess what that's taken care of in faith in Jesus and he's like faith in Jesus is this thing that um Echoes throughout the Bible and he kind of talks about and shows how even Abraham sort of the first patriarch or the big figure head for those who were Jewish to believe in uh in beginning their relationship with God he's like even Abraham right he received from God you know this faith in his righteousness through faith and that kind of brings us all the way up to chapter 5 which is where we're going to be kind of starting today now I'm going to kind of approach this text a little bit backwards um because what I think Paul is doing is at the beginning of Romans chapter 5 he has a couple verses that I think are big summary I think he's giving this like big major point and then he spends the rest of the chapter kind of explaining those points and so rather than go to the summary first I want to go and start a little bit later in chapter 5 and go through his explanation and I'm rhy back up at his summary at the top of the chapter so we're going to start in uh Romans Chapter 5 Verse 6 so if you can find that in your Bibles we have Bibles in the pews here uh we also have Bibles in some shelves back there those are for you if you don't have a Bible you were more than free to have that and use that keep that um but we will also have the scripture up on the screen so Romans chapter 5 we're going to jump in starting in verse 6 6 through 8 says this you see at just the right time when we were still powerless Christ died for the ungodly very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die but God demonstrates his own love for us that while we were still sinners Christ died for us now amen right my sermon is done um I mean there are passages in scripture in which all you got to do is read it because it is just it's there right and this is one of those passages at the right time while we were still powerless we did not have the power to save ourselves Christ died for the ungodly and then I want to talk about verse seven because verse S if you read it and pay attention it might sound a little strange right because it says very rarely well anyone die for a righteous person though for a good person someone might possibly die well that's kind of strange right because we think of like a righteous person like at least in my mind like the way the English language works I'm like well a righteous person like isn't a righteous person better than a good person like I was like what's the what's what's Paul trying to say here and um it is kind of it's a little bit tricky the language I think what Paul like there's a couple people kind of argue over exactly what Paul's saying and I I think what he's trying to kind of get at is like like like the righteous person is the person who maybe does all the right things but you don't really like hanging out with but the good person is maybe a little rough around the edges but you're really good friends with um and so Paul's kind of he's he's kind of like saying like look like you know the person who lives the perfect life but maybe isn't all that nice of a person um you you you wouldn't die for them but if you had like a really good friend maybe right and so Paul's kind of making this argument he's like look like even if we look at good people people that we love people who do all the right things right people who are supposedly by those merits deserving of sacrifice in order to preserve them we still wouldn't do that but Christ died for ungodly for not just undeserving but for ill deserving you see what I'm saying it's not just that they didn't deserve it it's that they deserved the opposite of it because while we were still Sinners right if we go on to verse 9 says this since we have now been justified by his blood how much more will we be saved by God's Wrath through him verse 10 for if for if while we were God's enemies we were reconciled to him through death of his son how much more having been reconciled shall we be saved through his life while we were enemies it's not just like We Were Strangers that weren't undeserving of God's grace of Christ's sacrifice we were active enemies we had rebelled we had chosen to say you know what I know God but I'm going to go this way because this is what I want this is my heart's bent I'm going to choose sin and that put us as enemies to God deserving of Judgment of Wrath of

