What Are You Praying For? | Renewed Creation

Do you ever look at the world and wonder why everything feels so broken?
 Are you carrying grief, exhaustion, or disappointment you cannot put into words?
 Do you long for hope that feels steady when life feels uncertain?
 
 Romans 8 reminds us that Jesus meets us in a hurting world with real hope. The gospel tells us that creation was made good by God, broken by sin, and is being restored through Christ. Jesus died and rose again to begin renewing all things, and that good news gives us something solid to stand on when life feels heavy. Even when we do not know how to pray, the Holy Spirit prays with us and for us in our weakness. God has not abandoned this world. He is still at work bringing healing, redemption, and life.
 
 If you have ever wrestled with anxiety about the future, pain over the state of the world, or questions about where God is in suffering, this message speaks directly to that ache. Scripture invites us to groan honestly, trust deeply, and hold onto the promise that God is making all things new. In Jesus, your story is not abandoned, and this broken world is not beyond redemption. The Lord is still holding all things together with love, purpose, and resurrection hope.
 
 Scripture: Romans 8:22 to 30
 “The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” Romans 8:22
 “In all things God works for the good of those who love him.” Romans 8:28
 
 Belong at First Pres by taking the first step: join us for worship on Sundays in person. https://firstprescos.org/belong

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 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_01 0:30

