Micah Berteau

I was going to write a blog this week about another subject but couldn’t get myself to after I heard of the recent activity in Japan. It breaks my heart as I continually hear and see what is happening with them. Real people, real lives, real brokenness, needing our real prayers. I share these pics so you can have something to look at while praying and as a realization of the severity of Japans’ current situation.

Jesus, help.

Hopefully this encourages and helps you see things in a new way :)

Romans 8:38-39

³⁸ And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. ³⁹ No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Sure, most of us have heard or read this as some point, right? Don’t you just love the winning attitude from Paul behind these verses? Perhaps this is one of the most uncompromisable promises God ever gave us. As it is for me, it may be difficult for you at times to really comprehend and fully understand a love like this. We have no other example in our world that illustrates such an intense, immense, unbreakable, immovable, Aint no mountain high enough, better than Justin Beiber, in your face kind of love. Boyfriend to Girlfriend…nope. Brother to Sister…nah. Humans to puppies…well, maybe (joking!)…Not even marriage can stay in the same ring with this kind of love. Crazy stuff…

So here we are, with this 24/7 accessible love-fest, but do we really feel like we have this love alive inside of us each day? Or is each day more like a mud-walk to get to the end of it just so we can say, “I made it!” I understand we have our ups in life, but it is just me or does it feel like our downs outweigh the ups 37 to 1 by the end of the week?!…I don’t know how odds work btw but I know this is lopsided. Or how one rough day can collapse the rest of your week under a huge pile of stupid. Maybe what is throwing you off is a more serious issue like dealing with the sorrow/grief from the death of a loved one. Point is, we all have “things” that slow us down at times. So what happens when we get caught up with a whirlwind of sin or a tornado of pain and emotions? What occurs is that we fail to recognize what Paul is desperately trying to scream to us about God’s love. You feel so separated and lost after falling in sin…yet His love is still with you. Emotions cause us to look horizontally for answers…yet it’s the vertical love that’s waiting. Ya, pain can draw us closer to our Heavenly Father but pain can also cause us to feel a little emotion called “overwhelmed.” 

NEVERTHELESS…though we get tripped up by some unexpected stuff, we must realize we have a loaded gun in Romans 8. How can we win anyone to Christ if we take on troubles the same way the world does? So it all comes to this…IF we can fully download that God has a NEVER LEAVE warranty on His love, we will come to the conclusion that…

WE WIN

We win because even the powers of hell can not dissolve the love our God has for us. We win because Jesus gave up his human life for out of love for us and rose in 3 days.

We win because we know the end of the story. My encouragement to you is to present this Romans 8 attitude of winning to your lost and searching friends and family. Paul lost many battles, felt pain and fought emotions, but still had this attitude because of his personal relationship with Jesus…don’t worry about your lost battles and recognize the war hero. We have a Savior that never gave up…He battled physical, emotional, spiritual, and every other kind pain, and guess what, He won.

And because HE won…We Win