Romans 8:28-30 • Perseverance
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
For now, let me ask that you would look in your Bibles at Romans chapter 8, Romans chapter 8. We're in Romans 8 all the way until Christmas, and that continues now to put us right in the middle with words that we love and are familiar to us. All things work together for good for those who love the Lord and recall according to His purpose. All things, all things, really?
All things.
We saw last week because of the work of the Holy Spirit in us and through us and even beyond us in our prayers, the Lord is working all things together for good.
The consequences are so powerful that they're rather strong in our ears to hear. We struggle at times to understand and to wrap our arms around all the implications of what it would mean for the Spirit to work in and through us to accomplish all things for good. So, as we read today, I'll ask you to stand as we honor God's Word, and we'll look at verses 28 through 30, taking in all that the Spirit is doing in, through, and beyond us.
Paul writes in Romans 8, 28, "And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose.
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.
And those whom He predestined, He also called, and those whom He called, He also justified, and those whom He justified, He also glorified." Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, You set before us in Your Word a sovereign image of who You are that is beyond our thought. We declare the mysteries of our God beyond our ultimate comprehension, but given in Your Word out of compassion so that we might have assurance of Your care. So help us to discern Your intent by Your Holy Spirit. Open our hearts to receive the Word that He has given that we might honor You and receive the glory that You intend by Jesus working in our lives. So we pray to You in Jesus' name. Amen.
Please be seated.
If you weary of the need to buy a lot of batteries for the gifts that you are preparing for children and grandchildren this coming Christmas, then you're really going to identify with the nation of Australia that just built the world's largest battery for only $200
million.
Built by Tesla, the electric car company. The battery is built for a country that actually has about 40 percent of its power already supplied by renewable sources, wind and wave and sun.
And because so much of its power comes from those renewable sources, you might say, "Well, why would they spend so much on a battery?"
Because sometimes the wind doesn't blow.
Sometimes the sun doesn't shine. And sometimes the sea is calm. And so they built this amazing battery that can provide at least for a time power for 30,000 homes at once. Amazing.
Why do you need that battery?
Because the natural forces can vary. And you need a constant power to compensate. Not unlike us. After all, we rejoice to read earlier in Romans chapter 8 that the Holy Spirit is evidencing Himself in us by new desires and new deeds and powerful prayer.
But what happens when our desires waver and our deeds fail and our prayers are neglected?
What happens then?
The answer from Scripture and the answer of our passage is the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. There is a persevering love of God that is giving us confidence, assurance of His work in our lives, even where we recognize the weakness and the variety of the affections of our own hearts.
And actually that message that the Apostle is building as he begins to help us understand how God is providing that constant love when and where we need it. That assurance first comes from a lesson in not tying.
I'm a fisherman, so I take lessons in not tying every now and then, but this isn't about fishing. This is about God's assurance. And the not tying lesson is in verse 29.
Where the Apostle writes of God for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son in order that he, that is Jesus, might be the firstborn among many brothers.
God knew us before our time. God foreknows us.
Just to think about what that is, you can think of God's Word to Jeremiah where he says in that very first chapter, "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." That's foreknowledge.
You might think how it's expressed in other places in the Bible as well. The psalmist writes, "God's eyes saw my unformed body, and all the days ordained for me before one of them came to be."
God perceives us before we're even born, and he knows all the days ordained for us before even one of them came to be. Why is that? Because we know the words of Isaiah, because God knows the end from the beginning.
That's part of what makes him God. For us, you know, when we think of a map, we think of it only describing spatial dimensions.
But time itself is laid out as a map before God so that God is able to see the end from the beginning.
And knowing that as we begin to perceive our lives, where they are on whatever highway we are traveling in life, you recognize God is saying, "I knew ahead of time you would be on that highway." And by the way, I know the destination too.
God foreknows, He foreordains. He doesn't look at the map and kind of go, "Oh, I didn't know that was going to happen. Whoops!"
God is saying, "It's all before me." And His knowledge of us and our lives ahead of time is actually being directed for an eternal good. He tells us what that eternal good is. He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that He might be the first born among many brothers in that plan that God is working not only before time but beyond time. He is engaging us for all time. He is saying, "I want Jesus to be your older brother.
