I saw a challenge this morning in his inimitable Texas Plains speak. Elder Sonny Piles makes the point that a text without its context is a pretext. I have in mind this morning one of the most comprehensive passages and scripture dealing with what we believe. If I develop context, I'm going to be challenged by the very breadth of it. And yet, I believe we need to develop that context. I may present some thought if I present the same thing you've heard a hundred times before with no. Thought provoking this, no suggestions to make you think and rethink and study, I have done you no favors. If I present something so new and aberrant to biblical teaching, I have done you a disservice, so I ask your prayers on my behalf. I'd like to read from the eighth chapter of the Book of Romans. Before I read, I want to make an observation or so. Out of thirty-nine verses in this chapter, Every verse except about four or five begins with a specific connected word, and, but, for, therefore, so on. And those four or five exceptions topically flow and are therefore tightly connected. Typically, if we single out any verse in Romans chapter eight from its context, we will go in the wrong direction. So I ask your prayers to. The Lord for my mind and your your mind, that we will follow context, that we will. Stay focused on what God would have us to know. I'd like to begin reading with verse 18, and Lord willing it's a bit lengthy, but I would like to read to the 39th verse. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. The creature was made subject to vanity not willingly, but by reason of him who has subjected the same in hope. Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to wit, the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for it? But if we hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. Likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, he also called, them he also called, and whom he called them he also justified, and whom he justified them he also glorified. What shall we say, then, to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Aside from the connectives, verse 18 makes a note of a future glory that shall be revealed in us. Verse 30 ends with the final and fifth of a five-step link of our eternal security in the purpose of God and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then he also glorified. There's something of a subjective bracket placed around these thoughts that gives us a sense of continuity aside from the connective words. There's continuity in those points. When I was about between ten and twelve years of age. My parents were members of a country church out from Corinth, Mississippi. We lived near Booneville, so we had to drive about thirty minutes or so, thirty or forty minutes to get to church. On a Saturday morning, the old country church schedule of a Saturday preaching service and business meeting and then Sunday service, and they'd meet once or twice a month. I don't like the schedule, but that's what we did, and the Lord blessed us, even if we didn't meet every Sunday. I commend the meeting of every Sunday and even more frequent meetings. As we went through a little community on the way and near to the church, we crossed a railroad track that just had to sign up with no arm for safety, and we saw the mangled wreckage of a vehicle. It was clear. The accident had just occurred. We were alarmed. We were concerned, of course. Tragedy has hit someone in this community. We got to church, and the pastor who lived in the community announced that a family that my parents knew, many of the people in the church knew. They belonged to a Pentecostal church. They were not primitive Baptists, but they were good neighbors and godly people. had raced across the track without looking in his car and had been hit broadside and killed instantly. My parents, as soon as the church door descended, wanted to visit the family to see if there was anything they could do and to comfort. We arrived at the home. Their pastor was in the back room talking to them, trying to comfort them. I had been, even at that early age, to funerals where this particular man had spoken, and with the knowledge that there were primitive Baptist members in the family of the deceased person, this man had taken out-of-character swipes at what we believe, obviously did not like what we believe in our theology. As a twelve-year-old, I was amazed that this man was reading Romans 828 and trying to convince these grieving parents that some way or another, a train wreck that had just killed their son was working for their good. Even that little 12 year old mind said there is something wrong here. This isn't right. If you're going to criticize us, understand what we really do believe. And don't pervert what we believe when you're in the face of tragedy and try to embrace it in an aberrant way. The universal sounding terms of scripture are often confusing and difficult to read and understand. All things here is something we need to examine and study. It's legitimate. There's a pattern of things in the reading that I read before you. You have the expression in verse 28, we know that all things work together for good. In verse 31, what shall we then say to these things? He's just mentioned five things in verses 29 and 30. And what we can say to those five things is a glorious, comforting conclusion, if