Worship
Service for June 14, 2026
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the
earth!
P: We come to worship the Lord with gladness.
L: Know that the Lord is God.
P: It is God who made us and we belong to God.
L: Enter God’s gates with thanksgiving, and
God’s courts with praise.
P: We give thanks and bless God’s holy name.
L: For the Lord is good, his steadfast love
endures forever.
P: Let us worship God together.
Opening
Hymn – For the Beauty of the Earth Hymn #473/182
Prayer of Confession
Holy and Truine God, You
created the heavens and the earth and crowned humanity with honor, yet we have
failed to honor you as our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. You call us to walk in wisdom, but we often
choose the path of self-interest and pride.
We have trusted our own understanding rather than seeking Your
truth. We have ignored Your voice and
neglected Your will. Though You have
justified us through Christ and poured Your love into our hearts through the
Holy Spirit, we confess that we do not always live as people of hope. We grow inpatient in suffering, fearful in
uncertainty, and reluctant to trust Your promises. Forgive us, O Lord. Renew our minds with your wisdom, strengthen
our faith through Your grace, and guide us by Your Spirit into all truth. Restore us to joyful obedience, that our
lives may reflect Your glory and proclaim Your goodness to the world. We pray in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Spirit. (Silent
prayers are offered)
AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Hear the good news: God proves his love
for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Through is life, death, and resurrection, we
are reconciled to God and welcomed into the family of faith.
P: In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven,
restored, and sent forth to serve the Lord.
AMEN!
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge
the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins; the
resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Gracious and loving God,
We come before You this morning grateful for the gift of
Your presence and the assurance of Your grace. We thank You that through our Lord Jesus
Christ we have peace with You and that nothing can separate us from Your love. We thank You for the countless ways You
sustain us each day, for Your faithfulness in every season, and for the hope we
have because of Your promises.
As we worship today, we acknowledge that many among us
carry burdens and concerns. Some come
with grateful hearts and songs of praise, while others arrive weary from the
struggles of life. Yet wherever we find
ourselves today, we are thankful that You welcome us into Your presence and
invite us to cast all our cares upon You.
We thank You for Your promise that You are present even
in the valleys, working in ways we cannot always see, producing endurance,
shaping our character, and leading us toward a hope that will never disappoint
us.
We pray for those who are ill in body, mind, or spirit. Bring healing where healing is needed, comfort
where there is pain, and strength where there is weakness. Give wisdom to physicians, nurses, caregivers,
and all who minister to those who suffer.
We especially pray for…
We pray for Your Church throughout the world. Strengthen believers who face persecution,
hardship, and opposition because of their faith. Help Your people everywhere bear witness to
the hope of the gospel through lives marked by faithfulness, compassion, and
love.
We pray for our nation and its leaders. Grant wisdom where there is confusion, justice
where there is inequity, and understanding where there is division. Guide those entrusted with authority to seek
the welfare of all people and to serve with humility and wisdom.
We pray for our world, where so many continue to
experience violence, conflict, poverty, disaster, and fear. Bring peace where there is war, comfort where
there is suffering, and hope where there is despair. Raise up peacemakers and servants of mercy,
and let Your light shine in every dark place.
And now, O Lord, hear the prayers that we offer in the
silence of our hearts….
Lord, in Your mercy, receive these prayers and those too
deep for words. By Your Holy Spirit, sustain us through every trial, strengthen
us in every challenge, and remind us daily that Your love has been poured into
our hearts through Jesus Christ our Savior.
We ask all these things in the name of Jesus Christ, who taught us to
pray, saying:
Our
Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our
debtors. And lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. AMEN.
Hymn – How Great Thou Art Hymn #467/147
Scripture Reading(s):
Psalm
100
Romans
5:1-8
Sermon –
Through the Storm to Hope
Romans 5:3-5
There
are some passages of Scripture that make perfect sense when everything in life
is going well, but become much more difficult to understand when we are sitting
in a doctor's office waiting for test results, standing beside a graveside,
watching a relationship fall apart, or wondering how we’re going to make it
through another week. Romans 5 is one of
those passages. Paul writes, "We
boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and
endurance produces character, and character produces hope." Most of us hear those words and wonder if
Paul is describing real life, because suffering is not something we naturally
celebrate. We spend most of our lives trying
to avoid it, praying for relief from it, or asking God to explain why it comes
to us in the first place.
Yet
these words come from a man who knew suffering intimately. Paul was not writing
from the comfort of a quiet study or reflecting on hardships he had only
observed from a distance. He had been
beaten, imprisoned, rejected, misunderstood, and persecuted. He knew what it meant to hurt physically,
emotionally, and spiritually. And yet,
looking back on his life and looking forward through the eyes of faith, he
could say that suffering was not meaningless.
It was not pleasant, and it was certainly not something he sought out,
but it was something that God used. Paul
had discovered that God often accomplishes some of His most important work in
us during the very seasons we would never choose for ourselves.