I want Him to be the first born among many siblings. And the great plan of God for those who love Him is that He who knew us ahead of time and knows the destination of our journey would say, "Here's what I mean to happen at the end. I mean to have a really, really big family at the household in my table celebration at the end of all time. And Jesus will be the older brother, and I want this to be a grand and glorious celebration that I knew was coming from the very beginning."
Now I just tried to express that very pleasantly.
And yet what I know is once you start using in church circles the words "for knowledge" and "predestination," people are starting to take out their boxing gloves, right?
What do you mean by that?
Right? And we're getting ready to say, "Wait, wait, are you saying that I don't have any free will?
And how do I say this to you?" That's not what Paul's talking about here. We're ready to get in an argument about human liberty, and what Paul is discussing is an assurance in the face of human frailty. We have to take the subjects of the Bible according to the purpose in which they are being discussed. I mean, after all, you don't talk about the wrath of God when you're putting your children to bed. I hope you don't.
And you don't talk about gentle Jesus meek and mild when you're trying to gather the people of God to war against evil.
You recognize there are subjects for their purposes, and you will misuse Scripture if you don't take that subject for the purpose that it's being addressed at that particular time. What is Paul addressing here? He is addressing the reality that we recognize the vagaries and the varieties and the weaknesses in our own heart's life's behavior, and he is saying, "God is going to work beyond that. God is tying a knot from heaven itself, from before time beyond time, in which He is uniting you to Himself so that Jesus will have many siblings at the end of time." And he's saying that knot, because it's tied by God, is so secure. You don't have to worry about that knot even if you mess up. It's the assurance argument that's being made here. I think of it in terms of my family when my children were growing up. A lot of summers we went to the same camp in Colorado.
And in that camp there was a nature trail that had various trees and flowers marked, and one of the trees early on the nature trail was called a limber pine.
Its branches are so limber that you can tie knots in the branches.
And as you start down that nature trail, many people had tied knots in the branches. So much so that for my children to have the privilege of tying knots in the branches,
they had to untie the branch first.
Now they were too small, so I would lift them up to the lower branches, and they would untie the knot. Imagine that the knot that they had to untie was not in the lower branches.
Imagine that the knot was at the top of the tree.
Imagine that the knot was at the top of the mountain.
Imagine that the knot was in heaven.
You would say they can't undo that knot.
And that is the point.
We recognize that we approach God at times and say, "God, it's even the Christmas season, and I want my heart to be warm and affectionate to you, but I'm so busy, and I'm so cold, or my family's in such stress, I can't feel anything.
Are you still there? Do you still care about me? When my heart is cold, is your heart still warm?" And God is saying, "I tied the knot."
And you're not untying it by your affections, by your weaknesses, by your doubts even. I tied the knot, and for that reason I want you to know that it is secure. And we need to remember that, not just in the season, but how many times in life do we wonder, "God, I just failed you. I just didn't do what I wanted to do.
Maybe my family's not what it's supposed to be. Maybe I have regrets that are deep down. And I wonder, do you care anymore for me?"
And I think of a song that lots of us learned to sing long ago, "None Other Lamb."
My hope burns low.
My faith burns low.
Only my heart's desire cries out in me.
And God is reminding us even from this passage, if your heart is crying out to him, then you are no longer hostile to him. And the mere fact that you're worried about your coldness, you're worried about his distance, is the evidence that your heart is still yearning for him, and that is the evidence of the Holy Spirit in you. And that deep down yearning of the heart that still cries out to God is God saying, "I did that.
That's me. That's my spirit working in you." And because of that, you can trust that I still love you.
I tied your heart to my heart, and you're not going to untie it because I tied it.
God does not only give us a lesson in not tying in this particular passage, he gives us a lesson in dominoes. The lesson in dominoes is verse 30. It's flowing out of that understanding of what God has done. Verse 30 says, "Those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified." Now I will confess to you, in this moment I do not remember how to play dominoes.
But I do know how to play with dominoes. You know what you do, right? You line them up, one after another, in whatever design you're trying to make, and then you want to just tip one, right? And when you tip one, what happens? Everything falls in the design that you intended.