God be for us, who can be against us. In verse 33, he says, Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? The things of verses 29 and 30 remove other things from the charge, the criminal and sinful charge of God's elect. Verse 34, I believe, is crucial to our understanding of the passage. God that justified, who is he that condemneth the Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen, who is even at the right hand of God, makes intercession for us. I'm sorry, verse 32 is what I wanted. He that spared not his own son. but delivered him up for us all. How shall he not with him freely give us all things? There is a tremendous clue to the passage in this reading. Whatever these all things are, are not things that coincidentally and tragically happen in our life. It is things earned by the death of Christ. He spared not his own son, delivered him up for us, in order that by the death of his son he would give us these all things." Friends, we have no access to God's loving foreknowledge, his predestinating grace, his effectual call, his eternal justification and our final glorification apart from the death of Christ. I'll develop the point more later on, but there is nothing in Scripture that hints that Jesus died so a young man could be killed in a train wreck, or so tragedy could occur in human life. Nothing whatever. After another list in verse 35 and 36, a list that includes tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword and martyrdom, in all these things, another list another identity, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Having laid that foundation with thought, I'd like us to look at the greater context of this passage. There are three focal points of groaning in the passage. The entire creation groans and prevails as in labor pains to be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. I don't have time to go into details, and it's an aside to the point, but I truly believe what happened in the Garden of Eden not only affected the moral character of humanity, I believe it affected the natural creation. of God. Nature reflects the impact of the fall, and having its origin with God its Creator, groans for restoration to its pristine beauty as God created it in the beginning. Not only does creation groan for that day of all days, we ourselves who have the Spirit of God within, groan within ourselves under the trials and distresses of life, groaning and waiting for the manifestation in our body in resurrection of the sons of God. And then, in verse 26, the Holy Spirit groans on behalf of the people of God who seek and whose hearts cry out to God in prayer, but can't utter the words. For the sake of time, I'd like to go back to verse 26 and then build the context from this point. As in the hope of creation, as in the hope of the children of God who wait for the manifestation of the sons of God in resurrection. The spirit helps our weaknesses. Aren't you thankful that Paul didn't say the spirit helps our strength? How many times have people said when when they were convicted to become a member of the church and make a public profession of Christ, I just don't feel worthy. Thank God! Thank God! Paul says, when I'm weak, then I'm strong. In the moments of tragedy, those parents of that young man were groaning deep within. Their hearts were breaking for the loss of their son. They couldn't tell God what they were feeling, the pain The agony of their loss was beyond words. And it didn't take a preacher to misrepresent a passage of scripture. The Holy Spirit was groaning on their behalf. And when you, my friend, face your weakest moment, not your pristine moment of strong faith, your weakest moment, And yet there's something deep within that just wants to cry out, God, I don't know what's going on. I can't explain it. I can't put logic to what I'm feeling. But God, I know I need you now. The spirit. Supplies the words you can express. For the time you were pastoring a church in Louisville, Kentucky, about 45 years ago or so, And I was preaching up there and I preached one particular night on the subject of prayer. I made the point that we don't have to be in a particular bodily position to pray. Scripture talks about people standing and lifting their hands up to God. You don't have to kneel to pray. Traditionally, over the years of my life, when I'm in the pulpit and praying or when I'm called on to pray, I would kneel. Arthritis in my knees and back and hips has gotten to me to the point that most of the time when I pray, I will stand. God doesn't hear my prayer any less because I'm standing than if I were kneeling. There was a sister in the church who took exception to my point, and we had a lively discussion, and I illustrated the point that there was a farmer who thought he had to kneel, get down on his knees to pray and be heard by God. And one day he was working around his open pit well, and he slipped and fell in head first, and he discovered that he could pray head down, feet up in the middle of his well, and God would hear his prayer. And God doesn't look at the form of the body, but at the spirit of the heart when we pray. The spirit helps our weakness. We don't know what we should pray for. How many times have we faced puzzling difficulties in our life and had to say, Lord, I don't understand this, I don't know how to explain it, but