McLeansville Baptist Church Pastor Mike Barnette

Romans 8 is a manifesto on the call of all who are saved to live the Spiritual Life. Not that it is a choice, in the strictest sense, because all who are "in Christ Jesus" will walk "after the Spirit." What is a "Spiritual Life" then? A spiritual life is one in which the believer, indwelt by God's Spirit, is daily acting in faith, being moved by hope, and growing in identity with, awareness of, and obedience to Jesus Christ. Spiritual life is a life in which we are being led by, filled with, and taught by the Holy Spirit of God to be "in Christ!"

Romans 8 is a manifesto on the call of all who are saved to live the Spiritual Life. Not that it is a choice, in the strictest sense, because all who are "in Christ Jesus" will walk "after the Spirit." What is a "Spiritual Life" then? A spiritual life is one in which the believer, indwelt by God's Spirit, is daily acting in faith, being moved by hope, and growing in identity with, awareness of, and obedience to Jesus Christ. Spiritual life is a life in which we are being led by, filled with, and taught by the Holy Spirit of God to be "in Christ!"

This is about timing not time. Do not mistake God's intentionality for slowness. God is not slow. He made light speed!



The question is, at what speed are we living life? The speed of sound, the speed of the Smartphone, or the speed of God?



There is a great lesson we can take from this study, that you, me, nor anyone is going to hurry God! When it comes to God’s plan for the world, for your life, or for your child's life, you can disobey God, you can get ahead of God, you can fall behind God, but you will not hurry God!



We are learning about waiting, trusting, conforming, and being renewed; because, after all, God is going to do what he promised, and even through the bumbling and fumbling of Abraham, the grace of God will prove sufficient.

Every phase of life offers us new challenges and difficulties. That's the reality of living in a broken, fallen world. So what are we to do? How do we not only survive, but thrive in the difficult life we have not only been given, but called to?

Ten years is a long time to wait, particularly when you have trusted God, uprooted your family, and journeyed by faith into a place you had no knowledge of and no connection to, other than the promise from God that he would make you the father of a great nation by giving you a son.

Ten years is long enough to take anyone to the precipice of either Getting Ahead of God or of Abandoning their Faith altogether! Yet, waiting has a way of weeding out the faithlessness.
When we wait on God this is not killing time, it is, as we are learning from Abram and Sarai, a season of refining, and of bringing the dross of faithlessness, idolatry, and of fear and doubt to the surface so God can remove it.

What you have before you, in this Action/Adventure chapter, is a man who is growing in grace, a man who is being changed by his walk with God. It has been months, perhaps years, since that flight in fear down to Egypt. Over that time Abram has been learning to trust God. In this chapter there are five marks of that growth evident in how Abram responds to the crisis.