More than Conquerors

A Sermon Inspired by Romans 8:26-39

Sermon 3 in “Nothing Shall Separate Us” Sermon Series

Today we conclude our sermon series from Romans, and we arrive at the promise that entitled this month’s series – “Nothing Shall Separate Us.” We’ve spent the past two weeks contemplating our sinful nature as human beings, our tendency to do the wrong thing even when we want to do the right thing, and our utter helplessness to resist sin without the saving power of Jesus’ grace.

So when we get to the end of Paul’s 8^th chapter in Romans, it’s like taking a fresh breath of air to read the words that open today’s passage, “the Spirit comes to help our weakness.”

Can I get an “Amen”?

Thanks be to God that even though we are a mess, Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would come to help us. The Spirit helps us when we aren’t able to choose the good on our own. The Spirit helps us live as God’s adopted children and heirs with Christ and all the responsibility that comes with that. And then, today, we learn that the Spirit intercedes on our behalf and prays for us when we don’t know how to pray.

And, whether we would like to admit it or not, this last promise brings us a whole lot of comfort because prayer is something many of find difficult or elusive at times. It seems embarrassing to admit out loud, and though I know many faithful prayer warriors in our congregation, prayer is tough for a lot of Christians. When congregations are polled, prayer continues to top the list of their top struggles in their faith journey. Even Jesus’ first followers asked him to teach them how to pray!

Sometimes, prayer just escapes us! We don’t know which words to use, and we get tripped up trying to piece together beautiful sentences that we think will be worthy of God’s ear. Or we worry that if we get distracted or we open our eyes, that we’ve lost the posture of prayer and we have to start over. Or, sometimes, we just plain don’t know what to pray for, where to start. Sometimes what we are experiencing in life is so painful, so confusing, so hard that the words just don’t come…or we aren’t sure what the right thing to pray for even is. This is when Paul reminds us of Jesus’ promise that the Spirit is our helper and advocate who will step in and carry the prayers of our heart that sound like sighs too deep for words to the throne of God on our behalf.

The Spirit intercedes, not because our words don’t matter. Of course, they matter! They are important to God. But, the Spirit stands in for us to teach us that words don’t lead us to prayer. The heart leads us to prayer. The Spirit leads us to prayer. Then words follow.

And when the Holy Spirit leads, she leads with love. Paul asks, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”

“Nothing!” the Spirit answers.

When you were a child, were you ever separated from your parents in a crowded place or store? How did you feel? Scared? Worried? Abandoned?

I remember this one time I was worried that I had been left behind. My family had gone to Blockbuster to rent some movies for the weekend. After I picked out my favorite movie to rent, a Shirley Temple variety show, I told my mom I needed to use the bathroom and that I’d be right back. The bathroom was in a separate part of the store, behind a door that led to a water fountain, restrooms, and a private office for employees only. After I finished washing my hands, I walked out of the bathroom and tried to open the door to the main store. LOCKED! I tried to pull harder. Still locked! My mind started to race. What had happened? Did the store close? Was there a fire and the store had been evacuated and all the doors locked behind? My mom wouldn’t have forgotten about me, would she? I turned and turned the door handle until I thought it might twist off completely. Still no luck. It wouldn’t budge. I was practically in tears as I looked up to heaven for help and read the words “Employees Only” written on the door. I turned around and saw another door, the real door leading back to the main store. I grabbed the handle and flung it open to reveal the shelves of VHS tapes and popcorn and candy and my family in the checkout line waving to me to hurry up. I’m sure it was less than 30 seconds in reality, but, to me, the moments when I thought I was separated from everyone else, alone and terrified, felt like an eternity.

When we feel alone and far away from God, Paul’s promise calls out to us “Nothing shall separate us from God’s love, for in all things we are more than conquerors.”

Exactly which things does Paul think we are conquering over? 