Lord, I know I need you right now. Would you help? I don't know that Peter could have articulated all of the elements of his need when he's standing on the water and begins looking around. Instead of looking to Christ, look at the waves and start sinking. But he knew one thing. He was in need. Lord, save or I perish. And the Lord helped. In those moments of our weakness. The spirit intercedes. Stands between. We understand by the Lord's model prayer and by teaching from Scripture that when we pray, Jesus intercedes, we pray in his name. This text says not only does Jesus intercede on our behalf, the Holy Spirit as well intercedes with the Father. You have two people working for you in heaven every time you pray. With groanings which cannot be uttered. A.T. Robertson, a respected scholar in New Testament Greek language defines the word and describes it, the groanings which cannot be uttered. A picturesque word of rescue by one who happens on one who is in trouble and in his behalf, pleads with unuttered groanings or with sighs that baffle words. This is the work of our helper, the spirit himself. And he that searches the hearts God is described in the Old Testament on more than one occasion as being the God who searches the hearts of men. Knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit. There is a beautiful and dynamic interaction within the Trinity here. That the Father intuitively knows what the Holy Spirit is saying, even if the words are not even expressed within the Trinity. The Father knows the mind of the Spirit and the intercession. And don't paint God as the big black ogre. It's the Father who designed the scheme of salvation and implements it. So they're all three on the same page. He knows what is the mind of the Spirit because he make it intercession for the saints, according to the will of God. The model prayer instructs us that among all the things we petition God to provide, thy will be done as in heaven, so in earth. Now, with that background, we make a strong case that verse 29 begins with a connective for. May I make an equally strong case that verse 28 begins with a connected and. Verse 28 does not start an independent new thought. It is a continuation of the thought already introduced. And stacking on to building on what has already been said, we know that all things work together for good to them that love God. Brother Gene has done a magnificent case, identifying that regardless of one's theological view or one's interpretation of Romans 828, there are certain filters and qualifiers that cannot be avoided in the passage. Those who love God. For the called according to his purpose definitely puts a restriction on the verse. and the things that are involved. The word no. Ido in the Greek language. Literally means, according to reliable Greek dictionaries, to see with the mind's eye. A clear and purely mental perception, intuitive perception. Whatever this passage is describing, it describes something that you as a child of God can clearly perceive and intuitively know to be reliable truth. It is not something that has to be justified, rationalized, or explained in such ways that theologians struggle with it. It must be something that is simple, perceptive, and intuitive that you know. I don't intuitively know when Hitler built ovens and burned Jews in it that that was of God. Understand? I don't intuitively perceive that when extreme terrorists captured passenger planes in this country and flew them into towers in New York City and Washington, D.C., I don't intuitively know and perceive that God did that. I'm going to take this awful, heinous sin that's committed and some mysterious way, work it for good. Whatever the all things are. Must be things that perceptively and intuitively. We know work for good. I want to take this text instead of putting it on the top of the meat and have one side of the sandwich, I'm going to put two pieces of bread and put the sandwich in the middle. So, just add a piece of bread to the sandwich you've thought about all along. I can intuitively perceive that when my heart is breaking, your hymn book has a hymn in it, does Jesus care? Intuitively, no matter how difficult my pain and trial, intuitively I perceive, oh yes, he cares. His heart is touched with my grief. Scripture says it is. He's a high priest who is touched by the sense, the feeling sense of my weakness. And in that very thing, he intercedes on my behalf. He doesn't need to intercede for my righteousness and my good works, but he needs and I need him desperately to intercede for my sins. And I need him to intercede for me in prayer. I can intuitively believe and know, whatever my circumstance, when I go to him in prayer, his response will be something that will work for my good. Jesus teaches the lesson in the Gospels. If you being evil, sinful people, One of your children comes to you in the middle of the night and says, I'm hungry. He needs bread. Will you give him a rock off the street and say, chew on this rock till morning and then I might give you breakfast? Instead of a piece of meat, will you give him a snake? No. If your child comes to you hungry, you're giving bread and meat. If you, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask to his children who pray? God, as a loving Father, refuses to give anything but good to his children in response to prayer. He won't