Thursday, October 2, 2014

Overwhelmingly, In All These Things


Every now and then, I read something in the Word
and rearrange it mentally for emphasis,
or to try to grasp better what it is saying.
This morning it was out of Romans chapter 8.
What it says is this:

Who shall separate us from the love of the Christ? 
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, 
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 
(according as it hath been written--
`For Thy sake we are put to death all the day long, 
we were reckoned as sheep of slaughter,') 
but in all these we more than conquer, through him who loved us; 
for I am persuaded that neither death, 
nor life, nor messengers, nor principalities, 
nor powers, nor things present, 
nor things about to be, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, 
shall be able to separate us from the love of God, 
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I was reading a New American Standard this morning,
so it was a little different.
Not different in meaning, but different in words.
(As a side note: one of the remarkable things about the Living Word,
is that it lives in every language.
Translate it into the most lowborn language you can find,
and let the lowest common denominator of humanity read it and believe it,
and it will raise him up and transform him.)
Just to think a little more about what was being said to me, I rewrote it:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
In tribulation we overwhelmingly conquer.
In distress we overwhelmingly conquer.
In persecution we overwhelmingly conquer.
In famine we overwhelmingly conquer.
In nakedness we overwhelmingly conquer.
In peril we overwhelmingly conquer.
In the face of the sword we overwhelmingly conquer.
In being put to death all day long like sheep being slaughtered, 
we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
Nothing can separate us from His love.

It is a shocking, revolutionary doctrine, which I still wrestle with.
But there it is.

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