What Are You Praying For? | Freedom From and Freedom For

Do you ever feel like you are trying to be good enough but falling short? Do you wonder if your relationship with God depends on how well you perform? Are you tired of the pressure to get everything right? What if there is a different kind of freedom waiting for you?
 
 In Romans 7, we see that Jesus offers something deeper than religious effort. He meets us in our struggle and gives us a new way to live. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus frees you from the exhausting cycle of trying to earn God’s love. The gospel is good news because it tells you that Jesus has already done what you could never do, and that truth becomes a foundation that steadies our souls when we feel stuck or discouraged.
 
 You are invited into a new relationship with God, one marked by love instead of pressure and freedom instead of fear. When you belong to Jesus, you are no longer defined by your failures or your striving. You are set free to live with purpose, to love others, and to grow in a life shaped by his Spirit. This is the freedom from sin and the freedom for a life that truly matters.
 
 Scripture: Romans 7:4 to 6
 “You also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead.” Romans 7:4
 “We have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit.” Romans 7:6
 
 Belong at First Pres by taking the first step: join us for worship on Sundays in person. https://firstprescos.org/belong

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the First Preds Sermon Podcast, where each week we dive into Scripture, wrestle with truth, and discover how faith intersects our lives. God's word meets us where we are, challenging, shaping, and calling us into something greater. No matter where you are on your journey, you belong here. And we're praying that this sermon might help you take a next step in faith towards Jesus. Hey, let's dive into today's message together.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

So good to be together here worshiping the Lord. There's so much going on in the life of the church. Three uh two weeks ago we had Easter here. We you hosted 3,400 people for Easter. If you were part of it, did you anybody volunteered? If you did anything, hosted, would you put your hand in the air? You volunteered, you brought a cookie, you brought something, you did something. Thank you. Praise, thank you for being part of that. Um that is a witness to the resurrection in our city. And last week we had a baptism service. 18 people were baptized, they're giving their life to Christ, baptized for the first time. 12 people rededicated their lives to Christ. 30 people came through the baptismal waters last weekend in the afternoon. We just praise God for that. And that's a lives are being transformed as we share the gospel, and Jesus is at work here. And Jesus has been at work here breaching people with his gospel and transforming lives for 152 years. And before we dip into uh the gospel today, there's the scripture today, we want to take a minute to celebrate because 152 years for 31 of those years, for 31 of those years, there's been a man quietly at work who's been here serving as an associate pastor, a minister of word and sacrament, where he has served this church. He has served this church against a promise that we make. You know, we never say you're not gonna hurt. Life is gonna hurt. But what we say is if you're part of the church, if you link in with us, you let us know what's going on. No one hurts alone. And there's someone who's been keeping that promise and helping us to keep that promise. And we're celebrating this weekend. Uh, he's here with his family. And uh, so we have uh kids that grew up in this church. Uh we've got Suzanne, we've got Matthew, who grew up in their lives in this church and grew up to love and serve the Lord. And we've got Deborah here celebrating uh this retirement season coming, who has been walking with this man all those years in support and love and care and in her own ministry and her own places of influence. And so uh we're pausing to just give thanks because this is uh a retirement day today, officially, and we're giving thanks for 31 years of faithful ministry of Reverend Dr. John Goodell.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

The love that I've received these recent weeks as this season is coming to a close, but even more than that, all of the memories that I have here of ministry shared, of seasons experienced together, of seeing what God has done in this great, great church. And uh I, as I mentioned in my sermon last Sunday, the deep, deep meaning that I have gotten to experience as your pastor. Uh somebody uh yesterday at the celebration mentioned, you know, I was in the same job for 35 years, and they didn't do this for me. I must have been in the wrong job. And my response was, you were in the wrong church. Uh this church is so full of love and graciousness. Keep loving each other in every way, and uh just know that as I retire, it's with a heart that is just overflowing with gratitude. Uh thank you all very much. Love you very much.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Amen. Amen. Lord, thank you for calling John and Deborah to be here with us to share with this family and ministry. Thank you for Matthew and Suzanne. We thank you, Lord, that you've sustained them all these years. Thank you for John's ministry and singles and uh divorce recovery, grief recovery, caring ministry, deacons, all the ways that he poured himself out. We thank Jesus. We think we're we're talking about 550 or more memorial services. That you placed this man right in that place of need where hearts were open and grieving, and through him you showed people Jesus. We're so grateful. Would you bless and sustain him, the good ale family, as they step into this next chapter of life and all that you're calling them toward, let them look back with grace and with joy at all the mighty works of God that they can see in their train and bless them for their future. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Bless you, brother. Yep. Well done. Come please. Open your Bibles at Romans 7, church. We're continuing in the series in Romans, and I'm gonna read for us from Romans 7, uh, 1 through 14. So hear now the word of the Lord. And I do encourage you, open your Bibles. This is a tough passage. Open your Bibles, it's only gonna help you. Do you not know, brothers and sisters, from speaking to those who know the law, that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives? For example, by law, a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him. So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man. So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law, so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code. What shall we say then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not. Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law, for I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, You shall not covet, but sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. Once I was alive apart from the law. But when the commandment came, sin sprang to life, and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then the law is holy. And the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. Did that which is good then become death to me? By no means. Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. We know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. What are you praying for? Never end a sentence with a preposition.