punishment have you guys ever you guys ever seen online like YouTube videos I spend way too much time on YouTube um but if you like internet videos or I I you know I knew of a youth group that did this once um have you ever heard of like the game bigger or better right it's where you like start out with like a pen or a paperclip or a penny or a quarter or something like that and then you go around and you go up to people and strangers in public spaces and you say hey what would you trade me for this pen you have something you would trade with me and what you're trying to do is this game of trading where you're constantly trying to trade up to something I actually knew some friends in high school who did this and they ended up with a couch um you know there's if you go on YouTube you can find like some people who are like trying to get you hooked looked into watching their videos he's like I'm going to trade this Penny until I get a house you know um you know and so I don't know I didn't have the patience to watch that video so I don't know if you made it or not um but that's the kind of general gist is starting out with something really small you kind of trade up oh I got a pen oh I got a camera oh I got this and you just kind of trade up until you get you know to something much bigger bigger or better and that's I mean that's kind of a silly um illustration but it's a lot of what we start with here right I didn't have anything really deserving of Salvation actually had something ill deserving of Salvation how did I end up trading up with something so much better um I want to share with you a quote from Martin Luther who was uh his life he was a monk and he was transformed in the reading of the book of Romans and um his understanding of the Gospel flourish and he was a prolific defender of the Gospel in so many ways and I wanted to share this uh quote from him where he calls the gospel this glorious or this wonderful exchange he says that is the mystery which is rich in divine grace to Sinners wherein by a wonderful exchange our sins are no longer ours but Christ's and the righteousness of Christ's not a Christ's but ours he has emptied himself of his righteousness that he might clothe us with it and fill us with it and he has taken our evils upon himself that he might Deliver Us from them in the same manner as he grieved and suffered in our sins and was confounded in the same manner we rejoice and glory in his righteousness Luther is there saying he's like what was mine which is sin was taken from me it became Christ's what was Christ's his righteousness was given to me Christ came and he uh took on human flesh and he took on sin my sin and he took it with him to the cross and then he gave to me his righteousness there was this exchange that happened and it was so so drastically like unequal we were undeserving of it and it was a demonstration of God's immense Grace and love for us there's another quote that goes like this you contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary now I say that's Jonathan Edwards with a question mark because nobody actually I couldn't find anybody who knew where this quote came from but it's commonly attributed to him so but either way whoever said it that's a fantastic concept you contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary you don't earn your salvation what did Paul say

here he said I'm going to have to find it

again it is from Faith from beginning to end Christ came and he died for us so oh that was in that was back in Romans 1 first from last in verse 17 he says for in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed a righteousness that is by Faith from first to last you start in faith and you end in faith there isn't this sort of magical like sequence of things that you've got to do in order to kind of become um saved right and one of the things that I I love about this passage we're looking at in in Romans 5 and it says while we were still Sinners we I talk about this all the time because this is such a prevalent idea or Concept in our head is we think well man in order to go to church I probably have to get myself like fixed up a little bit I'm I'm too messy to be around other Christians and that is so not true because I'm a mess you're a mess we're all a mess the church is for messy people it's for people who need the gospel if you've got yourself all put together and you don't need God you shouldn't be here right the definition of the church is people who have found that they needed something that was not inside of themselves and they found it in God they found it in Christ alone and it's by faith it's not a you know what I don't need to get myself fixed up I just need to come and say while I'm still a sinner and say Jesus please come and save me that's the truth of the Gospel there is no like we have this myth of all right well if I finally get this done and this done and this taken care of then I'll finally be ready to follow God that that's that doesn't exist we're waiting for some sort of magic point where we're kind of like good enough to pursue God to be after him and that that that's not coming that's not going to happen if you're waiting for some sort of like oh when I get my life together or when this happens then I'll really kind of consider following God or I'll really start to like pursue reading the Bible I'll wait until I get to like a a certain level then I'll kind of like take this seriously or I'll get after it or I'll I'll finally be able to let myself into God's presence and and this this says no no while you're still an enemy while you're still a sinner while you're still broken that's when you start and so there is no like if you're waiting for some moment to get to be ready to follow God stop waiting and start following so while we were still Sinners and in vers 9 again I want to want to point this out since we have been justified by his blood how much more shall we been be saved from God's Wrath through him so Paul is pointing out this big idea he's like look he's like you have been saved through Christ you've been made in right relationship with God and so now we have nothing to fear at the end of all things if God has said you're my child you're my my son you're my daughter you're in right relationship with me well that means that at the end of all things when he comes to uh judge the living and the dead well then he'll say well you're my child like you you aren't deserving of Wrath anymore you're welcomed into my family you're protected and that's a hope that Paul is giving to the Romans here he's saying look this is something we ought to be rejoicing ing in we skip down to verse 11 says not only this so but we also boast in God through the Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation we were enemies and we've now been reconciled right it's this fancy word to say that like things have been made right we've been put into right relationship with God and this is a really important point point and it might seem you know kind of silly because I think a lot of times we have this really we like to paint god with our own imagination and when we do that we create a God in our own image we create a God that's not God we create a God that's in a box and that box kind of fits to our constraints but the Bible talks about a God that doesn't fit into our box doesn't fit into our social expectations the things that we think how he ought to be he fits into uh no box he fits into his own definition of who he is and one of the things that we love to kind of paint away is the wrath of God this this passage mentions it we've talked about it earlier in the passages because God t or Paul talked about it earlier in the Book of Romans this idea of God's Wrath and I would like to propose to you that rather than that being something that makes us squirm and uncomfortable that you should be uncomfortable if it if it was absent from God because if we were to think about let's say a like things that make us mad right if we were to find out let's say a judge was like in charge of making some sentencing and they were in charge of sentencing some pretty bad people and they took some bribes they were just like you know well I like know this person or uh I know their someone's family and maybe they gave me some money or something like that and then they gave and then they um they kind of just washed over the sentencing they weren't just in their decision they were biased they made uh an unjust decision how would we feel about that right like I don't like that right particularly if it had maybe involved me or something like that that wouldn't be particularly great and so so like do we want a god who's just like yeah I know that that's evil but

