Listen, rest, rest of heart, oh, hear me say this, rest of heart is never found in you trying to figure out the future. Rest of heart is not found in your personal understanding. Rest is found in entrusting yourself to the one who holds the future and understands it all. I have rest because I understand it's impossible for my God ever to be surprised. It's impossible for him to ever be confused. It's impossible for him to ever be unprepared. Impossible. And so my rest is because I believe that there's somebody who is in charge of this who understands it all. Don't waste your time trying to figure out the future. It's closed to you because God loves you. Doesn't mean you don't plan, doesn't mean you don't think, but those limits are set by God's goodness for us. And if you could see it all and know it all, you would be crushed. Suffering is a universal human experience, and that means, there's a final thing I want to say in this session, is your suffering is never meaningless. Your suffering is never meaningless. Oh, brothers and sisters, we don't believe in bad luck. We don't believe in karma. We don't believe in fate. We believe that sitting on the throne of the universe is one who is perfectly holy all the time in every way, and he's the definition of wisdom and love and goodness and power. Your suffering is never meaningless. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for the honesty in scripture about the hardships that we face. Thank you that you have been honest so that we would experience the grace of preparation, so we would not live with unrealistic expectations and we never think that our struggles are meaningless. Thank you that you love us. In Jesus' name, Amen. SESSION 3 So we want to go back to Romans 8. We are in the midst of talking about how God meets us by his grace in our suffering. The first was preparing grace. That's Romans 8:18 through 25. But it's not just preparing grace. He meets us with his intervening grace, his intervening grace. This is verse 26, "Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is in the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." This is so sweet and tender. There are moments in your anguish, there are moments in your confusion, there are moments in your pain where you literally do not know what to pray for. There are moments when you are so weak and crushed. Even prayer seems too much to do. And in those moments, God doesn't get angry at us. In those moments, God doesn't judge us. In those moments, God doesn't turn his back on us. He meets us in our weaknesses. And in ways we haven't thought about, he's already prepared us for those moments because he's indwelt us by his Spirit. The Spirit doesn't just empower us, doesn't just convict us of sin, doesn't just illumine the word. The Spirit carries our groanings to the Father. Listen, when you're suffering, you don't have to pray theologically precise prayers. God doesn't require that. You don't have to rehearse a prayer so it has a good beginning and a good middle and a good end. Listen, God hears the rehearsal. But messy and chaotic, you can cry out to God and the Spirit carries your cries in words too deep for uttering. Isn't that beautiful? I want to say to you, just groan, groan, groan to your Father. Don't be embarrassed to groan. Don't fail to pray because you don't have the right things to say. Don't fail to pray because you're afraid you'll ask for the wrong thing. Groan, groan, groan. In the hospital in my screams, some of those screams were prayers. Nobody would ever known they were prayers. Sometimes I would pray a three-word prayer, maybe the best theological prayer I could pray, "God, help me. God help me. God help me. God help me." God will never turn his back to you because you're too weak to pray a precise theological prayer at the right time, in the right moment, and know enough to ask for just the right thing. The Bible says God remembers that we are dust. He knows in those moments you're confused and lack wisdom. He knows in those moments you're shaken and all of a sudden, things that you depended on aren't there anymore. He knows how shattering that is and he's given you his Spirit.
TRANSCRIPT: SESSION 3
GOSPEL HOPE
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