unknown 8:33

Right?

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Grammar police? What are you praying for? Freedom from, freedom for. We're starting a new series, starting a new series. We're continuing in Romans. We're doing every passage of Romans, even the ones that are difficult to understand. We're doing every passage of Romans. But in this next little chapter, we're going to be focusing on prayer. Focusing on prayer. What are you praying for? We started, as Pastor Ellen talked about, 40 days of prayer, a journey together. And I hope you'll jump in. You can get daily texts to remind you to pray, scripture to remind you to pray. There's going to be prayer walks around the city. There's going to be prayer gatherings here in the church. And we're asking you to take Fridays during this season and to approach God with a different kind of intensity. Which may even include, we want to invite you, which may even include fasting. Setting something apart for the sake of something else. First thing we think about with fasting is fasting from food. If we set apart food, then sometimes that makes us hungry for the spiritual things. I myself, I've been praying for a deeper spiritual hunger. A hunger in me and in us as a church, a hunger for the things of Christ. Well, when you put aside uh the material food, sometimes that makes you spiritually hungry. But there might be other things that you set aside. What about your phone? Oh boy. Amen. What if you took that phone? I want you to imagine this. Imagine taking that phone and for 24 hours turning it off. Did you know it can be turned off? I bet you didn't know that. You have to look on your phone to figure out how do I turn it off, right? Imagine even 12 hours. Do you know 12 hours of your phone being off? You know what happened to you? You'd see the world differently. What if you had 24 hours of no screens, nothing glowing in your face at all? 24 hours. Can you imagine that? So we want to invite you into some spiritual practices to grow deeper with the Lord, to get closer to Jesus, to grow in your hunger for Him, and fasting on Fridays can be a part of that. You want to set something down in order to receive something else. You want to get, as we're talking about today, some freedom from so that you can gain some freedom for. You need to have empty hands to receive the gifts of God. You set something down for the sake of something else. In a time when there's war and uncertainty, we wonder about what to say about current events, and leaders, we're all asking, what will you say? But more important than asking, what will you say is this question. How will we pray? What are you praying for? And some would say, Why are we doing this now after Easter? Why didn't we do this, you know, for Lent? We've got Lent. Yes, there's a season of preparation for Easter called Lent, 40 days where we're preparing for Easter, and then we have Easter, and now we're in a different season of the church. It's called Easter tide. And it's the season between the resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. And what is Easter tide about? You know what it's about? It's about the people of God learning how to live out the implications of the resurrection of Jesus. The tomb is empty, Jesus is not dead, he is risen from the grave, he has conquered sin and death, and he has opened up the kingdom of heaven. Now what? Who are we now? How do we live? What are we going to do? Well, this is what we're going to do. We need to learn to be resurrection people, living out the implications of the resurrection. Those who believe that the resurrection of Jesus makes all the difference that there is. That's how. That's what. That's who. Resurrection people. The scholar N. T. Wright wrote: the point of the resurrection is that the present bodily life, the life we're living, is not valueless just because it will die. What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it. What you do in the present by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, eating for the uh caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself, will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly. He's a British scholar. You hear that? A little less beastly, a little more bearable until the day when we leave it behind altogether, they are part of what we may call, these things that we do, they are part of what we may call building for the kingdom of God. Resurrection people. What if we unleashed a couple thousand resurrection people into our city of Colorado Springs in these next 40 days? People who are steady on Christ, founded in his grace, and sure that his kingdom is on the way. That's the series. That's what I'm inviting you into. What are you praying for? Today, Romans 7. Do you like that passage? How about that passage? Whew. Let's get into it, okay? Because this passage, what this passage is going to demonstrate for us, what this passage is going to invite you into is there's an exchange that needs to be made. You need to move from a relationship to the law, a marriage to the law, a marriage to earning your righteousness before God. You need to exchange that for freedom in Christ. You need freedom from, so that you can gain freedom for. You need an exchange. Now, it's compared to a marriage, isn't it? Or actually, it's actually if you if you if you caught this, it's compared to like a first marriage and a second marriage. So look at this, verse two. For example, by law, a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he's alive. