Devotions with Pastor Dick

Out of Overwhelming Challenges, I Rise

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Romans 8:35

God does not keep His child immune from trouble; He promises,

• “I will be with him in trouble…” Psalm 91:15

It doesn’t matter how real or intense the adversities may be;

• Nothing can ever separate him from his relationship to God.
• “In all these things we are more than conquerors…”Romans 8:37

Paul was not referring here to imaginary things, but to things that are dangerously real.
And he said we are “super-victors”in the midst of them,

• Not because of our own ingenuity,
• Nor because of our courage,
• But because none of themaffects our essential relationship with God in Jesus Christ.

I feel sorry for the Christian who doesn’t have something in the circumstances of his life that he wishes were not there.
“Shall tribulation…?”

• Tribulation is never a grand, highly welcomed event; but whatever it may be— whether exhausting, irritating, or simply causing some weakness
• It is not able to “separate us from the love of Christ.”

Never allow tribulations or the “cares of this world” to separate you from remembering that God loves you
“Shall…distress…?”

• Can God’s love continue to hold fast, even when everyone and everything around us seems to be saying that His love is a lie, and that there is no such thing as justice?

“Shall…famine…?”

• Can we not only believe in the love of God but also be “more than conquerors,”even while we are being starved?

Either Jesus Christ is a deceiver, having deceived even Paul, or else some extraordinary thing happens to someone who holds on to the love of God when the odds are totally against him.

• Logic is silenced in the face of each of these things which come against him.
• Only one thing can account for it— the love of God in Christ Jesus.

“Out of Overwhelming Challenges, I rise” every time.


Pastor Dick