Romans 8:27
It happened to me a few summers ago. I got sucked into watching “American Ninja Warrior.” Believe me, the irony is not lost on me that I spent many an hour sitting on my butt on the couch watching other people go for broke on a crazy obstacle course. But it was fun to see them conquer it. We all love a great victory story, don’t we?
But what happens when the obstacles are overwhelming? And I’m not talking about a TV show anymore. I’m talking about life.
In Romans 8, Paul pretty much assumes that we will encounter “trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword” (v.35). Now, a few of those are a bit extreme. Hopefully you and I won’t have to face famine or a sword...or public nakedness for that matter. But all of us face things that threaten to take us down. Things that strike at our courage. Things that leave us feeling deflated.
What do we do then?
We remember that nothing we face has the power to defeat us.
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” -Romans 8:37
We aren’t just conquerors, Paul writes, we are more than conquerors. We haven’t just claimed a victory, we claim the victory to end all victories.
Why? Because we can never be loved more than we are loved right now.
Isn’t that what drives so much of our desire to win? We want to be loved. Maybe we want to be loved by our family or our friends or our co-workers or the random stranger on Instagram. Maybe it’s that we want to love ourselves. We want to be proud of what we’ve accomplished (and there is certainly nothing wrong with that).
But we are “more than conquerors” because we already have the greatest love we could ever know and that love is so secure that “neither death nor life...neither the present nor the future…neither missed promotions nor lonely Friday nights…neither broken friendships nor lost opportunities…neither overdrawn bank accounts nor failed midterms…will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (v.38-39, with a few changes).
So, dear conquerors, you have already won. You are fully and completely and unalterably loved by the God of the universe. Let that victory give you peace, strength, and hope today. And then go out there and live victoriously knowing you have already won.