[00:00:10] Well, hey, friends, welcome to Friday's edition of the Weekday podcast. It's been a joy to be with you all week long. If you ever have anything I can join you in praying for, drop me an
[email protected]. i'd be honored to join you in that prayer. Today we're going to wrap up the week with an idea that we need to stop striving and actually start receiving. Stop striving and start receiving. For the law of God. Here's what Romans 8:3.
[00:00:32] What the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh as an offering for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh.
[00:00:43] Now, a few years back, about six years ago, I had shoulder surgery going in. The doctor told me it was pretty straightforward. It's just a bone spur. Two weeks and a sling, I'd be good to go. But it turned out it wasn't that simple. When they got in there, they found a lot more expected tears, rotator cuff damage. What was supposed to be two weeks turned into 12. And those 12 weeks of physical therapy, well, they didn't feel like healing. They felt like the opposite, like someone was trying to break the thing that actually got fixed. Every session I thought, did this even work? Now I'm six years out of surgery and my shoulder feels great, like it never happened. But here's what I know for certain. What healed it wasn't Bobby trying harder. It wasn't me trying to muscle through the pain on willpower. What healed it was trusting a surgeon who knew exactly what he was dealing with and staying patient with the process that he started. And that's the picture I keep coming back to when I read verses like Romans 8:3. Paul says the law could not get us there, not because the law was bad, but because it depended entirely on us, and we kept breaking under the weight of it. So God did what we could never do. He sent his Son. Jesus kept every single requirement perfectly. Then he took every consequence that we deserved. And what he began in us when we said yes to him, he's still completing.
[00:01:57] This is the answer to the whole cycle we've been talking about this week. Not a new commitment, not more effort, not rededicating yourself at another altar with a better plan and more tears. The answer, really is to just stop.
[00:02:11] To stop.
[00:02:12] To stop and to receive and to quit trying to earn what's already been given. Quit trying to make up for the past. Quit hiding behind your version of a fig leaf. Quit running on willpower and wondering why you keep ending up in the same place.
[00:02:28] The surgeon who repaired my shoulders saw everything that was broken before he ever made the first cut. And he didn't walk away.
[00:02:35] God saw everything that was broken in you before he ever stepped into the operating room. And he didn't walk away either. He said, I know what this could be, and he has been working on it ever since. You do not have to earn his attention. You already have it. So stop striving. Start receiving.
[00:02:54] He's not done with you yet. What you couldn't earn, Jesus already paid for. So my encouragement going into the weekend is receive it. Have a great day and I hope to see you soon at Sugar Hill church or at live.sugarhill.com have a great day. We'll see you back here.