eh right like that's not a good thing to have in God to have God just simply be you know what evil me like it's all just kind of right well then that means that well he he's not actually calling the evil that was done to you evil he's just kind of calling it just kind of it just kind of happens I guess you know like there's no justice for that that's not actually evil because I guess God doesn't think it's worth punishing H right and so if we decide to remove wrath from God because it makes us more comfortable with the way that we want to picture him we've suddenly removed a thing from him we've removed Justice we've removed this understanding of God making right decisions we've maybe even lost the ability to say that somebody did something wrong to me that somebody sinned against me and it caused me harm but if I believe that God just doesn't have wrath or Justice then I guess I should just get over it and that's not okay but the reason it makes us uncomfortable is because we're enemies with God is because as soon as I begin to point at the other person and say like look at all the evil and sin that they've done I'm also having to pull up a bit of a mirror and look at myself and say some of what is there is also here and some of what they are deserving of I am also deserving of and so the good news is that we have been delivered from that wrath because of the sacrifice of Christ Jesus Jesus was a covering was a was a atonement for our sin and he was that sacrifice that saved us and so God's Wrath he remains just by having had a atonement for sin a covering a purifying of sin through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ we've been reconciled through him but where did all of this sin and Brokenness come from and Paul kind of digs into that into this next part of the passage message here in verse 12 he says therefore just as Sin entered the world through one man and death through sin and in this way death came to all people because all sinned what's he talking about well he hasn't said it yet but he's talking about Adam he's talking about Adam and Genesis you know Adam and Eve and he's saying that sin entered the world through one man and with sin Came Death and now um and in this way death came to all people all people die both spiritually and physically and so therefore all people sin he's showing that this this cause and effect of Adam and Eve making this decision in the garden to not follow God's way but to choose their own way has led to this ongoing consequence of sin that has trickled down and reverberated through each and every single person's life afterwards and you know there's a ton that we could talk about here because we're such you and I we're such westerners we're such individuals we were uh I was at small group the other night and the discussion was talking about how to read the Bible and um and someone brought up he's like you know we see the Bible through Western eyes we see it through our own understanding like the way like you know see it the way that I see it not the way that the ancient Jews and Greeks saw it and so um and one of the things that is different about the way we see the world versus the way the people who wrote the Bible see the world saw the world is that we see it everything as individuals like we're a room full of individuals like um we have a hard time wrestling with this understanding of people being responsible or having an identity as a group right and and sometimes we're okay with ident group identities right like um sports fans right like that's a group identity we're okay with but like what does it mean to be um like held responsible for our actions as a church body for all of those things and so here Paul is is pointing back to Adam and he's like look Adam like he was this representative for all of humanity his name Adam means man mankind it wasn't like a it was his name itself is representative of who we all are and Adam and Eve both chose to say you know what I'm not going to live under God's rules and the way that he has called me to live I would rather become my own God and pursue my own way and they ate from the fruit of the tree of knowledge and good and evil and ever since then death has come into the world let's pick up in verse 13 says to be sure sin was in the world before the law was given what he's talking about right there he says there was sin in the world before Moses is what he's saying before Moses got the Ten Commandments there was sin in the world before the law nevertheless death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses even over those who did not sin by breaking a command as Adam did who is a pattern of the one to come all right so he's saying that everybody has sinned like even if you're not breaking that specific um like a Ten Commandment or a specific rule right Adam was given this Choice don't eat from this fruit and Adam's like I'm going to eat from the fruit right um and Paul is saying like even when there was an absence of an of an exact command sin was still active in controlling and affecting the way in which people live their life people still were

