Northwest Bible Church

Stuck in something that won’t change? It’s easy to assume God has abandoned you. James 1 says to believe the opposite. God is at work even when you can’t see it. He builds a persevering faith through the “no,” and when we ask, He gives us wisdom to see what He sees.

When you’re stuck, you tell yourself things like “I’ll never be happy again,” and you believe it. Psalm 42 comes from a worship leader struggling to worship. Nothing around him changed, but he kept answering his soul with what God said, and God’s word got the last word.

Life takes a turn you never wanted, and the questions come fast: Whose fault is this? Is God punishing me? When the disciples asked Jesus about a man born blind, he didn’t name anyone to blame. He said this happened so God’s work could be displayed in him.

When you’re stuck and there’s nothing you can do, contentment can feel out of reach. Writing from house arrest in Rome, Paul says he learned the secret of being content in any circumstance. Philippians 4:13 tells us where it comes from: Christ, who gives us His strength.

Some things in your life aren’t going away, no matter how many times you’ve asked God to fix them. Paul pleaded three times for God to remove his thorn, and God said no. But it was no with a promise: “My grace is sufficient for you.”

What do you do when there’s nothing you can do? Jesus answered John the Baptist in prison, and He never opened the door.

You know the argument you make with yourself. Nobody’s perfect, and you’ve always been susceptible to this. In Romans 6, Paul says that argument belongs to the person you no longer are, because Jesus defeated sin once and for all, and sin has no claim on you.

You know what you ought to do, and you still can’t do it. The question was never what will rescue you, because Jesus already did. Romans 6 asks the harder one: now that God has placed you in Christ, how do you actually live like it’s true?

You’ve been trying to fix yourself for a long time and you’re no closer than when you started. The problem was never your behavior. It’s who you’ve been since the day you were born, and in Romans 5, God shows what he did in Christ to change that.

Most of us reserve our best love for people who have earned it, and quietly write off the ones who haven’t. Jesus doesn’t wait for us to clean ourselves up before He loves us. You cannot give away what you have not first received.