Read:
Romans 8:12-25
Meditate:
Romans 8:24-25
Reflect:
Imagine receiving an invoice to cover all that God has done for us. It’s a debt we’d never be able to pay. But this isn’t how God works. God doesn’t offer us a transaction: God adopts us into the family so that we become children of God, entitled to all that belongs to God’s household, heirs of the reign of God. Something within us longs to be reunited with our Maker; the Spirit of God moves within us urging us to find our way back to the One who made us.
Again Paul reminds us that if we live according to the ways of the world, we are destined for destruction, but if we respond to God’s love, we are welcomed into the family and find life in the Spirit. But there’s a tension here, we are members of the reign of God, but we live in a world where we experience pain and suffering and God’s reign is only glimpsed. This is what Paul refers to as labour pains: the whole of creation groaning in a state of brokenness longing for the new earth and heaven.
Paul recognises this and reminds us that we have hope. It’s a hope in what we know through our experience of God, that which for now we don’t see fully, but we know will be revealed. We live in the reign of God, longing for its fullness to be realised.
Ponder:
In what ways can you recognise that the reign of God is here among us?
Pray:
God who reigns, help us to recognise your presence in this world and show us how to be members of your reign and do your will on earth as in heaven.
Respond:
Talk to other members of your Christian community about what God is calling us to do as members of the reign of God.