Well, again, thank you guys and good morning. Good to be with you in the room here. As as Pastor Dave said, Pastor Tim is sick and um and hopefully just it's cuddled up under some blankets. I don't know if that's if that's quite where he's at, but um at least he tells us he's sick. See, I think this might actually be a form of hazing that that has taken place. No, I I um I have heard about uh horror stories from other pastors who have walked into the church and and the lead pastor's walking out, hands them a pile of paper and says, Good luck, I can't do it this morning, and and hands it to them, and they have to walk right in. Fortunately, Pastor Tim gave me just enough time to kind of look over his notes and start tinkering and start pulling apart all the really good thoughts that he had. And so so this morning, as we go, if you find yourself confused at any point, that would be my contributions to the message. And so, with that disclaimer, and as this thing is gonna roll, um, let let's let's begin here. See, Pastor Tim, he handed me this these notes, and and they started off right at the top, and it just said, Everything stinks. Okay, and that's the message that we have this morning is everything stinks. See, everything stinks. I mean, our world is broken. We've been praying about that already this morning here. We we know that there are not only multiple wars raging across the globe, but we know that injustice is prevalent, that there is injustice in so many places, that people are suffering, that our nation is divided, that that grief and sorrow and pain are prevalent everywhere. It's everywhere. And it's not only out there. There's a new documentary out on Netflix uh called The Plastic Detox. Has anybody seen this yet? Has anybody seen this yet? Okay, so this may not be one that you're gonna want to see, actually. It's one of those kind of can't unsee it categories, okay? This explains how microplastics are everywhere. Microplastics are everywhere, they're in everything. And so we are eating and breathing and sucking in microplastic toxins through our skin, through our food, through perfume and cups and plastic spoons. It's everywhere, and there's simply no escaping it. And so this documentary links the rise in microplastics with the rise in health issues and disease and other maladies over the last 50 years. And so, to recap where we're at today, everything stinks, everything is broken, there's poison everywhere, family systems are breaking down, schools are failing, leaders are faltering, churches are floundering, Pastor Tim has streps throat, and I've got this great taco joint that I love that just raised their prices like a lot, and I'm very upset about it. Everything is bad. Welcome to First Press. We're glad you're here this morning. We're we're in a series right now called What Are You Praying For? And together we're on a journey of 40 days of prayer. We we are praying for specific things together as a body each week. We first started with praying for inner peace, for peace. And then we were challenged to pray for resurrection life, for resurrection life to be realized in our hearts. And then last week we prayed for enduring hope. And next week, we're gonna be looking at conquering love. We're gonna pray for conquering love. And we're gonna, as Pastor Dave said, gather around the church. We're gonna link hands after this service and we're gonna pray together in the heart of the city. I hope that you join us for that. Today, though, we're called for to pray for something bigger than just what's going on in us, something bigger than just what's happening in our community. We are called today to pray for renewed creation. And so the question on the front of our mind today is if everything is broken, if there's poison and toxicity everywhere, what is God going to do about it? And what is our role in that? And so we're gonna be looking to Romans chapter eight once again. And this passage, this Romans eight passage, is really a worldview passage. It's one of the places in the Bible where where we kind of get new lenses on our glasses, where our prescription is is adjusted a bit so that we can really see the world differently, where we can see the world through a good lens. And this is a passage that is uh directed straight at some of the big questions of life. Questions like, what is the nature of the universe? What is wrong with the world? And can it be addressed? Can it be fixed? And so let us now go to our Lord in prayer, and then we will read together Romans chapter eight. Let's pray. Well, Lord, our rock and redeemer, we put our hope in you, our trust in you, for you are good and worthy of praise and honor and glory. Lord, we ask that you would till up the soil of our hearts. Lord, that you would grow new things in our hearts because of our encounter of you today. Lord, that as we receive your word, that you would speak to us, we would hear you, and that we would be changed. We would be different because of it. And so, we surrender ourselves, we surrender this time to you in Christ's name. Amen. And so we're gonna backtrack a little bit of where we read last week. We're gonna look at verse 19 to begin. Romans 8, 19 says, For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn above many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called. Those he called, he also justified. Those he justified, he also glorified. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. So at the end of last week's passage, we learned that we are connected to the brokenness, that the world hurts because of us, because of fallen humanity. We look back to verse 19 here, for the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. This world is hurting and broken because when we ruptured our relationship with God, the whole world bore the consequences. And since we were the first into disobedience and brokenness, creation knows that we will be the first into reconciliation and restoration. And only then will this world be relieved of pain. But let's let's zoom out a little bit this morning. Let's zoom out first. We might first ask, what is the fundamental nature of this universe? Is everything just a collection, a random collection of matter? Are we just a cosmic accident? Is everything that we know just material and matter? Is that it? Is that all there is to this universe? Well, physicist and committed