Next Chapter: Living Through Perseverance

Sermon Quick Summary
Over the past few weeks, as we have entered into a new season, we’ve been exploring what it means to step into the Next Chapter of God’s calling on our lives and where God is leading us next. Today’s message acknowledges the reality of persevering during a hard next chapter of our life that many are facing. The Apostle Paul explains in Romans 8:18-25 the sure, confident hope of believers in the midst of suffering. All creation, including believers in Christ, is groaning. The Holy Spirit intercedes for us. Pastor Tammy Long shared parallels between Paul’s message of Perseverance and the African American Experience. Lyrics to the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing” also parallel Paul’s message of Perseverance. Here are practical ways to persevere: (1) Lament: Bring Your Pain and Suffering to God. (2) Embrace God-Given Distractions in Shifting Your Focus. (3) Lean into Community Support. Move forward with hope and trusting God by applying these practical ways to persevere.

Today’s message acknowledges the reality of persevering during a hard next chapter of our life that many are facing
            It can be hard to think about purpose and passion when our life stories feel as though they are on hold, when we are bombarded with struggles that feel insurmountable, or when we’re in chapters of pain, suffering, or deep disappointment. For example, living in a hard chapter is what our brothers and sisters are experiencing right now in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. Even just watching the news clips, it’s hard to imagine what they are going through.
            However, there are broader concerns. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America nearly 60% of U.S. adults experience anxiety each year, and about 40 million suffer from depression. The CDC has reported a rise in suicide rates, especially among teens and young adults. This trend is alarming in the African American community, as we shared in our Genesis workshop recently. Further, a 2022 report from the American Psychological Society found that 87% of Americans are stressed about inflation and the rising cost of living, as we are hearing in the current election conversations. Then there are individuals with chronic physical illness; they are 2–3 times more likely to experience depression or anxiety adding another layer to their challenges. This doesn’t even speak to issues like societal problems such as poverty and homelessness, or the pain of broken relationships. Any of these realities can lead down a path of hopelessness. It can be hard even to think about the next chapters with purpose or passion. So the question becomes, how do we respond when life is simply too much to bear? What do we do when we’re feeling hopeless? How do we move forward when the next chapter feels too distant and out of reach?
           
The Apostle Paul explains in Romans 8:18-25 the sure, confident hope of believers in the midst of suffering
Suffering is a part of our story in this broken world, but Paul wants us to focus on the sure, confident hope that God provides in Romans 8:18-25. “18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory He will reveal to us later. 19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who His children really are. 20 Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. 24 We were given this hope when we were saved. If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it.  25 But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.” In this passage, Paul acknowledges a truth we often don’t like to talk about: suffering is a part of our story in this broken world. Suffering hurts deeply, but God provides hope.

All Creation, including believers in Christ, is groaning
            Even creation is groaning (verses 22), waiting for restoration. Global warming, hurricanes, and earthquakes all reflect that all is not how it should be. We are not living in heaven on earth. The damage and ravages of sin continue to impact every aspect of this world. As believers in Christ, we are groaning too (verse 23). We feel the pain of illness and disease. We struggle with challenges that come from living in this fallen world. Our struggles include mentally, physically, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually. We see the effects of aging no matter how hard we try to slow it down, for we know that physical death is inevitable.
            We long for the day when God’s glory will be fully revealed, and God restores this earth. All will be right with the world as God intends it to be. Paul uses the metaphor of childbirth to illustrate this experience. The groaning of creation, the groaning of our hearts, is like the labor pains of a mother anticipating new life. Childbirth is painful, intense, long, and yet with the promise of leading to something glorious. Paul tells us the suffering we endure now pales in comparison to the glory that is coming. Paul doesn’t dismiss the suffering; he doesn’t tell us to just get over it. The Apostle Paul validates it, and he reframes it.
            Here is the key: Our suffering isn’t meaningless. It is part of our story. It’s part of God’s story. It’s part of the journey toward something greater, toward the full revelation of God’s plan for our lives and for the world.

