Not Alone

1. Not Alone (Romans 8:22-27; John 14:14-21)

2. Life is Hard Life is not easy: • If you know somebody who says life is easy, you may think about somebody else who is now struggling in one’s own darkness. • Life is neither easy nor fair, and some of us have to struggle with a lot more than others. • Abraham Lincoln didn’t have an easy life: lots of failures, the Civil War in the US. When he was able to enjoy his greatest triumph, he was assassinated.

3. Life is unfair: • If we know somebody who says life is easy, we can be sure somebody else is carrying that person’s weight and burden. • Michael works in a local convenience store full-time, while he is also going to school full-time. He works, goes to school, studies, makes good grades, and doesn’t have much fun because he has to work all the days. • Everyday I see a lot of kids his age whose parents are paying for everything… • Some of them will end up in high paying jobs where somebody else making less money will still carry their weight.

4. Not Giving up hope of life Time to look up: • When troubles come or when we feel really weak, sometimes we are tempted to give up, saying “Life is hard.” • When we feel hopeless in our lives, it’s time to look around and look up, not time to give up. • If we just give up our life, we may be free from dealing with the sense of pain and despair, but somebody else have to carry our burdens for us. • our suffering is not gone but is only moved to any other people who are related to us.

5. God carries our burdens: • We see God as the source of life and the ground of being • What if our Father God is really sick and tired of all humanity and turn away from us? Then, God would be free from all those problems happening in the world. • But then we human beings have to deal with and carry out all the burdens and troubles and our every sin. • Life is not easy, but we can still keep it going and even celebrate our days not because we are good but because God our Father carries and deals with our burdens.

6. The Holy Spirit pray for us People let us down: • “The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Rom. 8:21). • No matter how our families and friends care for us and we love them, they will all fail us as they die or leave us alone someday! • That’s why Jesus warns us not to love anyone more than God because they will someday let us down.

7. We let ourselves down: • It is not just other people, but sometimes we let ourselves down. • Paul confesses about his weakness, “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” (Rom. 7:19). • Life is hard because we human beings are so weak. If we had to handle a life that is out of our power, we might lose hope. We might despair soon. • Paul continues to cry, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (7:24).

8. The Good News: • We are not alone. • What we couldn’t do, Christ has already done for us: death and resurrection! • God the Holy Spirit has been poured out on us, so that we can call God “Abba, Father” (v. 15). • “The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with grans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will” (v. 17-18).

9. Repent and Worship the True God Worshiping the true God: • If we do not worship the true God but still say we worship the Lord, then we may only worship God’s gifts instead of the Giver. • Loved ones die or they leave us… All the pleasures of this world are soon gone by. Worship the wrong things, and, yes, God will show us how foolish we are! • “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). • Jesus was only warning us not to worship wrongly; he was turning our hearts to God our Father, the only Lord who can save us from troubles and keep our lives going in peace and joy.

10. Repent and free from our bondage: • About our new worship format, many people are glad to have “the prayer of confession.” It is time for us to confess our sins and so for God to clean our hearts and minds. • “Unless we confess our sins, we can’t come before the Lord and worship God.” • Unless we confess our sins, we can’t receive God’s holiness in our hearts. • As we repent, and as we worship the Lord only, we can be liberated from our bondage to corruption and brought into the abiding help and presence of God our Father (v. 21).

11. Time to receive the Holy Spirit • In the midst of our troubled life and this uncertain world, Jesus promises all his disciples and us today, “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you” (Jn. 14: 18). • We are not alone, not abandoned, not orphaned, and not deceived by anything false from the world because the Risen Christ stands in our midst by the power of the Holy Spirit. • Life is not easy, but life is good because the Holy Spirit is now with us, praying for us, leading us, carrying our burdens, and having hope of life for us. • Thanks be to God! Amen!