do it. I'm ashamed of the fact that years ago, I used to issue cautions and warnings to people. Be careful what you pray for. If you pray foolishly, God just might give it to you to prove you don't need it. I don't do that anymore. I increasingly believe that it doesn't matter how foolish my prayer. I may pray to God in weakness. But God is a father who cares and whatever he provides will be good. I can intuitively perceive that that is fact, and I can rely on it. I can go to God when all I can do is groan and say, God, I need you. And deep down inside, I know whatever he does in answer will be good. The people who pray to God are people who love God. There are people who have been called according to God's purpose. The lesson Jesus gives is a lesson that deals with children going to the parent for blessing and help in time of need. And then Jesus builds the lesson to the corollary that says the heavenly, your heavenly father will give good gifts to his children when they pray. Well, someone says, well, preacher, you don't know all the weaknesses and the doubts and the misgivings I have about my faith. I don't know all of yours, but I'm acquainted with mine. I can't tell you, I can't tell you that however weak and sinful. I can go to God knowing he'll respond. I'm even told in scripture that when I sin. I'm not to try to hide my sin from God. I'm to confess that sin to him. And Scripture assures me that when I confess that sin to him, he is faithful and just to forgive and to just keep on cleansing. He's my advocate. He's my lawyer. In our American jurisprudence. When a person is accused of a crime, he must have an attorney to represent him in a court of law. When the court desires to address the accused, He's asked to stand. His lawyer stands with him and speaks for him. Isn't that what John says the Holy Spirit does or Jesus does? We have an advocate who stands with him. In our own thinking, we like to compartmentalize. Over here is the practical, over here is the doctrinal, over here is the timely, over here is the eternal. Scripture seldom draws such sharp distinctions. I suggest for your thinking that this text does not draw such a distinction. It is a flowing, continuous text that begins with a groaning creation, desiring restoration to the pre-Adamic glory. An acknowledgement that the family of God groans under the load of sin and fallenness, waiting for the resurrection and glorification of the body. And oh, by the way, while you wait, When you find yourself in trouble, when you find yourself in weakness, and you cry out to God for healing and wholeness, the Holy Spirit groans with the Father to restore and to heal and to keep His family healthy and intact. And whatever the Holy Spirit does in response to your prayers, the Holy Spirit works according to the will of God and does things that you intuitively perceive to be for your good. And you have the comfort and assurance of Scripture. So it says, well, I need more evidence. Good. Read verses 29 and 30. Four. Connected. Your prayer life and the Holy Spirit's intercession and the Holy Spirit's provision of good things in response to your prayers is not isolated from your eternal security in Christ. It is. Why do you pray in his name? It's all part of the same fabric. Sometimes people get so mixed up in their theology because they get things out of time sequence. Our good friends in the charismatic movement will tell you when they advocate the idea of faith healing, Well, Isaiah 53 says he took our sicknesses. And in the book of Matthew, Jesus healed a number of people that the scripture might be fulfilled. And he's a quote. He's quoting from Isaiah 53. He took our illnesses and they'll say, well, Jesus just he died for your sickness as well as your sin. All you have to do is name it and claim it. Touch the sick and pray for them. And the blood of Christ purchased your healing from sin. I don't deny that God occasionally intervenes in human events and miraculously heals his children from illness. My wife is a living testimony of that fact. And I would say the charismatic interpretation is 50% true. Jesus did die for your sins. There's not going to be a single person in heaven with cancer. When you get to glory after the resurrection, there won't be rheumatoid arthritis and there won't be broken joints and there won't be scars and there won't be emphysema and cancer and all of the illnesses of humanity and of our fallenness. All those sins and all those illnesses will be left in the grave and our resurrected body will be whole and healthy so it can praise God for eternity. Jesus died for that. They just have the timing wrong. verse 29, for whom predestination and all these other things deal not with wicked men doing wicked things, but with a people known and loved by God in advance. The word no is used in a variety of ways in scripture. This text doesn't say that God, in a particular way, included certain people in his omniscient knowledge and was ignorant that other people would even exist. This is not a text that deals with God's attribute of foreknowledge. It deals with his covenant work of salvation. In the covenant work of salvation, he knew a certain people. They're named in the covenant. David's dying words, not a perfect man. Although my house be not the clear sky without clouds and storms and rain, although my house be not so