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him. Death releases the bonds of marriage. We say at the altar, till death do us part. So he's it's like he's saying, this is like a marriage, a marriage where the the now that because one of the persons has died, that that binding law isn't there anymore. And what Romans is saying, you need to think about that as kind of like your relationship with the law. You were bound to the law. You were bound to this relationship where you had to try, try, try, try, try, and never satisfy what was required of you. The big question today, really, folks, is this what is a Christian? What is a Christian? What is a Christian? Is a Christian somebody who knows what God wants, knows what God demands, and is always able to keep up with it? Is a Christian someone that understands the law and is able to keep their life right on track with it? Is a Christian someone who's just more religious than everybody else, doing it a little better than their neighbor? Is that a Christian? What Paul says is, look, that's that's that first marriage. A Christian is something else. And if we don't know that, if we don't know how to live into that, here's the thing. Even as those living in grace will fall back into that first marriage again and again, we'll think in our own minds, I think I need to please my way out of this, I think I need to earn my way out of this, I think I need to get back in that first marriage with the law. Being a Christian is different from being religious in that way, bound to religion. The gospel is an announcement of freedom. Freedom. So Paul uses this illustration of marriage. I want to just go right into that. He the scripture chose that for us. Let's go right into that. So imagine. Just imagine that you're in a marriage. Like a first marriage, because it's not going well, this marriage. So imagine you're in a marriage, and whatever you do, you cannot please the desires and the needs and the expectations of your partner. I mean, you just you try and try, but you cannot meet the measure that they say they need. You cannot meet them where they say, this is what I'm expecting out of this relationship, no matter how much you try. And so how does that make you feel? Well, it doesn't make you feel, it doesn't make you feel like wanting to give them what they want, does it? You don't, you feel uh inadequate, uh, you feel uh incapable, uh, and you don't feel like giving them what they want, you just feel bad. What does that marriage need? That marriage needs a total reset. That marriage needs to go all the way back to the starting line, and the two of them need to go all the way back to the very beginning and make this marriage a competition, but not a competition of who can get more from the other, but a competition of what? Who can serve the other? Who can outdo the other in love? Who can give themselves away more? Now, if they go back and do that, see, wives, give yourselves away to your husband, like a church that loves to serve Jesus. Husbands, give yourselves away to your wives, like Jesus who poured his body and blood out on the cross for the sake of the church. So you got to go back to that place and reset. But if you're stuck in that marriage, what Romans is saying is that that's like that's like a relationship with the law. Where you try, try, try, and you can never please the standard. Probably most of us started out that way in our religious life. When we started thinking, I think I want to please God, I think I want to be in a relationship with God, I think I want to get more religious, I think I want to get more spirituality. From the first time that you have a consciousness that there's a God in heaven, you want to start to please that God. You want to try to make that God feel good about you. You want to earn your way into that God's love by what? Through your behavior, through your patterns of behavior. You find out what they want. You say, this is what God wants. I'm gonna do that, and when I do that, God's got to give me what I want because I've done what he wants, and so now I'm gonna get what I want. And so you you try to wrench God's arm behind him and say, if I do this, you've got to do that. It's the first thing that we think of. It's probably where you started. Trying to please God through behavior. There's a Danish philosopher named Soren Kierkegaard, and he called this pattern, he called this pattern religiousness a. Because it's what we start with, religiousness A. Obey the rules, climb the ladder, earn your spot, prove you're worthy. And when you're in religiousness A, what happens is you start pinging between some optimism, like maybe I can do this. Maybe I can do this. And what? Despair. There's no way I can do this. The standard's too high. Holiness is too far away. Righteousness is unattainable. And so you give up on religiousness A, and you pivot to what Kierkegaard called religiousness B. Religiousness B is the leap of faith, where you throw yourself into the arms of the Savior and say, I've got no hope but that you save me. Unless you rescue me, I am lost. This is exactly what Romans 7 is talking about. This is what Romans 7 is trying to share with us that you've got to move into an abject and total uh abandon into the grace of Christ. You've got to leap