In the Face of Crisis
READ: Romans 8:18-23
Take a look around you. Our world is going through one major crisis after another. The breakdown of morality with the homosexual community and abortion clinics, violent crimes, political problems and more! Now look at your own life and how many things you may consider to be “major crises.”
This is the way that Renee was looking at her life. For the past month she had been worrying about finals. She had really been slipping in three of her classes. She felt like such a failure to her parents. Then there was the fact that she had recently broken up with her boyfriend Mark. She still wasn’t over him and he wouldn’t even look at her when they passed in the halls now. Her friends seemed to think less of her too, since Mark had broken their relationship off. It seemed she had no one to turn to.
It was under the weight of all this stress that she did finally find someone to turn to. It was on a flyer taped to one of the hall doors in school. The kind that one of the religion teachers would regularly use to prepare the students for an upcoming chapel. It was a lot longer passage than usual, maybe that’s what caught her eye and made her stop before she left school that day. It was Romans 8:18-23, the verse on which our devotion is based.
After reading this, she realized that she had been leaving God out of her life and that these things were all trivial in respect to the joys that were waiting for her when she would be united with her God in heaven. She read it over and let herself be reassured that these temporal problems were just that—temporary—and in the end God has the ultimate plan for the best of our lives.
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT: Examine your own life and try to decipher what makes life’s little problems seem like they’re too hard to handle. Look at Romans 8:18-23 and pick out what is meant by “bondage” in today’s society and think about what you can do to liberate yourself from this.
PRAYER SUGGESTIONS: Ask God for help in times of crisis. Turn to Him. Ask him for comfort. Thank Him for always being there.