with God, yet he has made with me an everlasting covenant order that all things ensure. It's all my salvation, all my desire. Oh, by the way, God didn't make it to grow. He included all the people in it to start with that were to be included in it. In the book of Amos, God says to Israel, rebellious and sinful Israel, after the division of the nations and Jeroboam had led the northern tribes astray, thee only have I known of all the peoples upon the earth. He didn't say, my omniscience didn't know about other nations. He's saying you were embraced by me in a special covenant sense. The New Covenant in Jeremiah 31, repeated in Hebrews 8 and Hebrews 10, says, They shall not teach every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord. They shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest. If they know him, does he know them? Of course he does. In Matthew, chapter one, the righteous engaged husband to be Joseph, discovering that his his fiancee, Mary, is pregnant. First thing, she's been unfaithful, contemplates divorce. Engagement in the New Testament culture of the Jews was as binding as marriage. It took a divorce to break an engagement. He's thinking to take this step, but he's willing to do it as a statement of, well, I've changed my mind. He doesn't want to make a disgraceful show of her and the Holy Spirit. appears to him and tells him the facts, the way they are, the rest of the story, as someone has said. He took her to his home. They were married. But the closing language of Matthew chapter one says he knew her not. So she had brought forth Jesus, her firstborn, and Mark tells us about Jesus, half brothers and sisters, they live together as husband and wife after Jesus is born. There's an intimate love in the husband-wife relationship. That's what it's talking about. For whom he did foreknow a sense of intimate covenant love. He knew them in the covenant. He loved them with an everlasting love in the covenant of grace. The same number, them, he also did predestinate. You've been here before. I'm going down the same path and I won't deviate. To be conformed to the image of his son. I'll never forget. Many years ago, a couple of adult women whose mother was a staunch primitive Baptist, but who had wandered away, they had wandered away from their mother's faith, and for a period of time, Mom influenced them to come back and hear our preaching. They struggled with the biblical doctrine, not the false doctrine, the biblical doctrine of predestination. They couldn't distinguish the two. One Sunday I was preaching and they were present and I preached on this passage and I said, someone says I object to that awful doctrine of predestination. I said, I want to ask you a question. Do you have a problem? Do you have any objection? When the resurrection day comes and Jesus raises your body out of the grave, do you have any objection to being raised in the image of Christ in His glory? Well, no, then you don't object to predestination. That's what it's all about. To be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. That's what it is. That's what covenant predestination is. All of these points are covenant points, principles of the covenant of grace. Those whom he predestinated, he called, named, called them out. The common teaching in our day-to-day, even among people who call themselves conservative Christians, is that biblical predestination and election has nothing to do with individuals being named by God and called out and saved. It has to do with God's dealings with Jews and Gentiles. Folks, this is a whom, a personal pronoun. Ephesians chapter 1 says He chose us, a personal pronoun, in Him before the foundation of the world that we should behold Him without blame before Him in love. It is personal and individual. And if you have any doubts about that, don't allegorize Romans chapter 9. God loved Jacob and hated Esau, two individual men in the Old Testament. And Paul draws the conclusion of the analogy in Romans 9 that this illustration of twin brothers still in the womb when God said the elder shall serve the younger is an illustration that the purpose of God according to election can you get away from two individuals in that case. Somebody says it's still Jews and Gentiles. Go down a little further in Romans chapter 9 after dealing with the principles of election. By the way, God is not a God of double election. He elected people to go to heaven and equally elected people to go to hell. That's not scripture. Paul specifically says in Romans 9, he prepared the vessels of mercy for glory, and he specifically says he endures with longsuffering the vessels of wrath. He didn't change the vessels of wrath. He didn't make them vessels of wrath. He endures them as they are. And then Paul says about these vessels of mercy, even us whom he has called. Not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. So much for the idea that predestination deals with Jews and Gentiles. Paul just eliminated the idea right there. And who he called he justified. Legal verdict. Two words in the New Testament translate over quite clearly into 21st century American language this way. Justification, the court's verdict, not guilty. Condemnation, the court's verdict, guilty as charged. For example, I quoted Matthew 5, 28 and 29 last night. All that are in the grave shall hear his voice and come