Romans 8:28 is one of the most precious promises of God but is often misunderstood. We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose (CSB). The passage does not teach us that all things are good, nor does it teach us that the bad circumstances of life will turn out good. It does not teach us that we will understand on this side of glory everything that happens to us. If you do not believe me ask Job.

The passage is a promise that in the end, we will discover that all things work together for our ultimate good. Most of my friends know that I love chocolate. In fact, chocolate has been a vice for me for as long as I can remember. My mom used to make chocolate cakes from scratch. One of the ingredients was cocoa powder. I saw the name Hershey’s on the cocoa powder in the pantry and thought, this must be good.  Long story short, it was not good, in fact it was terrible. How in the world could something so bitter be an ingredient to make something so delicious. It has to be worked together with other ingredients.

God takes everything in our lives both good and bad and He works them together and He brings something good out of them. It is not the good that we think that God should bring but our ultimate good. In fact, the very next verse tells us what the ultimate good is. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29 CSB). God uses everything in our lives, and He works them together so that we might become more like Jesus.

As we approach Easter Sunday, we are remined that Jesus’ death was not an accident but what God had planned from the foundations of the world. Jesus had set his face towards Jerusalem. He had an unwavering determination to follow His Father’s will to go to Jerusalem for there He would be crucified. On his way, he made his way to Jericho and as was leaving a blind man named Bartimaeus began to cry out, “Jesus Son of David have mercy on me.”  He cried out loud and he cried out non-stop.

The people around him kept telling Bartimaeus to be quiet. He was socially insignificant who had to live on the mercies of others. Jesus was popular and to the crowds Bartimaeus would have been considered a disturbance. But Jesus heard a cry of faith, not believing that Jesus would give him alms to sustain his pitiful life, but for healing of his blindness. He called Jesus, son of David. Which is to say, Jesus the Messiah, the anointed one of God. Bartimaeus had the opportunity to further express this faith, when Jesus asked him what he wanted Jesus to do for Him. He said, I want to see. Jesus touched him and healed him.

This Easter season, you may feel insignificant. You may feel that there is no hope. You may even feel that you are nothing but an interruption to other people’s busy lives. You are not any of these things to Jesus. Cry out to Him in faith, believe and Jesus will come to you, just as He came to Bartimaeus.

I grew up in church, in fact, I tell people that I have been in church since 9 months before I was born. I grew up singing hymns and spiritual songs. My dad led our family in devotions after we ate and some of my earliest memories were pretending I was the music minister leading my family in a song after the Bible reading and prayer.

Throughout my life there have been songs that expressed my faith and helped me grasp the truths of what we believe as Christians. I am grateful for churches who made sure that I was singing songs that did this and not just taught us to sing songs just because they were popular. Hymns such as Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, and the Solid Rock helped shape my faith. Songs like Rise Again by Dallas Holm and Praise the Lord by the Imperials helped me express my faith in my youth. Throughout my years in ministry songs like Holy Ground, Shout to the Lord, In Christ Alone, and now The Goodness of God have helped me to worship and strengthen my faith.

I am so glad that God said, Sing to the Lord a new song (Psalm 96).Yes, I still love singing the old songs, but I enjoy signing the new songs as well because they help to express my faith in new and deeper ways. Keep singing but also keep singing with all your heart for the songs help us to express what we believe, but how you sing it expresses how much you believe it.

When was the last time that you cried? Did you cry over good news? You found out you were going to be a new parent or grandparent. Did you cry over bad news? You found out someone you loved has cancer, or a friend died. We cry when we’re sad, and we cry when we’re joyful. We can cry when we are in pain or even when we are overwhelmed. When was the last time that you cried over your sin?

Luke 22:62 says that Peter went out and wept bitterly. He did so after he had done what he said he would never do, He denied knowing the Lord. That truly was a grievous sin but aren’t all our sins grievous. David prayed in Psalm 139 Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me. Every sin grieves God and should grieve us.

Our problem to often is that we compare our sins to others and so we can say I am not that bad. But every sin that I commit is as R.C. Sproul said, an act of cosmic treason against a holy God. We live by singing, I did it my way instead of what we should, live His way. Because we take our sin so lightly, and we choose to feed our sin rather than kill our sin. We excuse our sin rather than weep over them.  The quickest way to kill our sins is to think about Jesus. When we truly understand that Jesus took the hell we deserve for every sin I commit, so that we can receive the heaven He deserves then we will weep for the pain that we caused Jesus. So when was the last time you wept over your sin?

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is healed the man possessed by a legion of Demons. This story is found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This demon possessed man had gone wild. The demons kept him naked and forced him to live in the tombs. No one could contain him or control him, that is, until he met Jesus. With just a word, Jesus cast the demons out of Him and immediately he was himself again. I do not know how long, he was in this condition, but he was driven away from family, friends, and all of society. But now he was whole and able to return home. But this young man’s desire was not to return home but to go with Jesus. Yet, Jesus told him, “’Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him” (Luke 8:39).