The Holy Spirit intercedes for us as believers
            In the next verses, Romans 8:26-27, after the scripture we heard this morning, Paul tells us that when we are too weak to find the words, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, praying on our behalf. Romans 8:26-27 declares, “26 And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. The Holy Spirit prays for us with groaning that cannot be expressed in words. 27 And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will.” When we become followers of Jesus, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is our counselor, guide, and comforter.
            Even though Paul is ultimately talking about this life now and the life to come, he tells us we also get a small taste of that future life. Even in the midst of pain and suffering in this world, God is with us and gives us a foretaste of the life to come here on earth as we experience God’s peace, love, and the joy of God’s very presence in the midst of whatever we may be going through. That foretaste will eventually be the norm of a new heaven and earth and the future hope that awaits us.
            This is the hope we were given when we accept Jesus, that one day evil and sin will be eradicated once and for all, and we will be with God forever. It is not an empty hope but a confident expectation that what God promised, God will fulfill. The presence of the Holy Spirit is not only proof that God can be trusted, but also proof of God’s presence with us as God’s adopted children. God’s story continues to unfold and God completes God’s plan for the earth.
            The Holy Spirit is a down payment now for what is still to come. That is God’s promise to us. Even in the hard times of life in seasons of pain, suffering, disappointment, discouragement, and all the other expressions of the brokenness of this world, Paul tells us to wait with patience and confidence. We trust that God is working even when we can’t see it because we have a future and a hope in both the now and in the not yet that is coming.
            In other words, long before Rev. Jessie Jackson said it, Paul told us “to keep hope alive, to hold on, and to persevere.” Whatever we are going through, the story is not over. For many of us, this is the message for our next chapter: to keep going, to keep holding on to hope, and to live through perseverance.
 
Pastor Tammy Long shared parallels between Paul’s message of Perseverance and the African American Experience
            Pastor Tammy Long shared: This idea of perseverance and holding onto hope, even in the darkest times, resonated with me deeply during my sabbatical. For an entire month, I traveled on the East Coast from Albany, New York, to Orlando, Florida. The focus of the trip was to visit African American historical sites because I wanted to explore my story as an African American and reflect on God’s presence in this cultural story. I visited several African American museums, including the National African American History and Cultural Museum in Washington, D.C, and numerous local museums along the way. I visited historical homes dating back to the late 1800s, including the homes of Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Maggie L. Walker, Mary McLeod Bethune, Howard Thurman, and Harry T Moore. I stopped at any historical African American church on my route, some dating as far back as the Reconstruction Era.
            I walked the grounds of the Kingsley Plantation, as well as a historic black-owned hotel in Orlando, built by Dr. William Monroe Wells in 1929. I walked the streets of Eatonville, Florida, the first and oldest town successfully established by African American freedmen in 1887, and also the place where Zora Neale Hurston grew up.
            There is so much history in so many stories. I walked through spaces that told stories of suffering, oppression, racial trauma, and deep systemic inequities. There were times when the weight of the history I encountered felt overwhelming. How do you hold on to hope when everything around you is falling apart? How do you trust in God’s promises when injustice is everywhere? How do you persevere? As I reflected on these experiences, I was also deeply moved by the stories of resistance, resilience, ingenuity, and stories of faith in God that held strong and rose from the ashes of despair despite the circumstances. These were people who, like Paul, understood that suffering was not the end of the story. They lived with an unshakable hope, believing that God was at work, even in the most challenging chapters of their stories. They moved into the next chapter with God through perseverance.
            One museum I especially enjoyed was the Ritz Theater and Museum in Jacksonville, Florida. The Ritz still stands today. The Ritz was constructed in 1999 on the site of the original 1929 Ritz Theater movie house, located in a historically Black area that was once known as the Harlem of the South. If you ever get to Jacksonville, it’s a treasure that is very well done, reflecting permanent and rotating exhibits of African American life in the early 20th century through today.

