Northwest Bible Church

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.

If you’re worn out from serving and nobody seems to notice, Jonathan Autrey knows the feeling. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul lists the beatings and shipwrecks he survived, then names what pressed hardest: the daily weight of every church he loved. God gives the strength to keep going.

You probably know this psalm by heart. David wrote it as a shepherd in the field and finished it as an old king who could finally see God had been shepherding him the whole time. It’s a psalm about living close, not about dying well.

When life stops making sense, where do we go? Most of us reach for the Bible when things get hard, then put it back on the shelf. In Psalm 119, God’s Word holds up every part of life: our decisions, our relationships, our emotions, our sense of direction.

Ever look around and feel like everyone else has it easier? Even one of Israel’s greatest worship leaders felt that way. In Psalm 73, Asaph almost loses his footing to envy, until God meets him in worship and shows him the whole picture.