Overwhelming Victory - It Is Yours. This Is Your Promise Today!

Well hey hey, hello to you today. Welcome to this episode of The Burt (Not Ernie) Show - a podcast with the singular focus of deep diving into every big and every little thing which God has promised to us in His word. We open the pages of the Bible, read what’s written there, discuss it and then we choose to believe that 

 what it says is there for us. Right now, today.

Because God’s promises are for His people, and we want to grab hold of everything that He has promised us.

 

I’m your host, Jan L. Burt, and you’re listening to The Burt (Not Ernie) Show podcast, part of the Spark Network, now playing on the Edifi app. This is episode 99.

 

So, it’s sort of a big episode today. It’s like the closer for the series on Romans chapter 8, and anytime we wrap up one thing we’ve been working on, we should try and do it well. The ending of one thing is also the beginning of something else, and so it stands to reason that how one thing ends is how the next thing begins. 

 

Ending on a sour note usually means we start the next thing with a sour taste in our mouths. So let’s work to end this series well. Paul had this fantastic way of ending his letters on a high note, and while Romans chapter 8 doesn’t mark the end of the book of Romans, it is a transition into chapter 9, so it’s like a mini-ending, of sorts. 

 

Romans 8, verses 37, 38, and 39 - I’m going to read from the Amplified -  Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors and gain an overwhelming victory through Him who loved us [so much that He died for us].  For I am convinced [and continue to be convinced—beyond any doubt] that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present and threatening, nor things to come, nor powers,  nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the [unlimited] love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

And from the New Living Translation -  No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[p] neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.  No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

This sounds like a great way to end this chapter. Talk about ending on a high note! 

 

Verse 35 talks about all these things that are completely unable to separate us from God’s love. Things that we face on the regular & things we face less often - things like calamity (we’ve seen a whole lot of that the last couple of years), hunger, destitution, danger, persecution. These things are the painful things in life, and Paul lists them here for that reason. Because they are on the extreme end of the hard stuff of life. There are a lot of things not on this list, and those things are still difficult, still hard for us and hard on us and hard on the people that we love and care about and do life with. But he hits on the worst case scenario because he really, really wants us to understand that even these things, even the very tippy-top pinnacle of the hard stuff cannot, cannot, absolutely cannot separate us from Christ’s love.

 

That’s the springboard that launches us into verses 37-39. 

Yet in all these things, and all really does mean all by definition, it does not mean some, so be aware that in your mind, in your thinking, it is possible to kind of switch out all for some or most… you have probably experienced this, where you don’t outright disbelieve something God’s word says, but you may categorize it, thinkin