The dominoes of divine love that God is lining up here are a little hard on our sensibilities, but you get it. Those whom he predestined, he also called.
God predestines his people. Now there's mystery here. We don't understand the entirety of it, we just have to confess that. But you get the gist of it. He has a plan from eternity past, because he foreknew, to eternity future, because he has a destiny that he intends for his people. God has a plan from eternity past to eternity future, and God acts on that plan. After all those he predestined, he also called. He works by his Spirit in our hearts to convict of sin and to convince of grace.
At some point, as that Holy Spirit is working in you, you begin to say, "Lord, I recognize you would have every just cause for wrath against me. I've not lived to your glory, I've heard other people, I've lived selfishly. My life is not even what I want it to be. There is conviction of sin, but that's not the end of the calling of God." You begin to say, "And God, I can't fix this. I don't have it in me to make it right. I need your help." And then he begins to reveal by his Holy Spirit that work of his Son who took the penalty for our sin upon the cross. And as we put our faith in him, we repent of our sins and say, "God, you have to make it right because I cannot." We become convicted of sin and convinced of grace as God is acting on his plan by the work of the Holy Spirit. And then God not only acts on the plan, he works his plan in our lives. Those he called, he also justified. There's a big word.
He executes justice and declares just. How does he execute justice?
He reminds us over and over again in his word that it is a moral universe that while people may live apart from him, evil and injustice may pervade this broken world, that ultimately there is a balancing of the scales. God will judge evil and sin. And so he says, as any just judge would, when you go to court, when there's been evil done to you or to your family, a just judge does not say, "Oh, it doesn't matter.
Don't worry about it. It's fine." You say, "No, we need justice here." And God says, "I will execute justice. There will be a penalty for sin." But at the very same moment, the just judge is merciful and he says, "I will allow you to by faith put the penalty for your sin on my son. He after all paid that penalty upon the cross and as you look to him in faith, then the sin that was on you is put on Jesus and the righteousness that Jesus had is put on you." So that God not only executes justice, he declares those who put their faith in Jesus Christ just made right with himself. God justifies. And even that's not the end of the story. God who is working his plan ultimately completes his plan and we're told those that he just divided also glorified. Now here's a strangeness in the Bible.
Glorified is put in the past tense.
But our glorification when we are with Christ in absolute glory is still future. Remember what will happen? We who have been made perfect spiritually, we will have our bodies made perfect put in a perfect world with a perfect relationship with God forever.
But it's so sure, it's so certain for those in whom God is working that he actually puts it in the past tense. Those that God justified, he also glorified. As if to say it's a done deal. And that's part of the dominoes falling as though God is saying, "When I start the process, I'm going to bring it to completion." Some of you will recognize the words of Philippians 1.6 right there. He who has begun a good work in you will do what?
Bring it to completion. How does Jesus express that? Think of it this way.
All that the Father gives me will come to me. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand.
The dominoes have fallen.
Not only does Jesus talk that way, if you look in this very passage, you will see that the Apostle Paul is talking this way too, that there is this completed process. Now to sense the dominoes and their full effect, I'm going to ask you to look at verse 30 again with me and just let me read it to you to make the impression.
And those whom God predestined, some of them He also called.
And those whom He called, some of them He also justified.
And those whom He justified, some of them He also glorified. Is that what it says?
It does not say that.
He who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion. Those who God has given to Christ, He says, no one is going to snatch them out of my Father's hand. Why? Because He's greater than all. He tied the knot. It's His work. It's that saving work of God. And the way it's expressed in this passage, look at verses 38 and 39, is where the Apostle takes all the alternatives he can think of, of what would undo the knot, undo the relationship, keep the dominoes from all falling. He says, "For I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." He scans the horizon. What can I think of? Is it something in the world? Is it something in the spiritual world? Is it demons? Is it heavenly powers? Is it matters of natural phenomena? Is it death itself? Is that going to untie the knot? Is that going to undo the dominoes from all? He says, "No, for I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers, things present, things to come, height, depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." You are secure. We say, "God, I failed you." He said, "I'm not going to fail you. God, I lost my grip. I didn't lose my grip.