forth. They that have done good to the resurrection of life, they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation. They are being resurrected to hear the pronouncement, the verdict guilty as charged. Away. Those included in God's covenant of salvation are justified. God views you. As if you possess every attribute of righteousness that belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ, no matter what you do. Your sins were nailed to his cross, and it wasn't a busted stapler that you can pull off. It's permanently attached. It was left there eternally and perpetually, and that righteousness which he earned and crowned at the cross is now fully charged to your account. That's what Paul says here. And whom he justified. Them he glorified. The very same number foreknown will be the number glorified. The same number God loved in eternity before he created the world and the universe in Genesis 1.1 will be the number that will come out of the graves in the image and glorious likeness of Christ and will spend eternity praising God in heaven. It's not a different number. It is the same number. And every one of these five links is connected with a personal pronoun whom, not what. The word predestinate is translated from the Greek word pro-horizo. The literal meaning is pro-in-advance, horizo-horizon, to set the horizon in advance. The very nature of the word does not encompass every single event of human history. It's the horizon you look at, not all the landscape between here and there. King James translators took that Greek word and translated it with a different word than predestinated in our King James Bible. And in both cases, they are dealing with the crucifixion of Christ. All right, follow me carefully here. I cannot make a biblical case, nor can anyone else, that God predestinated that honorable, fair minded civic rulers were suddenly grabbed by the ultimate hand of providence and power to do diabolical and evil things to my Lord. But I can read scripture and I can clearly get the pattern. They had evil intent to do far more than they did. But the hand of God intervened and didn't let them do it. God put the limit on what they did. He didn't force them to do what they didn't want to do. That's the meaning of the word. For God to cause you to do sin, and then turn around and be the healer of sin, is inconsistent and diabolical. Elder Lonnie Mazzingo, Jr. drew this analogy. It's the equivalent of God taking a two-by-four, beating you to within an inch of your life, leaving you on the side of the road to die, and just in the nick of time sends His paramedics with His ambulance, takes you to His hospital, and fixes you up and says, don't you think I'm a great guy? Is that something you can intuitively, perceptively grasp from Scripture and your conviction about God? Absolutely not. The foundation Paul has laid here is the foundation that says there is a master plan. It doesn't have to include every event. It does not include all the travesties of human sin, but it includes. a divine arrangement that finds you and, in fact, all of God's created order groaning under the weight of sin for deliverance and says, in the end, deliverance will come and we'll be sure. Life, death, principalities, powers, things present, things to come, nothing can separate you from the love of God. And in your weakest moment when you pray, that assurance encourages you to believe in answered prayer, doesn't it? Lord, if you provided for my eternity, if Jesus loved me and died for me, Lord, I need your help right now. Come help. We had a dear sister in our church who she died a few years ago with Alzheimer's, but before she became ill. She was telling me about a time earlier in her life. Her husband had passed away. She had an adult son who had a brain tumor. The doctors had essentially said, surgery is compulsory. There's no choice. And then the next paragraph, the doctor said, the chances of him surviving surgery are very slim. She goes home to an empty house the night before her son's surgery. She said, Brother Joe, I got out my Bible, and I opened it up on the side of my bed, and I got down on my knees on the floor beside my bed, and I read my Bible, and I prayed, Lord, give me some peace about my son. And then I read a little more, and I prayed a little more, and read a little more, and prayed a little more. And she said, finally, I couldn't get peace. I couldn't feel a relief. And she said, finally, I said, Lord, I'm not getting up. I'm going to stay here till you give me some comfort about my son." And she said, just like that, the Lord said, your son's going to be okay. She said, I went to bed, had a good night's rest, went in, the doctors operated on my son, and he was fine. Praise God. How many times have you prayed in desperate moments until your sweet relief later discovered wondrous answers? Beyond your imagination, God responded richly. That, my friends, is what Paul is talking about here. The whole scheme of God builds selectively and wisely and intuitively and perceptively. The things that God works for you are things that are good. They include your eternity and all the steps necessary. They include God's interactive responses to you here in time when you pray and when you need Him. And as you love Him, as you love Him and call on Him, He works. And it's always for your good. God bless you.