If God be for us?

Isn't it a shame that we even have to ask, "if God be for us"? Although I think that question in the scripture is meant more as a rhetorical question, I believe many of us waste too much time wondering if God is really for us.

A dear friend started off my new year right by sending me this passage of scripture and told me to meditate on it. I challenge you to do the same:

"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

As it is written: "For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. "

-Romans 8:31-39

I am making this my passage of verses for 2009. When struggles come..."Who can separate us from the love of Christ?" No matter what we are going through, Christ's love is always surrounding us. I am determined that this year I will not ask... IF Christ is for me. I have decided to pull out this scripture through any time of doubt. I am determined to be reminded that "neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing" will be able to separate me from God's love.

Won't you take a look at this scripture today and ask God to show you this year how HE IS for you!