God Is for Us

 February 3, 2024

Saturday

Romans 8:31 (NASB 2020) 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

Many of us can say, “I know some people who are against me.” Yes, but that isn’t what this scripture means. There are those against us but they will not prevail.

Is God for us in everything? Does God aid us in our sinning? Of course not! God is for us by disciplining us when we sin. God is for us by allowing us to fail. God is for us when everything goes wrong. Three verses before this one we learned that God works everything for our good. This certainly doesn’t mean that everything is good nor that everything that happens to us is good.

This book also asks if we should sin more so that we can see more grace. The answer is clearly that we shouldn’t. There are consequences for sin. We must endure those consequences. They may look as if God isn’t for us. But God still is. Consequences help us remember not to do what caused those consequences again. They will help us walk with God. They often drive us to seek His presence.

Even while serving in churches, I have not always walked closely with God. I have done what Joshua did when he didn’t seek the Lord before he made a treaty with the Gibeonites. Just as God’s people faced the consequences of that decision, I have faced the consequences of not seeking the Lord. God let me make these bad decisions and face the consequences because He was always for me. He gave me a testimony of His grace and forgiveness. That didn’t mean that the consequence were fun. They were as strong as I needed to remember the bad decisions I made without seeking the Lord.

So, no one nor anything can make God go against us. He is for us when we  obey Him and He is still for us when we don’t. We learned to walk by falling. Falling caused us to strive to stay on our feet. We learned to walk with God by the consequences when we disobey. They cause us to try to walk closer and closer to Him.

We don’t need to see only good things happening to us today to know that God is for us. He is always for us through the good and the bad.