sinning and so there is this um there is this kind of demonstration here in the passage that Christ is going to be this greater pattern of the than Adam so if we we look verse 14 again says nevertheless death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses even over those who did not sin by breaking a command as Adam did who is the pattern is a pattern of the one to come now I we're going to talk a little bit more about that but I want to keep going for just a few minutes um verse 15 but the gift is not like the trespass for if the many died by the trespass of the one man how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by that Grace of one man Jesus Christ overflow to many nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man's sin the Judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification for If by the trespass of one man's death reigned through that one man how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of Grace of the gift of the righteous reign in life through one man Jesus Christ that's a mouthful but what is Paul saying let's kind of break it down he's got we've got Adam over here and Adam he made a decision one man made a decision and that decision through all of his descendants brought s sin and death and Brokenness that one decision now in in the way that the Bible understands there's an argument in the book of Hebrews and I forgot to mention this in one of the last sermons I gave but um there is this ancient understanding that the father that a man carried in himself in his loins all of his descendants and there's an argumentation in Hebrews that talks about that and kind of makes that demonstration kind of visible and so Adam in their mind Adam carried everybody with him in his own body when they were making that when he made that decision it's a different way of thinking than you and I we think about it in more modern terms right of like genetics like oh well they had my father has my genes but the Bible describes it as being more no like there was something that um Adam was carrying a bit of all of us in it and when he made that decision it also carried in through to us and so Adam makes this decision and it impacts many people all of us each and every single one of us born into this world with sin and Brokenness we didn't need to be taught how to sin we just knew how to and then you've got on this side Jesus and he's over here with all of the sin all the many trespasses and he says you know what I'm going to take all of these and I'm going to bring them to myself and then out of me there is going to come a Salvation that then affects everybody else and so each Adam and Jesus are being kind of compared and contrasted here saying Adam did one thing and affected many that many was a thing that Christ took and then out of it came salvation for everyone else by one death he saved many and that is the grace and the justice and the righteousness of God and so we have this picture throughout the entire Bible and there it talks about talks about Adam being a pattern of the one to come and I want to talk briefly about how the Bible has been talking about Christ from beginning to end right because we have at the beginning of the Bible we have this story about Adam and Eve which you might be familiar with and then they have this conversation where God kind of measures out these are the consequences of what's happened sin has entered the world you're now going to endure suffering in in childbearing and suffering in work and there's going to be rebellion in the land and Rebellion against each other and all of these consequences and death is now going to have this effect but he pauses and he and he says to the woman he says to Eve he says that there will be an offspring someone from your line there will be a child one day and this child will come and he will squash the serpent that came and deceived and was part of the sin that entered into the world he's going to squash the head of that Serpent and when he does he's going to injure himself he's going to injure his heel when he crushes that Serpent's head and that's a first hint that there's going to be somebody who's going to come and undo the curse of sin and now Paul is saying that person that's Christ and even here Paul's mentioning he's talking about Adam and he's talking about Moses too and there is this unique thing that happens in the story of Moses that I hadn't really noticed before when I had read the story and I was kind of reading this a little bit and it really kind of shook me a little bit there's we know the story of Moses he goes you know let my people go right and he goes and lets the PE you know gets the people from Egypt and takes them across the Red Sea on dry ground and he gets to this mountain Mount Si and I and he says okay you guys stay here hang out be chill be cool uh I'm going to go up this mountain and I'm going to go talk with God he goes up to the mountain he gets some tablets he comes back the people were not cool um they were sinning and there was a lot of bad things happening and there was some significant consequences he broke the tablets he's like ah and he had to take care of a bunch of things and then he had to go back up the mountain and when he goes back up to the mountain he goes up and before he says he's like you guys stay here I'm going to go see if I can make atonement for your sin and then he goes up there and then he tells God he's like look God like don't destroy these people because if you destroy them you might as well blot me out of the book too see Moses was making this offer of a sacrifice the moment that there was this law God's covenant his relationship with his people the people immediately broke it it and then Moses was like oh I will go make atonement for it I will go offer my own self blot me out of the book and God says no and there's some more stuff that goes on but ultimately God doesn't take Moses's offer he doesn't say no no no that's not going to happen he doesn't take that but there was going to be someone who does come and say Lord take me as a sacrifice as an atonement for sin and that is again Christ Christ is the greater fulfillment of everyone who came in the Old Testament when you read the Old Testament you should read it as like a every time someone new comes onto the scene you should be asking yourself is this the person who's going to fix it all who's going to get rid of sin who's going to crush the Serpent's head and the answer is ultimately no no no until Christ comes on the SE