You are mine. I gave my son for you. I knew you before you were born. I had a plan for you. I was working the plan. As you committed your heart to me, I committed my eternity to you, and you are not going to undo that plan.
Now I mean for that to be assurance to you, but we have a big problem.
And the big problem is what's not in the list of verses 38 and 39. And if you think of that, I mean, what's not in the list? There's so many things of the natural world, the supernatural world, the present, the future, life, death, what's not in the list? None of those things can separate us from the love of God. What's not on the list?
Sin.
Personal sin.
And I recognize even as it happened after the first service day, there were people like, "Wait a second. What about that unforgivable sin?
What about that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit that Jesus said, "Everything else will be forgiven, but not that?"
Well, we're not dealing with all that today, but let me just go this far. I want you to remember from John 15 what the role of the Holy Spirit is in the universe.
The role of the Holy Spirit, John 15, Jesus says, "The Spirit will testify of me," says Jesus.
To reject the Holy Spirit, to say what the Holy Spirit is doing is wrong and false, is to reject Jesus. It's to reject the testimony of the Holy Spirit. That's not different than what you would automatically think. To reject Jesus is to be in spiritual danger. That's always the case. And that's what that sin against the Holy Spirit is, to reject the testimony of the Holy Spirit. But at the same time, you say, "Well, but what about personal sin?
It's not on the list here."
Actually, I think it is.
And the place that God is talking about everything, including personal sin, not undoing His plan,
is with the greatest expression of tough love in the Bible, verse 28.
I already read it. Do you remember? And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. What is the tough love? God is saying everything is being worked together for the good of His people. Now, He didn't say everything feels good.
He didn't say everything seems good. He didn't say everything we're going to be able to figure out in this life how it works for good. But He is saying there is an ultimate good that God is accomplishing by His purposes in the earth. He's already said what that good is. So that ultimately His people would be conformed to the image of Christ, and Christ's family would be enlarged. He would be the first of many brothers.
How does that assure us that even in the face of our sin and failure and weakness, that God wants us to know that we are secure in Him?
Now let me just tell you, in the history of the church, this goes by different names. Some of you are already, you know, thumbing through your Bibles looking. Some people call this eternal security. Some people call it the perseverance of the saints. Some simply call it the perseverance of God for His people. God is maintaining His love even in the face of our frailty. What is the greatest evidence of that? I think it's actually thinking carefully through Romans 8.28, "All things work together for good." Now I confess, sometimes in the church we use that verse like a Christian two-by-four, right?
"Oh, you've had a terrible tragedy in your life. Oh, you're really hurting. Well, all things work together for good."
Oh, well, thanks. That makes me feel better, you know, kind of like...
No, not the point.
All things work together for good in bringing about God's loving and eternal purposes, His ultimate good for His people. What does that mean? If you could think of it this way, God knows the end from the beginning. He knew you before you were in your mother's womb. He at the same time knows all the days ordained for you before one of them came to be. If God knows all of that, just imagine, if you will, that in your life you're going down a highway and God knows as you're going down that highway that down the road there is this spiritual wreck where you are going to, if it were possible, reject God, sin so badly that heaven would no longer be in your future, that you would reject Christ so badly He would reject you. If God were to know you were traveling down a road where that terrible spiritual wreck that was going to destroy your eternity was going to happen, what would your eternal good require God to do before you got to that wreck? What would God require?
He's going to take you out. I'm sorry. He's going to take you up before you take yourself out. If your sin is going to be so bad, so awful, that if it were possible you were to take yourself out of eternal good, then God to be true to His Word would have to rescue you early by taking you home sooner than that wreck or else He's not working everything for good. For God to be true to His Word, you cannot draw one breath beyond ultimate belief. Now listen, we all struggle because we know the people who said this at one phase in their life and they're living somewhere else now. They may be our children. They may be our parents. They may be people that we know that seem like they were on the highway and now they're off like, "Listen, you don't know their hearts and I don't know their hearts.
And I don't know their destiny." I mean, how many people have we become aware of whom God has turned around by whatever crisis or weakness in their lives when they finally walk away long? What God is saying to us is, "Listen, you need to know that when you feel you have gone far away from God and no way that He could still love, you turn around and He's saying, "I'm right here.