God has called you and I to be His witnesses (Acts 1:8). A witness is someone who tells others what they have seen or experienced. If you are a Christian, you have a story of what God has done for you. Too often, we think that if our story is not flashy, or if I am not famous then my story does not matter. That is a lie. Your story matters and it can help connect someone with God.

Your story can be summarized by sharing about your life before Christ, how you came to Christ, and what Christ is doing for you today. My story is simple. I was raised in a Christian home and in church. At a very young age, I heard the gospel that Jesus Christ died for my sins according to Scripture, that he was buried and on the third day he rose from the dead. I trusted Jesus for my salvation. But for a long time, I was not trusting Christ alone for my salvation. I was looking at my performance and because I kept sinning, I doubted my salvation. But one day, I came to understand that my salvation is based solely on Jesus’ performance and not my own. Since then, I have not had a doubt, and because I know how much He loves me, I want to serve Him. That is my story, what is yours.

My brother-in-law David Nicholson cooks the best ribs in the world, and he makes his own sauce. I have tried many times to make a sauce as good as his and I have never been able to match his flavor. However, I keep trying to make my own barbeque sauce. When I grill chicken, porkchops or ribs, I will spend time in the kitchen adding a little bit of this and a little bit of that. As I make it, I get a little taste to see how good it is going to be. When I get it the way I want it, the little taste makes me hungry, and I can’t wait until dinner is ready. I also can’t wait for my family to taste it so that they can enjoy it too.

From time to time, God gives us a little taste of what heaven will be like and it makes us long for glory all the more. This past Sunday Night, I had the privilege of participating in a joint worship service made up of several churches in our area. We sang, we prayed, we gathered together in unity and in worship. Although, I did not know the majority of people in the service, I felt at home. We are a family. We experienced the presence of God together.

When Peter witnessed the transfiguration of Jesus, he saw the Lord Jesus Christ as He really is, in all His shekinah glory. Peter simply wanted to stay there. He asked Jesus could he build a tent for them all there, so that they could stay on the mountain. Jesus said, nope Peter, we have to go back down. Peter got a taste of heaven and all he wanted was more. God gives us those little tastes of glory to keep us hungering for more but also to remind us that this world is not our home. He also gives us a taste so that we desire to share it with others. We can’t stay on the mountain top; we have to come back down. When we do, we have a taste of heaven that we want to share with others.

I had a most encouraging conversation with a friend the other day. He asked me if I had used the devotional book my dad had written, “A Fresh Sip of God’s Word”*.  I told him yes, but it had been a while. He said that he was using it with his children and how God was using it to speak to him and his family.

When he said that it really encouraged my heart and I immediately thought of Hebrews 11:4, “And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.”  Dad wrote that devotional book over twenty years ago, and he died just a little over a year ago and yet, God is still using it to speak into people’s lives. My dad left a legacy, his faith still speaks today, and his books are merely one of them.

We should all strive to leave a legacy for those who come after us. Hebrews 12:1 says, therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us run the race that has been set before us. Those witnesses are not looking at us run the race, but we are to look at them. When you live by faith, you are leaving a legacy for others to look back on and be encouraged as they run their race. They will see that as you lived by faith, God is faithful to you, and they will know that He will be faithful to them.

 *A Fresh Sip of God’s Word by Don Davis is available at the Christian Supply Shop.”

As Christians, we do not have to try to change. When we come to Christ, he changes us immediately. Ezekiel 36:26 says, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Our problem sometimes is that we choose to see ourselves as we once were. We choose to define ourselves by our sin and not who we are in Christ. There is a big difference between saying I have a bad temper than saying I am a Christian who struggles with the temptation to anger. The former says there is no hope to change, the latter says through Christ, I can overcome.

As Christians, we are new creations in Christ. We need to see ourselves in Christ and not in our sin. We should all be able to say, I may not be who I ought to be, nor am I what I will be, but thank God I am not who I used to be.

If you watched the Super Bowl this year, it was only an exciting game if you are a fan of the Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles outplayed and outcoached the Chiefs. Following the game, interviews were given, and social media posts were made. Nick Sirianni, the coach of the Eagles acknowledged God’s goodness with thanksgiving. He said, “God’s blessed us very much, “He gave us all the talents to be able to get here. So first and foremost, thanks to him.”  Jalen Hurts, the Super Bowl MVP said, “God is good, “He’s greater than all the highs and the lows.” Following his loss Patrick Mahomes shared on Social media, “I Want to give thanks to God for every opportunity he has given me.

These men teach us what the Bible commands, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Sirianni and Hurts teach us the importance of thanking God when things go your way. Thanksgiving is a reminder to yourself that you are not ultimately responsible for your circumstances. It is God who blesses us. There is also something better than the highest high that this world has to offer and that is a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Patrick Mahomes teaches us that even in loss and disappointment, there is always still something for which to be grateful. In this case, he thanked God for the opportunities that God has given him. There have been some 15-16 thousand players who have played in the NFL. Only 10% of players in NFL history can say they have won the Super Bowl. Mahomes has done that and had the opportunity to play two more. No matter what hardship we may be facing now, God has blessed us so much more throughout our lives, so there is always reasons for thanksgiving.