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Feb 02, 2020

Finish Work (click here for resources)

Passage: Romans 8:26-30

Speaker: Brian Land

Series: Romans Eight

Category: Grace Brevard

Keywords: prayer, hope, spirit, providence, sovereign, good

By God’s perfect power and intervention, he is re-creating this broken world, this broken me, into something new, which is hopeful, but often really frustrating and painful, perpetually resulting in us crying out to him for hope, healing and to finish his restoration work. In the heart of our Godward pleas, God himself in the Holy Spirit takes our pains, hearts and hopes to the throne of Grace, interceding on our behalf. All this allows me to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with honest hope: neither denying the reality of the pain nor being hopeless about the promised outcome. So, when broken life is difficult, when I can’t see or understand what God is doing, when I don’t like or agree with the renewal process, I can trust that God is fully committed to re-birthing us and all of creation, and He will not fail.

Order of Worship

PRELUDE: Gravity - Pray For Me

CALL TO WORSHIP: Isaiah 63:7,9

MUSIC: 

READING: Hebrews 10:14-16 

GRATITUDE  / CONFESSION  / PRAYER: The Lord’s Prayer

ALL: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

For Thine is the Kingdom

and the power and the glory

forever and ever Amen.  

MESSAGE:  Spirit Completion

CENTRAL TEXT: Romans 8:26-30

ILLUSTRATION: Lion King 2019 - Remember

BENEDICTION: Philippians 1:6 & 2 Corinthians 13:14 

ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

  • Genesis 50:20
  • Psalm 139:13-14
  • Philippians 1:6
  • 1 Thessalonians 5:23
  • Psalm 23:1-6

MEDIA:

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. What is prayer?
  2. Why pray?
  3. How should we pray?
  4. What does it mean that we don’t know what to pray for
  5. Talk through this paraphrase I’ve heard from other pastors: “The Spirit prays for us what we would pray for ourselves if we knew what He knows.” For the Spirit to know what to pray (on our behalf) he has to be intimately familiar with every shred of our being.
  6. How can the truth that we are super-intimately known by God be in itself a help in our weakness?
  7. The Spirit not only perfectly knows, he is perfectly able to help.
  8. What kind of “help” do you want from God right now?
  9. What is God’s goal for us? What is God making us into
  10. What does “good” mean in 8:28
  11. How can this be hopeful? ...Frustrating? ...Angering?
  12. How is this often different than my goals for myself?
  13. What do my prayers reveals about my goals?
  14. How is 8:28 mis-used as an empty platitude, and how can it be used (should it be used) to bring hope?
  15. Refer also to Genesis 50:20 “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” -- and how this has been proven on the Cross.
  16. To understand this passage we have to see that God has the WHOLE STORY in his hands...and not just ours, but the whole story of all of creation, and how we specifically fit into the Grand Narrative. What impact could believing this have on you?
  17. Without worrying about disagreements in defining specific words in vvs 29-30, what does it mean that God can speak in the past tense about how he already has (even as he currently is) moving us from wherever we are all the way into perfectly “glorification”?
  18. How can the absolute surety of us being glorified impact today?

QUOTES:

  • “I don’t want my life to be explainable without the Holy Spirit. I want people to look at my life and know that I couldn’t be doing this by my own power.” - Francis Chan
  • “A triune God would call us to converse with him . . . because he wants to share the joy he has. Prayer is our way of entering into the happiness of God himself.” - Tim Keller
  • “God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knows.” - Tim Keller
  • “Good is not always God's will, but God's will is always good.” - Watchman Nee 
  • “The purpose of prayer is emphatically not to bend God's will to ours, but rather to align our will to his.” - John Stott

BOOKS / DOCS

SERMONS / TALKS: