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Real Devotional 7

by David Joynt on May 07, 2022


ROMANS 8:28 | 28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

This verse, from Romans 8, is a neat summary of James’ first few verses. Paul describes these moments when we are so overwhelmed we can’t even pray. He chronicles the groaning of creation itself, glorious and broken and begging for restoration and renewal. He faces the reality of death all around us. But he also knows that suffering can be used by God to perfect and change us. It can deepen our knowledge and experience of God’s love, from which nothing can separate us. God can use persecution, hardship, distress, peril, famine, nakedness, or violence to turn us into conquerors and deepen our souls and hearts.

Read Romans 8 in its entirety.

Memorize today’s verse and one other from this chapter.

How has God been perfecting you?

Tags: god, you, romans 8, perfecting

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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