Sticking it out

This week's verses are a classic: Romans 8:38-39:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor heavenly rulers, nor things that are present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

These verses come at the end of a longer passage written by the apostle Paul, talking about how we shouldn't give up hope or let anything dull our love for God, even though a lot of bad things were going to happen. And in the last section, where these verses are found, he turns it around.

He says that God is not going to give up on us. That nothing at all can stop him from abundantly loving us. He goes out of his way to drive his point home: God is faithful. Eternally faithful.

And so that makes our task that much more important. Two people love each other but are separated for a season in a long distance relationship. One of them loses hope and begins to tell themselves "they'll never marry me. they don't love me. they'll find someone else and break my heart." So eventually they cheat. 

If the person they betrayed was a loser, it's not much of a tragedy, right? But what if the other person was really great, like out of their league, and was 100% faithful? What a mistake! They've basically ruined their life! If you were their friend, you'd be like "what were you thinking? All you had to do was stick it out a bit longer and all of your doubts would have disappeared."

And that's kind of what Paul is saying in between the lines here. Yes, life will be difficult. And waiting indefinitely for Christ to return can be really difficult when you're being persecuted. But God is that 100% faithful suitor who is way out of our league! All we have to do is stick it out, and we'll be set for eternity! How tragic would it be if we gave up before then?

Paul would know about this if anyone would. He'd endured all kinds of hardship in his life. It only made him seek God's presence more intensely. So when he's writing these verses, he knows about both sides of this story, the hardship and the reward.

If you find yourself reluctant to take your faith seriously, or maybe find yourself thinking that he seems really distant, then keep these verses in mind. He will be faithful to you. There is nothing that can happen to keep him from upholding his end of the deal.