The end of Romans 8 has been important to me for many years

My Bible: reasons to believe in the power of the Bible

‘The end of Romans 8 has been important to me for many years. It's the reading we had at our wedding almost 35 years ago, and I hadn't realised at the time just how that would sustain me for the future. Paul reminds us that there'll be tough times. But those final verses are really significant: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution ...?” No, he says: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (verses 35, 37, NIV).

‘At the lowest points of my life I've seen God's faithfulness, and I've known his love and leading – in married life, in family life, through my own call and my wife's call to ordained ministry. 

‘Before I was ordained, there was a time when it felt as though all the doors were closing and we didn't know why. What evolved out of that a year or so later was my own call to ordained ministry. It felt like an oppressive time, but actually God was leading me through his faithfulness. 

‘Before I came here, I knew I had to leave my previous church. There was a sense of the unknown, quite a long period where the end was in sight but there was no new beginning. It meant just holding on to God's promises and knowing that, as Paul says, he is for us, not against us. 

‘Things like that have given me a longer-term perspective. In this passage Paul writes that in all things “God works for the good of those who love him”, but that doesn't mean those things come about today or tomorrow. When we look at the sweep of biblical history, we see that sometimes God's promises took hundreds of years before they were fulfilled. 

‘That's not terribly helpful in the short term! But what I have learned personally is that sometimes God does take time. It's only as we look back that we see that those things that felt quite difficult for a season have been used for his glory. And there's that sense that he doesn't let go of us – that in all these things that might come against us, he is still stronger.’

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