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The Holy Spirit has "conditioned you toward" responding in love and power beforehand - before the problem, trial, trouble, or circumstance occurs.
Romans 5:1-5 is a glorious scripture, and many of us don't necessarily feel real happy about these scriptures. I mean, when it talks about "glory in tribulations"…you've got to be joking!

And this one is a real enticement: "tribulation worketh patience." I doubt we'll all stand up to the line and say, "I'd like to order a thousand more of those tribulations, please." It is indeed a fact that spiritual truths often make our flesh cringe until our mind is renewed to the Truth of God and His Word.

God has had me on a mission regarding love and today He brought me to the fifth chapter of Romans. I understood why verse five would be included in the study of love, but how did verses one through five figure in?

So I began with a word study. I grabbed my faithful companion, the Strong's Concordance, and began to look up all the "big" words. I also engaged my Amplified Bible. Was I in for a surprise! When I finished, the Kathryn Stuckey Translation read like this:
Therefore, since we are justified (acquitted, declared righteous, and given a right standing with God) through faith, let us grasp the fact that we have the peace of reconciliation to hold and to enjoy, peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).

Through Him also we have our access (entrance, introduction) by faith into this grace - this state of God's favor - in which we firmly and safely stand. And let us rejoice and exult in our hope - our confident expectation - of experiencing and enjoying the glory of God.

Moreover, let us also be full of joy now! Let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure, affliction, and hardship engage our commitment to purpose - causing us to persevere and appropriately respond to our situation. Our response is governed by our purpose. Our commitment to purpose proves us faithful to our duty and shows us reliable to that which we have been entrusted.

Our faithfulness and reliability yields confident expectation and anticipation of the glory or goodness of God manifested in our life and situation. And such confident expectation is never disappointed because it is God's love spread in our heart by the Holy Spirit that is the foundation of our commitment and therefore our appropriate response to the situation.

If God, or love, is the author of our response and the author of our purpose, then we know without a shadow of a doubt that God's goodness will be manifested. Therefore, we can rejoice and be glad during and amid the "tribulation" because we know the end result for us is God's goodness in our life.
Now, is that different or what! All of a sudden, I realized that because of all God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have done I am predisposed to love—I am totally empowered to be victorious over any circumstance that arises in my life.

One of the hardest things I have had to accept is that I already have within me what I need to respond to the world in power and in love. That's right. If you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior you are predisposed to love and to be successful.

We Are Predisposed to Love
What do I mean, predisposed? I mean that the Holy Spirit has "conditioned you toward" responding in love and power beforehand - before the problem, trial, trouble, or circumstance occurs. We are predisposed to love. The Holy Spirit has spread abroad in our heart the love of God; therefore, our mind has been conditioned to be ruled by our heart filled with love.

Our usual way of responding is now to follow our heart by an act of will founded on the principles of love and our duty to our Lord and Master. This commitment to love stays in charge of our words, actions, opinions, thoughts, etc. and results in the doing of good deeds to the honor and glory of our God.

In other words, God working by the Holy Spirit has prepared our heart beforehand to respond appropriately to every situation and to emerge from every tribulation fully manifesting the goodness of God in our lives.

We can be happy, joyous, and free right now, regardless of the circumstances because we are in right standing with God and have been filled with His Spirit. The Holy Spirit has broadcast the love of God into the soil of our heart and we are ready to produce a harvest of love and power. Hallelujah! We make a commitment to live according to the Word of God.

Getting Into Position
We put ourselves in a position to hear the Word of God and let our mind be renewed by that Word. We act according to that Word, not our feelings, and end up living our life from our heart and not our head. We end up having the opportunity to have the same report that Jesus had - "who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him" (Acts 10:38).

As the Apostle Paul said in verse two, "Through Him also we have our access (entrance, introduction) by faith into this grace - this state of God's favor - in which we firmly and safely stand. And let us rejoice and exult in our hope - our confident expectation - of experiencing and enjoying the glory of God."

We are predisposed to love and can confidently take our place as a child of the Most High God. Let our flesh cringe if it must, but let us renew our mind by the Truth. Then let Truth set us free to live a life of joy, peace, power, and love.

Copyright © Church of the Fulness of God
All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Author Biography

Kathryn Stuckey
Web site: The Church of the Fulness of God
 
Kathryn Cypert Stuckey is the cofounder of the Church of the Fulness of God in Abilene, Texas. She assists her husband, David, in pastoring; however her primary duties are preaching and administrating. She leads The Ways of a Woman of God seminar and is the author of The Devil Knows Your Right!
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