I never lost sight of you and I never lost hold of you and I'm going to forgive you because I tied the knot that bound my heart to yours."
And that understanding of the greatness of God's love means that when we cry out to God and say, "God, there's this awful tragedy in my life and I'm the cause of it," that we know we can still go to Him and know that He will still love us. I think, I think of why it's so important we hear this as we deal particularly in the holiday season with the most wonderful and the most awful of family relationships.
And we have to pray for one another and we have to pray for those that we think have gone far. In the first service in the prayer time, I just asked the prayer team to pray for a family member of mine who I would have said early in life was the most sincere Christian in our family.
And because of things that happened at war, he felt he could not trust the Lord anymore.
I don't know ultimately his heart, but this is what I believe, that God who knit the heart of the Savior to that man, God, if it was genuine, if it was real, is not going to let Him go.
And there will be in that highway of life the turnaround, the work in his heart that maybe even he can't explain fully.
But the reason I need to know that and the reason you need to know that is the effect of such tough love.
If God is really going to say, "I will love you, you mess up, you call me names, you turn your back on me, I will not turn my back on you." What does that do to us? The effect of tough love is, number one, grateful love.
John Bunyan, the writer of Pilgrim's Progress, I've told you before.
His pastor believed in the doctrine called eternal security that we're talking about today. He also believed that the king of England should not determine who the pastors of local churches were. And so he was one of those people that you learned to spell in third grade, anti-disestablishmentarianism, right?
He was an anti-disestablishmentarian. He didn't believe the king should establish who the clergy was. He believed in eternal security. He's thrown in prison. Now he's thrown with other people, Christians believe in Christ, but they did not believe in eternal security. They also believed the king should not establish who the clergy was. So they're put in prison with Bunyan.
And because they are Christians all believing the work of Christ, even though they disagree theologically, what did they do together at night?
Yeah, you know, they debated theology, yeah.
And here's what those who did not believe in eternal security said to Bunyan, "You cannot keep assuring people of the love of God.
If you keep assuring people of the love of God, they will do whatever they want."
Bunyan's famous answer, "No.
If you keep assuring God's people of God's love, they will do whatever He wants."
There is a chemistry in the heart that says, "If He loves me that much, if He will not leave me, if He will not turn away, it is the magnet of the Spirit to my own heart to draw me in love to God." It is after all what Paul the Apostle would say, right? The love of God controls us. What ultimately controls you? What you love the most. And why would you love God? We love because He first loved us. Here is God saying with all the zeal so much that it actually puts us off a little bit, "I will love you. You mess up, you turn your back on. I will love you." Why? To turn us back, to turn us around, to make our hearts love Him. And while we recognize all the dangers, and people of course use the slogan to identify the dangers, "Once saved, always saved," which gets interpreted mean, "Once saved, always saved." So sin city, here I come.
No, they forget the rest of the verse. All things work together for good for those who love God.
The assurance isn't to someone who says, "Oh, once saved, always saved." So I'll just trample on the blood of Jesus and take advantage of God and dishonor His name, but I'm saved.
What evidence do you have of that?
The assurances are for those whose hearts grieve for their sin, who yearn for the Spirit to make them alive and well and whole again. For those persons, even though they recognize, "I have sinned, I have fallen, I am weak," God says, "But listen, you were never mine because you were strong and upright.
You were mine because of my love from the very beginning and my provision." Ultimately, we recognize that God talks about eternal security, this persevering love of God for His people because He is trying to create grateful love in us that is ultimately the power of obedience. Jesus said it, "If you love me, you'll keep my commands.
You want to please me, you want to walk with me. Well, we'll create that love." Knowledge that He loves us and He's not put off by our weakness is eternal security dangerous.
What's saved always? Is that dangerous? The answer is yes.
Sure it is. Will people take advantage of that? Will people use it to sin? Of course they will.
You know what's even more dangerous than eternal security?
Eternal insecurity.
Oh, my goodness, I messed up.
You'll hate me now.
You won't care for me anymore.
You will not return to that God.
Paul says it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance.