One of
the things I appreciate about this passage is that Paul does not tell us that
suffering itself is good. There are
Christians who sometimes talk as though pain is a blessing in itself, but
Scripture never says that. Disease is not good.
Grief is not good. Loneliness is
not good. Death is not good. These are all reminders that we live in a
broken world that is still groaning for redemption. The Christian faith does not require us to
pretend otherwise. When Jesus stood at
the tomb of Lazarus, even knowing that He was about to raise him from the dead,
He still wept. Yes? The pain of this world is real. And Paul isn’t trying to tell us otherwise.
What
Paul does tell us, however, is that God is able to do something remarkable with
our suffering. He is able to take
experiences that seem only destructive and use them as instruments of God’s own
grace. In God's hands, suffering becomes
a tool that can shape us, refine us, and prepare us for something greater than
we can see in the moment.
A
friend of mine has done multiple marathons, which has made absolutely no sense
to me. I’m not a marathoner, I’m not
even a runner. Some days, I’m barely a
walker. One day I asked him why he
runs. What makes you like to do
marathons? This is what he told me.
When I was in my early
twenties, I decided I wanted to run a marathon.
At first, it sounded exciting. I
bought new shoes, mapped out a training plan, and imagined myself crossing the
finish line. But I quickly discovered
that marathons are not won on race day.
They are won in the countless ordinary days beforehand. A few weeks into training, I developed pain
in my knee. Every run hurt. Some mornings I wanted to stay in bed. Other days it rained, or I was exhausted from
work, or I simply lost motivation. More
than once I thought about quitting altogether.
But I kept going. I learned how
to run through discomfort. I learned
patience when progress seemed slow. I
learned discipline when enthusiasm disappeared.
Little by little, the struggle changed me. I wasn't just becoming a better runner; I was
becoming a different person. Months
later, I stood at the starting line of the marathon. As I looked around, I realized
something. The confidence I felt was not
based on wishful thinking. It was based
on what I had already endured. Every
early morning, every sore muscle, every difficult mile had proven
something. It had shown me that I could
keep going. When I finally crossed the
finish line, the greatest victory was not the medal around my neck. It was the hope I carried within me. I knew that future challenges could be faced
because I had already seen what perseverance could produce.
That
is what Paul is describing in Romans 5.
Suffering is like those painful training days. But hope is not just optimism. It’s the assurance that comes from seeing
God's faithfulness through every difficult mile of the journey. Paul describes this process almost like a
chain reaction. One thing leads to
another. Suffering produces
endurance. Endurance produces proven
character. Character produces hope. And when we step back and look at the whole
progression, we begin to see that Paul is describing not merely what happens to
us during difficult times but what God is doing within us through those
difficult times.
The
first thing suffering produces is endurance.
Now endurance is not a particularly exciting word. We admire achievement, success, and
accomplishment, but endurance sounds much less impressive. Endurance simply means continuing to move
forward when stopping would be easier. It means remaining faithful when
circumstances would tempt us to quit. It
means getting up one more day and trusting God one more time when we feel as
though we have nothing left to give.
Most
of us would never volunteer for the experiences that build endurance. We would prefer to learn patience without
waiting, courage without fear, and trust without uncertainty. Yet life simply does not work that way. The qualities we admire most in other people
are almost always forged through difficulty.
When we meet someone whose faith seems deep and steady, whose confidence
in God remains unshaken through adversity, we are usually meeting someone who
has walked through valleys we know nothing about. Their faith did not become strong
overnight. It was shaped through years
of trusting God when the path ahead was unclear.
Think
about the people in your own life whose faith has inspired you. Perhaps it was
a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, or a friend. Chances are their faith became compelling not
because they had an easy life but because they remained faithful through a
difficult one. They learned something in
suffering that could not have been learned any other way. They discovered that
God's grace was sufficient not because they read it in a book but because they
experienced it in their own lives.
And
that endurance, Paul says, begins to produce something else. It produces character. It is the language of precious metals that
have passed through the fire and emerged purified. Character is not simply what we claim to
believe. Character is what remains after
life has tested those beliefs.
One of
the things suffering does is strip away our illusions. It reveals what we are truly trusting. As long as life is comfortable, it is easy to
imagine that we are self-sufficient. We
begin to think that our plans, our abilities, and our resources are enough to
carry us through. Then a crisis arrives,
and suddenly we discover how fragile many of those assumptions really
were. Yet even that discovery can become
a gift, because it teaches us once again that our hope was never meant to rest
upon ourselves in the first place.
The
remarkable thing is that as God sustains us through those moments, we begin to
develop a character marked by humility, patience, compassion, and trust. We become people who know not only that God
is faithful but why we believe He is faithful.
We have seen His faithfulness firsthand.
And it is precisely that proven character that leads to hope.
That
may seem a little backwards to us because we often think hope comes first. We hope that things will get better. We hope that God will answer our prayers. We hope that the future will somehow work
out. But Paul says that real Christian
hope grows out of experience. It grows
out of seeing God's faithfulness over and over again, even when circumstances
would suggest that we have every reason to despair.
You
have probably experienced this yourself. You can look back over your life and
remember situations that seemed overwhelming at the time. Perhaps there were
financial struggles that kept you awake at night. Perhaps there were health
concerns that filled you with fear.
Perhaps there were family crises that left you wondering how things
would ever be made right. In those
moments, you could not see what God was doing.
You could not see the end of the story.
You could only take the next step and trust Him.
Looking
back, you can see the evidence of God’s presence all along the way. You can see doors that God opened. You can see strength that God provided. You can see comfort that arrived just when it
was needed. You can see people God
placed in your path. You can see how God sustained you when you were convinced
you couldn’t go on. But let me tell you,
if you are in the midst of that right now, you can’t. One day, you will be able to look back. Not now.
Maybe not even tomorrow or next month or even a year from now, but you
will be able to do that one day.
If you have seen God’s
faithfulness in the past, you can find yourself able to trust Him more deeply
in the present. That is hope.
Hope
is not pretending everything is fine when it is not. Hope is not ignoring reality. Hope is not wishful thinking or positive
thinking. Christian hope is confidence
that God is who He says He is and that God will do what God has promised to do,
even when we cannot yet see now.
God is actively at work in the
lives of His people. The suffering does
not produce endurance by itself. The
endurance does not produce character by itself.
The character does not produce hope by itself. Underneath all of it is the gracious hand of
God shaping and molding God’s own children.
The
image that comes to mind is that of a potter working with clay. As the clay spins on the wheel, it may not
understand why the potter's hands press here and reshape there. If the clay could speak, it might object to
the pressure. It might resist the
process. Yet the potter sees what the
clay cannot see. The potter knows what
he is creating. In much the same way,
God often sees what we cannot see.
When
we are in the middle of suffering, we usually want explanations. We want answers. We want to know why this happened and why it
happened now. Yet God gives us something
better than explanations. He gives us
Himself. He gives us His presence. He gives us His promises. He gives us the assurance that He has not
abandoned us and that His purposes are still being accomplished even when they
remain hidden from our sight.
That
is why Paul can make such an astonishing statement in verse 5: "Hope does
not disappoint us." Think about how
many hopes disappoint us in this life.
We hope for success and encounter failure. We hope for health and face illness. We hope relationships will last forever and
sometimes discover that they do not. We
hope our plans will unfold exactly as we imagined, only to find ourselves on an
entirely different path. Human hopes
disappoint us because they are tied to circumstances that are constantly
changing. But our hope as Christians
rests upon something far more secure. It
rests upon the character of God who does not change.
Paul says, "Hope does not
disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the
Holy Spirit that has been given to us."
Notice where Paul ends. He does
not end with our endurance. He doesn’t
end with our character. He doesn’t even
end with our hope. Paul ends this
section of scripture with God's love.
The
ultimate proof of God's love is not that He keeps us from every hardship. The ultimate proof of God's love is that He
entered our hardship. In Jesus Christ,
God stepped into our broken world. He
experienced rejection, suffering, sorrow, and death itself. He carried it all upon the cross and rose
again in victory so that nothing—not suffering, not loss, not pain, not even
death—could separate us from the love of God.
That
means when we suffer, we do not suffer alone.
Christ walks with us. When we
struggle, Christ sustains us. When we
cannot see the future, Christ holds the future in His hands. And because He does, we can keep moving
forward, even when the road is difficult.
The
wonderful truth of Romans 5 is that God is doing more than helping us survive
our suffering. He is using it to shape
us. He is producing endurance. He is forming proven character. He is building hope. And through it all, He is teaching us to
trust more deeply in the love that He has already shown us in Jesus Christ.
So, if
you find yourself in a season of suffering today, remember that the story is
not finished. What feels like an ending
may actually be part of God's process of forming something beautiful within
you. The pain is real, but it is not
pointless. The struggle is difficult,
but it is not wasted. For the God who
began a good work in you has not abandoned that work. God is still shaping you. God is still sustaining you. God is still leading you forward. And one day, when we stand in God’s presence
and see clearly what we can now only glimpse through faith, we’ll discover that
even the darkest valleys were held securely within God’s loving hands.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Offertory – (Call for the Offering)
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Gracious God, All that we have
comes from Your generous hand, and so we return to You a portion of what You
have entrusted to us. Receive these
gifts and use them for the work of Your kingdom, that lives may be touched,
needs may be met, and the good news of Jesus Christ may be proclaimed. And as we dedicate these offerings, we
dedicate ourselves anew to Your service. Use our hands, our hearts, and our lives for
Your glory. Through Christ our Lord we
pray. Amen.
Closing Hymn – Jesus, the very Thought of Thee Hymn #310/89
Benediction –
Go now in peace, trusting in the God who meets you in every
circumstance. When trials come, may He give you endurance; through endurance,
may He strengthen your character; and through character, may He fill you with a
hope that does not disappoint.
And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of
God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you now and always. Amen.
Postlude