atheist Richard Feynman said yes. He lectured that there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms and they're acting according to the laws of physics. But if that is it, if if physics is all that there is, then all the problems and the pain that we experience in the universe, they're really not problems at all. There really are no grounds for us to complain about the pain that exists. The universe, if it's naturally and rightly spinning apart in increased entropy and moving towards chaos rather than order spinning down like a wound-up spring, just kind of waiting to fizzle out. If that's so, then nothing that we do really matters. After a period of time, the sun will burn out and earth will cease to exist. And so that's the kind of purely materialistic worldview. And and it's a hard one. Because if there's no meaning, if there's no meaning in our origin, and there's no meaning in our destination, if there's no sense of where we're coming from, if there's no sense of where we're heading, we can't really navigate this messed-up world with any hope. I mean, it makes life just hopeless and pointless. Christianity, on the other hand, offers a different approach. The Christian faith says that this world was created by God, was broken by sin, and is being restored. Again, created by God, broken by sin, but in the process of being restored. This is maybe a familiar doctrine, familiar language for you. Christianity, again, it says that the world was made good. It was a good thing, it was fundamentally good. But then it got twisted out of shape. It got twisted. And so it's not working right now. It's not working the way it is supposed to be. It's twisted out of shape, it's thrown off, it's depraved. Christianity says that the maker of this world is not okay leaving this world like that, though. He's not going to leave creation like this. The maker is actually at work slowly twisting and setting things right. The maker is putting it right again. And we, as his children, are invited to participate in that work of setting things right, being agents of reconciliation is the language that we get. I think of um on a much smaller scale, I think of a Rubik's Cube. Okay. And so I'm I'm absolutely horrible at Rubik's Cubes. I have yet to solve one. And I know some people could do that behind their back. That's not me. But there's this kind of resetting that happens. And the closest I've come to solving a Rubik's Cube, uh, my boys, my boys and I were working on one, and and so we were fixed doing this and twisting and trying to fix and repair and reconcile the Rubik's Cube. And finally I said, guys, let me show you a trick. And I removed all the stickers, and then I put them where they were supposed to go. And so that's that's the closest I have come to reconciling work in this world, but but the Lord is actually able to do that. And so we go back to Romans, we look back at verse 19, and and we see that creation in verse 19 is personified. And creation is kind of standing on its tiptoes, it's it's waiting, waiting to see this restoration. Creation is in bondage, is is in bondage and enslaved, and is just longing for this restored world, this restored reality. This gives us some explanation for natural disasters. Again, if it were just that we are natural products of the world and just simply atoms acting according to the laws of physics, we wouldn't be so distressed to see the world shake us up with earthquakes or hurricanes or floods. But there's actually something in us that says, no, no, no, this isn't the way it's supposed to be. This isn't right. That shouldn't happen. See, slugs, slugs are not surprised. Slugs are not shaken when a flood comes. They they they roll with it. But we are. See, we are we are rejecting natural disaster. There's something, again, inside of us that's big and growing up that says, no, no, no, no, this is not right. This is not how it is supposed to be. C.S. Lewis in his famous book, Mere Christianity, wrote that creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger, well, there's such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim, well, there's such a thing as water. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. Friends, creation is wanting to live into a restored reality. And we groan in the face of this disorienting world. We long for another reality. This tells us that, again, we were designed for something better. We were designed for a different way of being. And so we groan. But it's not, it's not the groan of defeat, it's not the groan of a victim of mugging, somebody who's been beaten down. It's the groaning, Paul says, of pregnancy, of childbirth. It's a groaning that leads to new life. Paul writes, we know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. In the face of brokenness and disorientation and disaster and disease, we're called to pray. But how exactly are we supposed to pray? What exactly are we supposed to pray for? I mean, do you know how to fix all that is wrong in the world? I don't. Do you know what full restoration would look like? I don't. In many situations, church, we we don't know exactly what to pray for. And so we can pray, we're told, our groans. We can pray these laments. We we can simply pray, come, Lord Jesus, into this. John Stott wrote that the indwelling spirit gives us joy. And the coming glory gives us hope. But the interim suspense gives us pain. Our groans express both present pain and future longing. Some Christians, however, grin too much and groan too little. Friends, the world we know is broken. You've experienced it. You know it. You've experienced pain and hurt and loss and grief. It's okay to groan. And know this that when when you groan, when you express this, when you're going to the Lord groaning, you're you're not alone. God meets us in that. When the diagnosis is dire, when news of the accident reaches you, and the challenge of this challenges of this world are just too overwhelming. Paul says, in the same way, the Spirit helps us, helps us in this weakness. We don't know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. The Holy Spirit groans. God groans, and we groan together in this kind of pressing, uncomfortable expectation that all things will be put right in the end. And along the way, we hold on to this comfort that God is at work, God is not absent, God is for us, not against us. And