|
Kevin Garcia, Pastor of Youth & Worship at Bethany — and another WCCS Graduate! — helped students at this year’s Spiritual Emphasis Week by addressing the question “Will God Be There...to Carry Me?”
He encouraged the students that God knows all about us — and even about our sin — and yet he still sent his Son to die for us.
We are all prone to sin. We are all imperfect people. We each face life-changing decisions. Each one of us struggles with sin.
The question is, “Will God be there to carry you . . . even when you might feel like He might just want to drop you!”
Joshua 1:5 (TNIV)
No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life.
As I was with Moses, so I will be with you;
I will never leave you nor forsake you. |
“God knows about even my sins,” Pastor Kevin shared, “and yet He chose to forgive me anyway! He chose to erase my sin! And God will never leave you or forsake you.”
Romans 8 (TNIV)
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things?
If God is for us, who can be against us?
32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—
how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?
It is God who justifies.
34 Who then can condemn? No one.
Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—
is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall trouble or hardship or persecution
or famine or nakedness or danger or sword
36 As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." [Psalm 44:22]
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,
neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,
39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. |
Peter is one of our heroes, but Matthew 26:69ff. describes how badly Peter blew it at the crucifixion of Jesus. He denied that he even knew Jesus, out of fear for his own life. And yet John 21 tells us that Jesus forgave Peter, and invited him to follow Him . . . and even to partner with Jesus to help change the world. Because “God will never leave you, or forsake you.”
|