It is the knowledge of how great is His love that turns us around. If you simply believe that He is going to frown and whip you for your inability to be perfect, then I will tell you something. You may love...you may knuckle under. You may obey for a while. You will not love Him. Now, I'm just talking in a cultural context that a lot of you are going to know better than I, where you have come out of traditions or churches or families that taught you God will love you as long as you're good enough.
God will forgive you as long as you weep hard enough, say you're sorry enough times, and you really mean it, but if you don't, the ogre in the sky is going to get you. Now I will tell you something. You may obey that God. You will not love Him.
Why not?
Because the greatest commandment in Scripture, Jesus said, is you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And if the only reason you're serving God is out of eternal insecurity, you may try to stay on His good side, but you cannot ultimately love Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Eternal insecurity is actually more spiritually dangerous than eternal security, which means ultimately as we look at the Scriptures, we recognize there's mystery here, don't we folks? I mean, can't we just confess that? We don't have all the answers. I mean, after the first service, I...what about this? I don't know. We're at the end of some of our logic at times. But we say at the same moment, God has to tell me His love is greater than my love. His faithfulness is greater than my faithfulness. His perseverance is greater than my perseverance. Or I'm ultimately going to walk away in despair.
And so God is telling me how great His love is because He knows ultimately that is what will draw my heart in greatest obedience to Him.
One of you this week sent me the story of Angel Hatfield, the executive producer of the new film that is out because of Grazia.
She writes about the necessity of eternal security, not just its danger, with these words, "Driven by fear, I hid my pregnancy for five months.
I knew the shame and the guilt I carried would only amplify when others knew, and the condemnation was sure to come.
The day I finally mustered up the strength and courage and confided in my father, something extraordinary happened. My father's shoulders sagged. He hung his head.
He finally raised his head. He looked at me with tears in his eyes. "Honey," he said, "I am disappointed. I am.
Now it was time for me to hang my head."
But he continued, "You've made poor choices, and now you have to face the consequences. It won't be easy. It's a hard path ahead, but I love you.
And now I figure I've even gotten more to love."
She wrote, "Wait, what?"
But before she could respond more, her father got up from his chair, wrapped her in his arms and held her.
Was he approving? No, she said. But he was refusing to untie the knot of love and trusting its power to transform.
Angel who is now an adult and a Christian film producer writes, "Grace swept over me and unleashed its power, connecting both my head and my heart. I confess my sins.
I chartered a new course, fanned by the winds of grace and truth, spoken in profound love."
That's what we so pray for, that the truths of God's grace would ultimately make us chart a new course, that we would turn a different direction, not into sin, away from the sin that a following father would tell us hurts us. And instead be overwhelmed by a father love who would provide his son for those who actually caused the suffering of that son. How great is his love? And when I know how great is that love, it makes my heart go to him. We don't sing it much anymore. He binds me with the cords of love that nothing can sever. I am his and he is mine forever and forever.
When that is the truth of our hearts, it changes us. It gives us a zeal for him, not because we can do everything that's needed, but we trust him to do everything that's needed.
As our grandkids are here for Christmas, we reflect on the traditions of our family for Christmas. And one when our children were real little is that we would, days before Christmas, we had an Advent calendar and we would open the little doors on each date and read the Bible verse that was there. And the child who read the verse had the privilege of taking one of the figurines of our nativity scene and putting it up on the mantle in the proper place.
Now when our children were real little, they couldn't reach high enough.
They couldn't do what was required. And so what I would do was I would take them and hold them and lift them so they could do what was needed.
And they loved it.
So our hearts work.
When we recognize our incapacity, our weakness, our failures, and still know God holds us and lifts us to himself, then we love him. And the love of God controls us.
We love to serve him because he has so loved us.
Father, what a time to remember how great is the love of our God for us that he would give his own son and more than that would bind us with cords of love that nothing can sever so that we are yours and you are ours forever and forever.
Because it's the season it is, Father, we even now pray not only for our own hearts,
renewed affection because of how strong are those cords.
But we now pray for those who are in our families, our workplaces, some friends that may have walked away from you as far as we know.
We pray again that you would renew in them the knowledge of how great is your love for them.
And you, Father, who have loved them before time, planned for them beyond time, would use our witness, even these prayers, to turn them to yourself.
So work in them, I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.