into his arms. You've got to jump off your pattern of trying to please God through your behavior and rest in his grace and be saved by what he does, not by what you do. And Romans 7 is saying that's kind of like that marriage. You've got to leave that marriage and go to the next. Now, listen to me carefully. This is not marriage advice I'm giving you. Okay? Everybody's marriage feels like that a little bit sometimes. Hang on, reset. Go back to the starting line. Start a competition about doing one another in love. This is not the Bible saying, jump out of that marriage, okay? But what the Bible is saying is that in your relationship with the law is like a really bad relationship where you're trying, trying to satisfy and never satisfying, and you just feel worse and worse and worse. And what Romans is saying is, you gotta exchange that. It's time to leave that behind and move forward and leap into Christ. Verse 4. So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law. Remember how the woman she, the marriage bond doesn't last because her husband died. Well, there's been a death. You also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. The first marriage is over because there's been a death. Who died? Who died? Jesus died on the cross. Who else died? We died with him. If you were here at Easter, we talked about this in Romans 6. We read this passage. We have been crucified with Christ. We have been crucified with Christ in a passage in Romans 6. For we know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. That's over. There's been a death. You see, that bond is done. There's been a death. Because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Freedom from. You gain freedom from this demanding relationship, this unsatisfiable, guilt-ridden relationship. You're freed from that. But you're freed for. Freed for what? A new relationship. A relationship of love, a relationship of joy, a relationship in which you're not trying to strive to earn your place. You're not trying to prove that you're worthy of love. You know you have a place because Christ earned it for you. You know that you're loved. Why? Because Christ died for you. He gave himself away for you. And so now you know I am loved, I'm forgiven, I'm worthy. And what happens then is you just long to serve that Savior. I can't wait to give myself away to you. It's a new country. Verse 6. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in a new way in the spirit, not in the old way of the written code. Have you been there? Have you been in that place? Have you fallen into that pit? I think I've got to earn my place. I think I've got to show God that I'm worthy of love. I think I've got to keep everything right, or it's all gonna fall apart. I think I'm not, I'm not worth, I'm not, I don't have a place unless I fight my way in. Have you been there? Leave that behind. And what the passage goes on to say, what Paul goes on to say to the Roman church is it wasn't working anyway. You can't do it. Trying to earn your way through the law into the righteousness of God, into that place, that's not what the law was meant to do in the first place. And it doesn't work. Why? Because every time God tells me what not to do, you know what I want to do? Exactly that thing. Exactly that thing. Now that doesn't mean the law is evil. The law is good. God has given us a gift in the law. He has shown us what is right and wrong, what is good and evil, what is righteousness, what is unrighteousness, what is life-giving and helpful, and what is toxic and corrosive. And we need that knowledge. It's a gift. But you know what? The law gets you into more sin than it gets you out of. That's what he's saying. Did you know that drinking a carbonated beverage rots the enamel of your teeth? Did you know that? I didn't know that. You knew that? I didn't know that until yet last week a friend told me that. And I said, no. Even the like the waters with like no sugar in them, nothing in them, just the bubbles? Yep. Even those rotting the enamel of your teeth. Oh. This is information I did not want. Right? And it's I guess it's good to know. Like it's better to know than to not know. But you know what else? That doesn't mean I'm not going to drink a Mountain Dew. In fact, I'm kind of thinking about drinking one right about now. This is what happens with the law. Look at this. What shall we say then? Is the law sinful? No, the law's not sinful. Certainly not. Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law, for I would not have known what coveting really was. If the law had not said, you shall not covet. So the Lord says, Don't covet. Don't covet. Don't covet. Coveting. Yeah. What are you doing? Don't think of a pink elephant. What are you thinking of? Don't picture a blue gorilla. What's in your head? You see? I got four kids. They all come from the same place. They're all raised differently. Some of them, you know, you tell them, don't do that. And they think, well, why would I do that? That'd be terrible to do that. I would never do that. Another one you say, don't do that. Same, what happens? That is 100% what I am doing right now. Right? I gotta check it out. I gotta check it out. We're all different. We're all different. The law has a way. Because of our sinful selves, our sinful selves are trained to rebel against the law. And so as soon as we hear from God, don't do this. What do we want to