Because if I’m being completely honest and transparent, I don’t exactly feel like we are winning at life right now, that we are conquerors over the tough situations we are facing as a world, as a nation, as a community, as a church, as individuals. There is so much that is hard right now, especially in this season of pandemic and the ways it has changed our lives and world and the places where we have realized that we don’t really have control. I don’t feel like I’m conquering right now. Do you?

I haven’t been able to stop people I love from getting sick. I haven’t been able to imagine a creative way to make online worship feel like you are actually together with your friends and family. I haven’t been able to figure out how to perfectly support the police officers I love and trust while at the same time calling for more accountability to protect our black citizens from the harm being done to them. I haven’t been able to design a perfectly safe plan for our kids and teachers to go back to school this fall. And I haven’t found the exact right argument that will get everyone to see that this pandemic and the things we can do to help fight it, like wearing masks, are not a political fight! I sure don’t feel like a conqueror, right now! I feel more like a failure. Who’s with me?

By saying that we are conquerors over hardship, distress, persecution, peril, and sword, Paul is not saying that our power wins against these powers. Remember, when it comes to sin power versus our will power, sin wins! Paul knows the kind of powers of sin, death, and evil that we are up against, and just how powerful they are! What Paul is reminding us is that these are the very powers Jesus battled against in his life, ministry, and death. On the cross, God through Jesus looked sin and evil and death straight in the face and declared that these things would no longer separate God’s people from God’s love. 

Through the power of resurrection, Jesus won our victory over death, over evil, over sin once and for all. By the cross, we have become conquerors. Nothing will ever separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus!

Not the sword of the tongue, the thoughtless speech of gossip that hurts like a swift stab to our hearts.

Not the peril of sexism, when women are physically assaulted or verbally abused, called nasty names by loved ones, colleagues, strangers.

Not the persecution of racism or bigotry.

Not the distress of being separated from one another as we wait for deliverance from the coronavirus.

Not even the hardship of facing our worst enemy—our self—and the lies that we tell ourselves that convince us that we are not worthy of love and that we’ll never truly experience or know God’s love.

No, it’s over these things and more that Paul says “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Through the love of Christ, we will never be separated from God, despite the way we feel or how the world might try to convince us otherwise. If God is for us, who can be against us?

Prayer is one of the faith practices that helps us feel this inseparable connection to God. It’s like a carabiner. Many times, you will see carabiners on rope course or zip lines or rock climbing, keeping people hooked into safety. Or campers and hikers will use carabiners to keep up with something they don’t want to lose, like a water bottle. The carabiner keeps the important item from being separated, from being lost.

Prayer is the carabiner that keeps us plugged in to God’s unending love. Too often, we separate ourselves from prayer because we aren’t sure we are doing it right or we feel self-conscious when we try. But a life of prayer, a life plugged into God’s love for us, is so much more than of grace you say before you eat a meal. Prayer is so much more than bowing your head and closing your eyes and folding your hands. Prayer is so much more than giving God 15 minutes of your time each day spent in quiet. Even though all of these things are important to prayer, they in and of themselves are not what it takes to live a life of prayer.

A life of prayer is just that…it’s life. All of life! To be praying constantly as the Scriptures teach us doesn’t mean we are mumbling prayer words under our breath all the time. It looks more like offering the jumble of feelings, worries, and doubts of our inner thoughts to God throughout the day and blessing them with an “Amen.”

A life of prayer is living in constant awareness of the presence of God in all things, the presence of God seeking to work all things in our lives together for good. To live life as a prayer is to invite the presence of God into your everyday moments, to clip it like a carabiner to your heart. A life of prayer trusts the presence of God will find us through the Spirit even when we forget to kneel and pray. Because nothing,

not death, not life,

not angels, not rulers,

not present things, not future things,

not powers, not height, not depth,

not coronavirus,

not the stories we tell ourselves about our unworthiness,

not our worries, not our doubts,

not our prayer lives or lack thereof,

not a single thing will be able to separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Thanks be to God! Amen.