seen so let's bring all of this together let's go back to chapter 5 verse 1 therefore since we have been justified through faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand and we boast in the hope of the glory of God not only so but we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance and perseverance character and character hope and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us those first two verses we have been justified through faith while you were were still Sinners with you had nothing to offer through faith you were made right you were made Sons and Daughters of God through faith no longer enemies you now have peace with God a there is no longer conflict there is no longer anything separating you between God and then it says goes on to say verse two through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand access the door was open we're not coming up to the courts of the king and coming to the throne room and knocking on the door and the door man coming saying sorry you can't come in no no we're coming up to the door the throne room where the king where the Reign where the man or the the being who rules the entire universe who created us who gave us breath and we're finding the door already open and he says come on in I've been waiting for you come stand you have access to me you can come sit here with me and talk with me and know me I've been waiting for you we now have access and peace and relationship with the lord of the universe and this is something we ought to boast in boast in the glory of of

God and this is what I think kind of the main idea of this passage is Paul here is saying that we have hope not just in the future but in the presents if God has given us Jesus how much more will we be delivered from Ultimate judgment and death and even more we will persevere through difficulties in in this life to come out on the other side better that's what he says when he goes on to say this in verse starting in verse three he says not only so but we also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance perseverance character and character hope and hope does not put us to shame because of God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us if I had to give like a theme couple of words words to this sermon to this passage is how much more we've been made right with God therefore you and I shouldn't worry about God's judgment we've been made right with him we've been put into good relationship with him his wrath has been sa satisfied and then not only that so we don't have to worry about the long term which is what Paul Paul was talking aot about about a lot in the later in the passage but he's also making this argument here and he's saying we don't have to worry about the short term either because he's saying he's talking about this view this shift of how we see the world in the midst of our

sufferings the way I kind of want to talk about this is well I guess there's two ways in my head that I I think that kind kind of help make sense of this because suffering is awful there's not a person in this room who has not or will not be touched by sin Brokenness and suffering whether that's our own sin whether that's the sin of someone else whether that's just the sin and the Brokenness of frail bodies and o or over the circumstances of this world we were just today this morning earlier praying about people who who are enduring

