Happy Happy Joy Joy!

Okay, so my small group (Sharon hosts it at her home) is studying Romans. A real challenging book to understand and follow. We're just on chapter 5 right now. Whew...what a chapter! How many times have we each read that chapter...go ahead and read it one more time!

I mentioned in a previous blog how I'm feeling a little blah, in a bit of a funk, as of late. Can't seem to find joy in where I am in my life.

v3.
"Let us be full of joy now! Let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance."

Oh, that's good.

v.4
"Endurance (fortitude) develops maturity of character (approved faith and tried integrity). And character of this sort produces the habit of joyful and confident hope of eternal salvation."

v.5
"Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us, for God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us."

So, verse 5 is interesting. This hope that is built on pressure, affliction and hardship doesn't disappoint, delude or shame us. Why? Because God's love has been poured into our hearts. Okay. What does that mean?

Here's a thought:

"When we are reconciled to God, we discover that He wants not simply to enjoy this one-to-one relationship, but to enlist us in Hisservice in working for His kingdom. And that will bring all kinds of His presence, even when it doesn't "feel" as though there's anything happening. We mustn't imagine that our feeling of being close to God is a true index of the reality. Emotions often deceive. Paul is summoning us to understand the reality, the solid rock beneath the shifting sands of feeling.

Note Paul doesn't say we celebrate our sufferings. We celebrate, he says, in our sufferings.

The Christian, like Abraham (whom Paul talks about in the previous chapter), is called again and again to "hope against hope (4.18). We look foolish in the world's eyes, waiting for something we can't see (8.25), but we don't appear foolish to ourselves, because we are sustained by something deeper, something which grows directly out of the gift of "peace with God", out of the reconciliation which Paul describes in a few verses later."

Paul for Everyone by Tom Wright

And yet another thought:
The word Paul uses for fortitude is hupomone which means more than endurance. It means the spirit which can overcome the world; it means the spirit which does not passively endure but which actively overcomes the trails and tribulations of life.So, I feel I need to get off my passive butt and begin actively living through and overcoming my trials!!