Just a few of the ways this promise equips us as we leave this place and enter our world.

1. We don't have to fear the future. The other shoe may drop. Stuff may hit the fan. But God's got us.

2. The suffering we will experience won't change because of this verse but the way we suffer can. We can't change what happens but God promises to redeeem suffering. Do something with it. To never waste it.

3. We can even with without regret. No doubt there can and should be grief about poor choices we've made. Opportunities we didn't take. But God is taking everything and coordinating it to accomplish His purposes for our lives. We may wish that we had made different choices, taken different paths, but the only way to become who God will make us is through the paths that we have and will walk under His Fatherly hand.

God for us is really all we need to know.

Father is the Christian word fir God. It's one of the best words for God. Let's use it often. Let's enjoy this often.

We are all in this struggle between what we know we should do and what we actually do. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we don’t. Thats some of what we see from Romans 7.18-24. But what do we do with that? What do we need? Liberation. Romans 8.1-14 shows us how we have freedom from the penalty of sin (verse 1), and freedom from the power of sin (verses 2 and following).

There is no condemnation for those who are "in Christ". What freedom. The rightly condemned, in Christ, are completely, eternally, gloriously acquitted! Those "in Christ" have been liberated from the penalty of sin. Secondly, we see that those "in Christ" are being liberated from the power of sin.

In Christ, right now, there is no condemnation, only transformation. Thats's our anthem. Think of how may ways we can pick up this anthem and where we can apply it? It is a mantra that hammers down, attacks, unravels, our common condition of frustration and failure. Wield this anthem often against false guilt, fear, and shame.

• When we doubt that God will indeed accept us....No condemnation!

• As we fear a future judgment and the retelling of our failures...No condemnation!

• As we feel like we will never change, never grow. As we feel stuck...Transformation!

• As we walk through life with others that seem stuck and our patience is growing

thin...Transformation!

• As we talk with someone else who struggles to feel forgiven. Who’s past and present

choices are so far from what they want to be. Who is drowning under guilt and shame

and fear...No Condemnation!

We confront all of it with this: In Christ, right now, there is no condemnation, only transformation.

Jesus shows up in the cradle. Jesus goes to the cross. Jesus rises from the dead. All in service of restoration. To bring us back to God...He has given us every reason to love Him. In the extraordinary. And the ordinary. May the Spirit give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to know.