do? We want to do exactly that thing. We're gonna talk a lot more about that next week if you know where Romans 7 is going. And we need inner peace from that battle. But here's the question this morning Which marriage are you in with God? Which relationship are you in with God this morning? Are you back in that first marriage to the law? In that first marriage, we're punished for disobedience and we can't figure out how to obey. In that first marriage, it's all a measure of how we're doing, of our behavior, of what we're what we're getting what we're doing, how it how far are we advancing, and we can never get far enough. In that first relationship, you know what happens? We're tempted to go down one of two tracks. Either we go down this double religious track, I'm gonna double down, I'm gonna bear down and do it twice as good, and I know I'm doing better than him, so I'm just gonna keep pushing, and I'm gonna keep pushing, and I'm gonna bear down on religiosity. And you know what's I tell you what, even if that works, what have you gained? Pride and self-righteousness. Folks that are trying to be more religious than others, they're some of the hardest people to be around, right? When you're in that marriage relationship, that first relationship with the law, you're gonna go one of two ways. Either you're gonna go down and I'm gonna double down on religiosity, or you know what else you're gonna do? You're gonna be tempted to give up. It's impossible. It can't be one. Righteousness is too high, holiness is too much. God must have never even meant for me to consider the law. I'm obviously just supposed to go whatever direction I would like and rest in the grace. I just give up. I give up. You're not meant to be in that marriage at all. You're meant to leave that relationship. You're meant to die to that relationship and step into another and exchange it for a relationship with Jesus Christ. To leap into his arms, to say it isn't about what I've done, it's about what you've done on my behalf. I can't earn my place, but you have purchased a place for me. You have given yourself for me totally and thoroughly and fully, and I can't wait, Lord, to give all that I have and all that I am to you. Rest in his grace. Trust only in him. Your relationship with Jesus is not marked by your punishment for disobedience. It is marked by his punishment on your behalf. And because he gave himself away, there's been a death. You're no longer bound, you're freed from, and you're freed for a life of loving service and the grace of Jesus. Trust in him, rest in him, accept. If you pray, pray freely. If you go to church, go to church freely. If you serve him, serve him freely. You are freed from if you fast, fast freely. Freely. You've been freed from. It's been a joy to celebrate this last chapter with John Goodale. And if you don't know him, I'll tell you why. He's out of the room so I could talk about him. With John, if you know John, you know this. It was never about himself. He was never at the middle, it's never at the center. It's about Jesus. And then it was about you. And then it was about John. I want to grow up and be more like that, don't you? This is freedom. A freedom of self-forgetfulness. You have from Jesus. Jesus Christ has won for you two freedoms. Freedom from and freedom for. And freedom from yourself being in the middle is freedom for service to others. And freedom from sin is freedom for service, joyful service to the things of God. And freedom from striving and grabbing and grasping and trying and pushing is freedom. Freedom for grace received with open hands. A relationship that rests in what Christ has done for you. Believe in the grace of Jesus Christ and receive the free gift. For the wages of sin is death. But the free gift, if you open your hands, the free gift is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So Lord, would you help us in all that we are trying to absorb from your holy word and all that we're trying to understand in these uh illustrations and of all that we're wrestling with? Lord, help us to be a people freed up by your victorious work, released, unchained, unbound, untied, set free, Lord, so that we can freely love and serve you and bear the fruit that gives glory to your name. Make us a church that moves out into this world, not as those who are anxiously striving, but as those who are peacefully resting in all cases in the grace and in the space that you have won by your grace. Where if we're resting, we're able to stand and rest in this world, no matter what's happening in the storms all around us, we're able to rest. Jesus, because you have done it all on our behalf. Lord, open our hearts to your grace. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

Hearing God's word is just the beginning. What connected with you? What challenged you today? Maybe it's surrendering something, stepping into community, or simply trusting Him more deeply. Whatever it is, don't leave it for later. Act on it today. We're praying that this message moves you closer to Jesus. And we'd love to walk with you in that journey and answer any questions you've got. Connect with us by visiting firstpres.org. Hey, if today's message encouraged you, take a moment and subscribe so you never miss an episode and share it with someone who needs to hear it. Check in next week and we'll continue to grow in our faith together. See you next time.