Romans 12:12


Romans 12:12

“rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer;”

Hello brethren,

It has been a while since I have written to all of you. Let me start by sending you blessings from above to each and everyone of you. Some of you have just finish their semester in High School, others are in the 2nd semester at College or University, some are just doing their daily work related activities and some of you have other responsibilities to worry about. At the end of the day, we all have one thing in common, we all need God and His anointing to do our daily tasks.

In this verse, we have four things that we need every day: hope, joy, patience and prayer. The chapter starts with a call to renew our minds to find what is God’s will. We live in a society that bombard us with ideas to do and be and go but none direct us to the will of God. It is sad to see that it is happening everywhere and it is sneaking into the church as well. We tend to ask God for guidance but forget to check whether or not it is His will or ours.

“Rejoicing in hope” . . . must be our attitude. We feel sad, depressed, frustrated for many reasons and we don’t know how to get out of that situation. I know the feeling because I have been there. In fact, just last week, I had a break down in my personal life and didn’t know how to respond to it. Then, I remembered that God has given me a spirit of courage to keep on going. Life is not about making me feel comfortable of happy all the time. We will have struggles and the exhortation from Paul here is to rejoice in hope. We need to understand this to the light of the Bible. Rejoice is not a state of mind or emotional feeling according to the circumstances of life.  To be joyful means to understand God and who He is. If I learn to know God, I will understand that no matter what is happening my God is stronger, mighty, and superior to all. There is an underscore of faith in all this. I will not see how things are working out for my better but God has told me that those who love God, all things work for the good of them. I can’t see it but I have the assurance that it is true, faith. That is our hope, Jesus.  We have hope in our Lord Jesus Christ who has come to meet us at were we are. Oh how grateful we should be just with the fact that God has come down seeking us in our sinful state and give us a way to be with Him. If there is nothing else good in our lives, at least we have God and His salvation in our lives. (At least is just a saying because that is the best of all things).

“. . . patient in tribulation, . . .” Patience, that is easy. Yeah ok, nice try. Being patient is so hard, but
we are call to do it. I love God’s word because it seems that when it speaks to us, there is always a sense of progression. If we start by rejoicing in hope, we will learn to be patient. People say that patience is a virtue and it might be true but, as any other virtue, you may develop it. If we start in the right place, we might get far. Being joyful and knowing that our hope is in the right place, will produce patience in our lives.

“. . . continuing steadfastly in prayer;” Above all, this is important. The command here is really important. It has the word continuing and is followed by steadfastly. Prayer is not a matter of choice, it should be part of our daily lives. How many of us forget this completely? I have to be honest, and sometimes I even forget to say grace when I am about to eat. Funny, but true. Prayer is nothing more that our communication with God. To all of you beautiful women, how many times you missed talking to your daddies? Men, how many times we wish we had someone to share our life with? And so many times we forget that we have someone just there ready to hear us. That is because we have learn to pray when we go to bed, or at the table or when the time gets rough. It should be a continuing steadfastly attitude in our lives.

We need to examine our lives and go back to our habits to see if we are making God our number one in our lives. If you are, please keep praying so you don’t stop doing it and if you are not, please pray that God will show you the way to do it and make it part of your daily life. May the Lord bless you and show you His mercies and blessings for you and those who surround you.

Blessings,

Pastor Cesar