Romans 8 Shows Up

You know, it's funny.

These days, my old struggles seem hardly even consequential most of the time. The complete lack of control over my own mind, the depression, the sense of darkness that hung over everything - these all seem like bad dreams that I had when I was young, not facts of life just a few short years ago. And lately, it seems like most days just pass by without much thought to what was once the most enslaving sin in my life. Even temptation is easy to say no to. It's just not attractive. I know where those roads lead, and I don't want to go down them.

But this season of relative calm and peace always gets disturbed, because there's eventually a moment where I get totally blindsided, out of nowhere, and it's all I can do not to flip out because of the pressure. They happen during some of the most inconsequential moments of life: shopping at the grocery store, writing an email at work, having a cup of coffee, reading a book, driving in my car. Yesterday one hit while driving home from work.

Two things happen in those moments:

1. I am profoundly conscious of the fact that there is an excruciating, deep longing that I don't think I will ever be able to fully describe. It is as though a vacuum opens up at the core of your being and begins to swallow everything like a black hole. But no matter how much it takes, it can't be satiated, and feeling that futile desire is probably as close to hell as I will ever get.

2. Even in the intense feeling of the idolatrous desires of my heart, I am profoundly conscious of my burning desire to go home. Home home. My soul groans for redemption in these moments.

In these moments I have to remind myself that the Holy Spirit is interceding for me with groanings too deep for words. For I know not what I should pray at those times. I have no words to speak, can't speak, can't think, can't focus, can't even breathe sometimes. But what I could never express if I wrote volumes or talked for years is known by my Father, and His will is known by the Spirit. And the Spirit intercedes for me according to my Father's will. Romans 8:26-27. My Father's will. Not my imperfect, selfish, quick-fix will.

What an amazing fact that is. Let that sink in for a moment. When you can't even breathe, God sends His Spirit to intercede on your behalf, to accomplish His good and perfect will.

And I believe that His will in those moments is twofold.

1. He allows that profound, excruciating longing to be felt for a reason. He doesn't just make it stop. And the reason for that is to continue to draw my attention to Him, the one who created me and who is therefore the only one capable of truly satisfying it legitimately, to His glory and my joy.

2. As He reminds me to look to Him and the cross, He desires me to be acutely aware of my own sanctification. He desires me to read on to verse 28, where He assures me that all things - even these moments of intense trial - work together for the good of those who are called according to His purposes. This is for my good because I am called according to His purposes. This means that I am blessed on the days when these moments of intense trial and temptation come my way, when I feel that if it doesn't let up I just won't be able to make it another day. Why?

Because this is what it looks like to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Philippians 2. We are to be obedient even to death as Christ was obedient to death on a cross. Obedience to the point of the death of our sin, putting it to death day in and day out. These horrible moments - in the grocery store, in the car - these are the opportunities for me to understand what it means to have my sin nailed to a cross so that it may die and I may live.

These are the death throes of the old heart's idolatry and the sanctification of your new heart. You are being transformed to look more like Jesus. 2 Corinthians 3:18. From one degree of glory to another.

Jesus cried out, hanging from my cross 2,000 years ago, that it is finished. My redemption is accomplished. The veil has been torn from top to bottom. I think that of all the images in Scripture, that is the one that is the most emotionally powerful for me. Can you imagine? Can you imagine the sky turning black, rolling clouds, a powerful earthquake, and the veil shorn in two? The Most Holy Place, once a room of privilege, fear, and unparalleled risk, now exposed to all; open, free, inviting, in the most beautiful symbolism ever to grace the face of the earth?

In that moment 2,000 years ago, my redemption was finished. It was accomplished. Period. End of sentence, end of story. Matthew's story ends with redemption.

All that remained was for me to be born and to live out the story that had now been written. And so here I am, living this story. Working out my salvation in the produce section of Safeway, in the right lane on Westlake avenue, at a streetside table at Uptown Espresso. All according to His will and through the intercession of the Holy Spirit.

You need to know that the story of your life is not the story of what you did with the years you were alive. The story of your life is the story of a God who transforms. He re-creates. He makes all things new.

He makes all things new.