SEEK PEACE AND PURSUE IT: ENABLING

Happy Labor Day!  This Labor Day is very special because during this pandemic we can see the importance of labor!  We can celebrate the medical professionals and the police patrol; the grocery store checkout person, and the warehouse worker; the airline pilot, and the auto repair person.  Each one has played a role in giving care and getting supplies during this difficult year!  May God bless your efforts and energy!  We continue to Seek Peace and Pursue It in our sermon series with the sermon, Enabling. We turn to Romans 5:1-10.  During this pandemic, we have heard a lot of justification for destructive and abusive behavior.  This is nothing new.  We, at times, find ourselves justifying our behavior which we know does not honor God.  In these verses, Paul invites us to find a peace that enables our lives to find hope, strength, and salvation.  It is a peace that enables us to find joy, even in the most difficult time.  As you read Romans 5:1-10, we pray that you will sense the Holy Spirit filling you with God’s love and power.  Romans 5:1-10 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. 6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (NIV)