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ROMANS CHAPTER 5 - (click here to read passage) The good news is that from the moment we accept Christ into our lives we are justified through faith and through faith in Christ we have the peace of God in our hearts which has been given us by the grace of God. However although we have this peace there is still present within us the pressures of sin. It is in this respect that we will inevitably face many problems during our Christian life but providing we look to God for help in these times then we can overcome them and learn to grow in our faith and become even closer to God through the trials that we suffer. We may ask ourselves where this help actually comes from - well it is given us through the Holy Spirit which is living within each of our hearts. Unfortunately we do and will continue to have times when we forget this and we stubbornly try to survive by our own means but in doing so we then wonder why our troubles have not disappeared. The answer is quite simple and that we will never be able to overcome our trials without the help of God in our lives through the Holy Spirit and also the fellowship of other Christians to support us - we may think we can but sadly we are only kidding ourselves and there will come the time when we will need to seek the comfort and support of our fellow Christians and to place ourselves in God's loving hands and begin to entrust our lives completely with Him. I have personally found that the deeper I get into a relationship with Christ, the more satan seems to try to separate me from His love. Well I am glad to say that he has not succeeded and that through turning any worries or problems over to Him, I have so often felt the peace of God within me. This does not sadly stop me from making the same mistakes again and again, after all I am human after all and so are you. Thankfully God knows this and when we surrender all to Him He will take us in His loving arms yet again and allow us to experience His forgiveness and peace. It is never going to be easy for any Christian - we only have to look at Paul's life to see that even he had his fair share of problems, but what does he tell us to do but to "rejoice in our sufferings". When we initially hear this we may think that Paul must be mad if he thinks we should be glad to suffer but he is not saying that we should rejoice in our sufferings because we enjoy the pain, but because we know that God will use these difficulties to our advantage in order to strengthen us in every way possible whether it be through perseverance, character or hope. Either way we will learn a valuable lesson each time we suffer and our trust in God will subsequently be deepened and it will help us to be more confident about our future and of God's involvement in it. In verse 8 Paul tells us how God demonstrates his love for us in that "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us". This means, therefore, that God loved us right from the beginning and that His love did not come after Christ died for our sins but before. It was then through God's love for us that he chose to send His only Son to carry the burden of our sins and to act as a mediator between us and God. It certainly wasn't because we were all good and sinless that this sacrifice was made but as an alternative means of our being able to receive salvation from God and in turn life with Him eternally in Heaven. This fact alone can seem so unbelievable but from the moment we committed our lives to Christ we are professing our love for God and, in return, he will give us the strength we need daily to meet every challenge we are faced with in our life. One interesting point that Paul is trying to portray in verses 13 - 14 is that keeping the law in itself is not our way to salvation - it is a way of allowing people to recognise the sin in their lives and to draw them nearer to God through repentance of their sins. The same can be said today and it is not the ritual carried out within a Mass that will save us but what is in our hearts and whether we truly believe in Christ and want Him in our lives. When we truly belief this with all our hearts the Eucharist then takes on a different meaning in the fact that we are partaking of Christs blood and Christ body and that His presence is with us through His death and His resurrection. So, therefore, by the law alone we can never be at one with God - we have to first accept Christ into our lives and to know that with His help through the Holy Spirit he will lift us up whenever we stumble and will catch us in His loving arms whenever we fall. It is only when we can place ourselves completely at God's mercy that we will ever come near to experiencing the peace and joy of knowing Him. Amen Until next time God's blessings be with you Chris |