in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. This is comfort for groaning times. This is like the cool, soft body pillow we need when we are uncomfortably pregnant with hope for the restoration of all things. In the last Lord of the Rings book, big spoilers coming here. In the last Lord of the Rings book, The Return of the King, Samwise Gamge collapses from smoke inhalation and exhaustion. And he he collapses believing that he and Frodo are about to be consumed by flames. But Sam regains consciousness, and when he does, he's in a soft bed. And he's looking up into the face of the wizard Gandalf, their guide. And in the book, he says, Gandalf, I thought you were dead. But then I thought I was dead myself. And he asks, Is everything sad going to come untrue? And Christianity to that question says, Yes. God works for the good in all things. Friends, we know, we know where we come from, we know our origin. We know that God knit us together and set us in this world. And we know our destination, that that all things, all things will be restored. And we know that God is working for the good of those who love him all throughout that, and that everything sad will indeed come untrue. And so in this time we trust to the Lord. We know that he is still at work and that the story is not over. Amen. Well, the closing verses of this passage offer some of the strongest language on predestination in all of Scripture. And so, verse 29, Romans 8 says, For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called. Those he called, he also justified. Those he justified, he also glorified. Friends, whenever we are granted a glimpse of the plan of salvation from God's point of view, it presents us with unanswerable mysteries. We're gonna dig a little bit more into this doctrine as we get into Romans chapter 9. That's Tim's problem for future weeks. Okay, he's gonna figure that out for us. So for now, we just need to know that in these verses, they they're there to inspire hope and joy and comfort. We know that God is in charge and our salvation is not ultimately dependent on our performance. We know that God has this, that there's no point in that whole chain of events in Romans 8, 29 through 30 that we can look and say with pride, yeah, that's it. That's where I accomplished my salvation. And we look to that and we say, Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord, my Savior. So again, everything stinks, everything is broken, the world is full of poison, and yet we know that God is still on his throne, that we belong to him, that the world belongs to him, and that he is working for good. There's a um, as we think about kind of end times, what happens as the world winds down, what what is God working towards? There's this uh theological idea called inaugurated eschatology. And it's a sense that that God's kingdom has been implemented, that God's kingdom has begun, and yet it is not fully realized. So it is the now and not yet. And and we live in that in-between time. And so the classic illustration, thinking about this, is D-Day back in World War II. And so the storming of the beaches of Normandy, D-Day, that is the beginning of the end of the war. That is it. The war is effectively won at that time. And yet there are years, there's months until we get to VE Day, the Victory in Europe Day. And so, so this idea that again, there's victory, and yet there is still battle to be fought, there is still work to be done, there is still time and pain and frustration and hope until we get to this realized kingdom, this realized victory. And so that is what we are in. That's where we live. And so, as we are in that, our Our challenge in this series is to think, how can we pray? What am I praying for? Again, we can recognize that the world is broken, that we we fell into disobedience and creation fell with us. And we can acknowledge and we can pray that God would continue to show us how to minimize that damage, that God would reveal to us how to repair the damage that has been done, to bear witness to the beautiful divine intent of creation at first, and then to speak to the promise of divine regeneration of creation at last. We can pray that way, and we can pray for future hope that everything sad would come untrue. Friends, a few weeks ago, Dick Eastman went to be with the Lord, and maybe you know that name. He ran every home for Christ, ministry based here in Colorado Springs, and he devoted his life to increasing prayer among Christians. He charged people to pray for an hour and kind of gave segmented ways of doing that. And he called it the hour that changes the world. And Eastman wrote, To be faithful in prayer is to share with God in his plan to change the world. Beloved, it is not age, experience, talent, or material wealth that makes the difference in the destiny of men and nations. Prayer alone will change the world from our neighbors to the nations. And so this morning, we're not gonna be able to pray for an hour together, but we are gonna pray. We're gonna take a few moments here to pray in silence. And of all the broken areas, of all the broken categories of this world that we live in, we're gonna take a moment now just to lift up a few of those to the Lord. We're gonna groan a bit. We can allow the Spirit of God to pray for us in unspoken ways. Maybe in the silence, pray for our children, pray for our schools, pray for our arts and media, for our government, for our military, for a world right now which is at war for our businesses and church and for strong ministries of Jesus. Pray now for a broken world that will one day be put right in Jesus' name. Let's pray. Lord, we come to you now. Hear us in the silence. Hear our groaning. Lord, once again, we know that you love this world more than we can understand. We know that you are living and active on the move. Or that you have called and you are equipping your church to be your hands and feet, to be agents of reconciliation, to be ambassadors for your kingdom in this world. So, Lord, may we know this. May we know your presence, your love. Fill us with hope, Lord, and make us people who share that with others. You are good, and we give you thanks in Jesus Christ, our Lord.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Amen. 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 firstprezos.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!