A Willingness To Share Our Possessions With

Every Day God Patiently Bears With Us, And Every Day We Are Tempted To Become Impatient With Our Friends, Neighbors, And Loved Ones. And Our Faults And Failures Before God Are So Much More Serious Than The Petty Actions Of Others That Tend To Irritate Us! God Calls Us To Graciously Bear With The Weaknesses Of Others, Tolerating Them And Forgiving Them Even As He Has Forgiven Us.

To Derive The Fullest Comfort And Encouragement From Romans 8:28 We Must Realize That God Is At Work In A Proactive, Not Reactive, Fashion. That Is, God Does Not Just Respond To An Adversity In Our Lives To Make The Best Of A Bad Situation. He Knows Before He Initiates Or Permits The Adversity Exactly How He Will Use It For Our Good.

Legalism Insists On Conformity To Manmade Religious Rules And Requirements, Which Are Often Unspoken But Are Nevertheless Very Real... There Are Far Too Many Instances Within Christendom Where Our Traditions And Rules Are, In Practice, More Important Than God's Commands.

In Order To Trust God, We Must Always View Our Adverse Circumstances Through The Eyes Of Faith, Not Of Sense. And Just As The Faith Of Salvation Comes Through Hearing The Message Of The Gospel (romans 10:17), So The Faith To Trust God In Adversity Comes Through The Word Of God Alone. It Is Only In The Scriptures That We Find An Adequate View Of God's Relationship To And Involvement In Our Painful Circumstances. It Is Only From The Scriptures, Applied To Our Hearts By The Holy Spirit, That We Receive The Grace To Trust God In Adversity.

The Gospel Is Not Only The Most Important Message In All Of History; It Is The Only Essential Message In All Of History.