Faith Gives Us What We Need

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

 Hi, Kyle Pipes here. Glad to be with you as we continue in our series on Romans. My question for you today. Is, how will you journey through the challenges, trials, and hardship of life? All of us will face them. None of us escape them. And so the question is how do we learn to live in the midst of that?

Paul has this advice for us in Romans 5, he's been talking so far about how it has always been faith that connected us with God, and so now through our faith in Jesus, all of humanity is connected to God, and he says, therefore, because that's all true, we now stand in this place of peace so that we can celebrate because we are in a right relationship.

We are reconnected with God through the life, death, resurrection of Jesus. So that's good news. Secondly, he says, because of this good news, We are able to even celebrate in the midst of our sufferings, not celebrating because of our sufferings, but in the midst of them because God is able to use those to shape our character and produce hope.

And then finally he says, in case that you don't understand, this Christ died for us even while we were still walking away from God. And so here it's his reminder to us that that's how much God loves us, that despite our willingness to walk away. And so Paul's offering to us would be that faith is the thing that we need to travel through the trials and hardships of life, because faith unlocks an experience of peace, connects us to hope, and helps us see how love has been revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Let me give you three thoughts where I think this can be helpful. So when you think about standing in the midst of peace, standing in a place of peace, I want you to imagine a moment in your life in which maybe it was at a party, a celebration of some variety, and you looked out and you took it all in.

And because of the love and the laughter and the connection in that moment, you felt like you were standing in a place of peace. For me, that happens sometimes here at Grace Community on a Sunday because as I tell everyone to turn around and greet one another, there's so much joy and laughter and I get to take it in.

I notice and I see, oh this is a place of peace because of our faith in the goodness of God. This community gets to experience the peace and goodness of God. And so as we go through these challenges in life, we will need those kind of things. We will need that place of peace that we can stand in. Second, it's that hope doesn't disappoint.

So what Paul says is that, Challenges produce patience or endurance, and that patience and endurance produces character and that character produces hope. My experience is yes and no. Sometimes suffering does produce patience and endurance. Other times it does not. It produces anxiety and turmoil and challenge.

And so I think what Paul's saying is that because of faith, they can do this for us. And ultimately that as we trust in the goodness of God, as we have faith in God's goodness, that the love, beauty, relationship, connection, justice, wonder that we see in the world is the good thing that God is going to bring restoration to.

We can have a sense of hope and of faith and of trust, and that ultimately that hope won't disappoint. Now when you think about that idea that hope won't disappoint you or bring you shame, I think it's good to wrestle with well, in what way? Because certainly I've hoped for things and those outcomes haven't yielded perhaps what I wanted.

But ultimately, my hope is not in that I will get the thing that I want. It's the hope that God is going to restore the grace and the goodness, and the beauty and the wonder of this world. And so then I think it could help us to think through like, well, what are our other options? So other than hope, there's the option of optimism, which is like, oh, everything's gonna work out.

I don't know about you, but I have certainly tried to use the position of optimism, like everything's gonna work out great in the end. And there are many times where everything just does not work out. And so that will disappoint us. Another approach could be a fatalism approach in which nothing matters and nothing has meaning, and I think in fact, that will disappoint us.

One of the options that I think is prevalent in our world is the option of progressivism. And the way progressivism works is that as we get better, Through technology and through policy, and through all the things that we do that the world will get better and better and better. The problem I see with progressivism is that it doesn't really engage and deal with the problem of evil.

And so in that way it also disappoints us because we try to make progress and yet some of the injustice and corruption and pain and death still exist in this world. And so finally there's perhaps another option, which is a option of relativism that somehow we need the darkness to experience the light.

We need the bad to know the good. And I think that in some ways that can be true. But then there are, again, there are moments where death and justice cancer show up and I don't think we need those. And so I think that disappoints as well. Which for me and each of us have to sort of understand this on our own, the hope that's offered in the person of Christ, which is that God has revealed who God is, God of love, sacrifice for us, and promises to bring restoration to this world.

That fills me with hope, and I think that that will hold up. It won't disappoint. The last part that Paul hits on in this tight little section in Romans 5:1-8 as he talks about how Jesus, the Messiah died for us and how you might find it hard to find a person who would die for another.

Sometimes we would, but not all the time. And I think, you know, for us as parents, maybe friends, we close with like, okay, I would die for that person, but the people that walk away from us, the people who are disconnected from us, the people that hurt us, the idea that we would die for them, that's a stretch.

And what Paul tries to remind us is that God loves the world so much that he came to the world, he didn't abandon the world, and he came to the world so that the world might experience hope, that the world might experience God's love and that love is displayed for us in the person of Christ entering human history, living the human wrestle, and restoring right relationship with God through his life, death and resurrection.

And so Paul closes to remind us, Hey, it's always been faith. That's how we connect to God. And when we do that, that connects us to love, to hope and to the presence of peace. And so I hope this week is perhaps you might be in a season of challenge or find something that you find challenging that you would remember that faith connects you to God, and that connection gives you the peace and the hope and the love that you were looking for. I hope you have a great week. Always good to be with you. Take care.