Papa,

Thank you that we have this hope. This hope that we will be made one with You as we walk out submission to Your will and ways, just as Jesus did when He was walking the dusty roads and paths of the Middle East, 2,000 years ago. Help us to be the generation that sees that hope fulfilled because we shed the religious trappings of the past and clung to the Truth of our relationship with You. Jesus, help us to walk as You did. Holy Spirit, guide us and help us to grow in trust with the Father, that we might get to the point where we become mature children of God. In Jesus’ name,

Amen

Romans 8:24-29

For this is the hope of our salvation.

But hope means that we must trust and wait for what is still unseen. For why would we need to hope for something we already have? So because our hope is set on what is yet to be seen, we patiently keep on waiting for its fulfillment.

And in a similar way, the Holy Spirit takes hold of us in our human frailty to empower us in our weakness. For example, at times we don’t even know how to pray, or know the best things to ask for. But the Holy Spirit rises up within us to super-intercede on our behalf, pleading to God with emotional sighs  too deep for words.

God, the searcher of the heart, knows fully our longings, yet he also understands the desires of the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit passionately pleads before God for us, his holy ones, in perfect harmony with God’s plan and our destiny.

So we are convinced that every detail of our lives is continually woven together for good, for we are his lovers who have been called to fulfill his designed purpose. For he knew all about us before we were born and he destined us from the beginning to share the likeness of his Son. This means the Son is the oldest among a vast family of brothers and sisters who will become just like him.

This week, this was the section of Romans 8 we discussed. Becoming the fully realized children of God, resplendent in His Glory is the hope which Paul is referring to here. When we have achieved the fullness of that hope, then we will be changed. We will have been fully saved. We will be perfect image-bearers of Jesus Christ. We will be so identified with Him that people will have trouble seeing where we start and He ends, and vice-versa. Even as humans, we often don’t have the words to pray, so the Holy Spirit, knowing that, our situations, and God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will, will intercede with and for us through sighs and groans too deep for words. he takes our requests, our feelings, and desires to the Father for us, and harmonizes them with the Father’s will for us. Let that sink in for just a moment. Because of that, we can cling to the fact that God is always working all aspects of our lives together for the best in keeping with His plans for us. Because He knows all things, He knew which of us would choose to be with Him by becoming like Jesus, taking on His very way of life, His very image. This makes Jesus our older brother, our savior, and our exemplar. That is huge. Far bigger than I have time to unpack in this brief devotion. That is what it means to be a child of God, to live as Jesus showed us to live, in loving abandon to the will of the Father. It is not simply asking God to “bless our mess”, but submitting ourselves and our mess to Him, and letting Him guide us through sorting the mess out.