suffering that is an inescapable truth but yet Paul here is saying he's like not that don't don't mishar this Paul isn't saying that just put a smile on and just like you know and kind of get over it um he's not saying that he's saying no no no it's like actual suffering but when we begin to have a longer term View when we begin to see the perspective that Christ gives us through it we begin to have reasons for Joy mingled with that suffering think about it if you've ever you know when I was when I was really young um and I was you know if I was sick and I stayed home from from school um you know and I was laying on the couch like couple things you'd watch like on television in the middle of the day like I Love Lucy um Price is Right and um Bold and Beautiful that was not what I was going to say Cameron um I was I I was I was going to say Bob Ross painting right like you know and he's up there and he's and he's just like hi there and he's just talking he's just got his little he's just like beat the devil out of that brush you know and he's just like and he's just and he's just like he's up today we're going to be we're going to be painting some mountains and he's just kind of like he's got his fro and he's just kind of and he's just like mix that with some some uh liquid white and he's just kind of just oh isn't that and you know and he just like oh well that's not a mistake that's a happy accident you know that's just going to be that's going to be a bird now um or that's going to be a tree little Happy Trees over here right and if you watch that show one it was really relaxing but two like it was absolutely amazing to see what was a blank canvas at one point and then he puts like all he just like puts this big wash of like color on it and then he does this and he does this and you're like at the end you're like wow how did he get there like that because like at one point what he was putting as the background we're like oh he's surely ruined it by now right but then oh no it it worked out in the end right it was he built onto it and as layers kind of came this picture emerged and it was this beautiful beautiful picture and that's a lot of what like our life is like because we see all these brush strokes and we see things that are kind of dark and scary and these shadows and we're just like what in the world is going on God why would you paint that into my life what's that there for and we might get really frustrated we might want to run and turn from that but the thing is is if we can zoom out at the end of all things when it's done it might not make sense until it's all done but when it is we're going to see a beautiful painting in our life and that painting doesn't display me doesn't display you it displays the glory of God and that's what Paul is saying here he says we have a hope in the glory of God that even in the midst of difficulty of sin and Brokenness in the midst of all the things happening I have hope that there is God is painting a picture of his glory with the story of my life it's going to be a story that shows how his Redemption comes through how even in the midst of my weaknesses he's made much of how in the midst of my mistakes God still shows up and has Grace for me me and so he has Grace for you don't look and behold my life and see something great see God might we be like Christ and display Christ crucified this is Paul's thing and this is what he means when he's this is at least one of the things that I think he says when he's not ashamed of the Gospel he's not ashamed to show his own life and say look at what Christ is doing in me me do not be ashamed of the Gospel hold on to that hope the fact that we have gained access in relationship with God that we

have a hope that gives us not just a long-term view not just something that gives us kind of like a pine of sky at the end of all things God will judge me to be a child but I can have a hope now in the midst of of my suffering in the midst of the uncertainties that God is with me that I have access to him and that he is doing and painting something glorious in my life even if you can't see it I know that you might be here and you might hear this this morning and you might say Pastor Luke I don't see it I cannot see how that would be possible and if you're in that place I just want to say that I and at least can or maybe I can't but I will hold the faith for you and that you can be here in the midst of that difficulty and it's going to be okay you're allowed to be here and the painting not be done yet you're allowed to be in process here let's

pray Heavenly Father Lord I am beyond thankful for your work in our lives Lord that you did not wait for us to come to you but that you sought after us that you came you wanted to make us right with you and Lord you you did this wonderful exchange where you took our sin and Brokenness and gave us your righteousness Lord I pray that that gift would sink deeper into our hearts might you might we better comprehend your love for us might we understand what it means that while we were still enemies you loved us Lord I pray that you would help us to just get a glimpse of a picture of your glory being painted in our lives Lord might we see and behold you might we not just be so focused on what is right in front of us but might you give us a vision through your holy spirit that allows us to see through that and see you and see what you are doing and Lord lastly but perhaps most importantly I pray for people who are here and hearing this who have felt like they needed to be something they needed to get themselves fixed before they could follow you I pray for those who have been waiting to follow after you to pursue you until they get to certain point of having it all together Lord I pray that that truth that while we were still Sinners while we still don't have it together you invite us to follow after you you invite us in to know you through your grace and your love Lord I pray that you would break down the barriers of Shame and guilt and that your love would shine through this morning into the hearts of those who are resisting that call Lord might you be glorified by our acceptance of the free Grace by faith that you've given us in Jesus name we pray amen