Lyrics to the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing” also parallel Paul’s message of Perseverance
            One of the permanent features of the Ritz Theatre is an animatronic exhibit featuring the story of two of Jacksonville’s most famous natives, James Weldon and J. Rosalind Johnson, who wrote in 1900 “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” By then, the era of Reconstruction had already passed, and Jim Crow was alive and well. Pastor Tammy Long shared: I’ve been singing this since I was a little girl and have continued to appreciate the lyrics as I’ve gotten older. But while I was at this museum, with the backdrop of all the history I had been exploring, and while I was preparing this message with God’s Word in my mind, the truth and power of this song hit me in a fresh way. The song “Lift Every Voice and Sing” captures so well the message of hope and perseverance. It exemplifies what Paul is trying to tell us.
            This song speaks to how to move to the next chapter through perseverance when life is hard. Let us hear the lyrics afresh. As we hear the song, let the words wash over you, keeping Paul’s words in Romans 8 close to your heart.
            Let’s view the Video of “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p30rG27_d5mGXUC00XLm-fVDQIV8GiGO/view
            In the first verse of Lift Every Voice and Sing, the call to “lift every voice” echoes Paul’s encouragement for us to hold on to hope, even when we are groaning under the weight of suffering. The song is more than about a physical act of singing. It is a spiritual act of lifting our voices to God in prayer, in hope, and in trust. Even in hardship, we are called to persevere with praise on our lips. Even when we feel voiceless, the Spirit is lifting our voice before the Father, just as the song lyric invites us to sing “until earth and heaven ring.”
            The second verse of Lift Every Voice and Sing moves deeper into the reality of suffering. “Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod, felt in the days when hope unborn had died. Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet come to the place for which our fathers sighed?” This verse brings to life the groaning Paul speaks about in Romans 8:22. All creation groans as we feel the weight of pain and suffering.  The “stony road” and “bitter rod” reflect the very real trials we face in life from times when it feels like hope has died before it ever had a chance to be born. Yet the song reminds us that even in those moments, we are to keep moving forward with a “steady beat” just as Paul encourages us to hold on to hope in our suffering and to persevere. Paul acknowledges the weariness of our journey, but he also points us toward the promise of God’s ultimate victory. God’s glory will one day be revealed. Every step of our journey will have been worth it.
            The third verse of the song shifts toward a prayer. ”God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who has brought us thus far on the way; Thou who has by Thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray.” This prayer mirrors Paul’s words in Romans 8:26-27 again. The Spirit intercedes for us in our weakness. Romans 8:26-27 calls upon God to continue leading us on the path, even when we are weary. When we feel lost with silent tears, we have the promise of the Holy Spirit, who not only guides us, but prays for us when we don’t know how to pray.
            The lyric “cry for God to keep us forever in the path” is exactly what Paul is calling us to remember that God is working all things together for good (Romans 8:28). This lyric is a call to trust in God’s sovereign hand and to believe that the same God who has brought us through past struggles will continue to lead us forward.
            God can speak to us through so many mediums and reaffirm God’s Word. As we consider God’s message for us today, both from God’s Word and repeated through the song, we see a powerful truth that perseverance isn’t something we do on our own. It’s the Holy Spirit who lifts us up, who intercedes for us, and who guides us, even when we feel too weak to move forward to the next chapter. God’s presence is with us leading us through the stony roads and silent tears into the light of God’s purpose, in this life and the eternal life to come.

Here are practical ways to persevere:
            What does perseverance look like in our everyday lives? How do we live out perseverance, especially when life feels overwhelming, and we are hurting? How do we move from what we know in our heads to living it out in our hearts with actions, to live through perseverance? Trusting God in confident hope, here are three ways we can live into our next chapter through perseverance.
(1) Lament: Bring Your Pain and Suffering to God
The first way to persevere with hope is by embracing lament. Lament is an invitation to be honest with God about our pain. Just as Lift Every Voice and Sing reflects on the “stony road we trod” and the “bitter chastening rod,” we too can bring our hardships to God in prayer. Remember, even when we don’t know how to pray, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groans too deep for words. Lament is not a sign of weakness; it’s a pathway to healing and part of persevering. In lament, we acknowledge our pain and also acknowledge God’s presence with us. We lay our burdens on God, trusting that the Holy Spirit is praying for us, even when we can’t find the words.
There are as many as 65 Psalms of Lament in the Book of Psalms; that’s almost half the entire book. There is also an entire book in the Bible called Lamentations. We can be real about our pain. We can let the tears flow. Tears can be a healthy release.
As David writes in Psalm 56:8, God collects every one of our tears. The sure, confident hope is in the truth that God is with us in our pain.
(2) Embrace God-Given Distractions in Shifting Your Focus
            Another way we can persevere is by embracing God-given distractions. Sometimes, we can get so caught up in our suffering that we forget to see the moments of grace and joy that God provides. Like the steady beat in “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” there are rhythms in our lives that God gives to help us keep moving forward. These might be small moments of beauty like time with loved ones, a creative outlet, or even a walk in nature. These God-given distractions are not about avoiding reality but about reminding ourselves that God’s goodness is present even in the midst of hardship. They help us shift our focus from despair to hope, from pain to praise, and remind us of the goodness of God in the midst of our circumstances. Just as James Weldon Johnson encourages us to “lift every voice and sing,” these moments are opportunities to lift our hearts in gratitude for the good that still exists, even when life is hard.
(3) Lean into Community Support
            Finally, perseverance means leaning into the community of believers. Remember, God has placed us in a family with brothers and sisters in Christ. Just as God has brought us “thus far on the way,” God has also given us the gift of community to walk alongside us.
            When the road feels too hard to bear, we need the support of others. We need friends, family, and our church community to remind us of God’s promises, to pray with us, and to encourage us to keep going. Just as the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, we too are called to intercede for one another, lifting each other up in times of need.

Move forward with hope and trusting God by applying these practical ways to persevere
Let’s move forward with hope and trusting God, as the Apostle declares in Romans 8:35-39. “35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean He no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? 37 No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. 38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The Apostle Paul declaration of moving forward with hope is expressed in our closing song: “Through It All” by Andre Crouch.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v5sLi5nPzpfvmSKnU5oUEY9-eL8Sz970/view
 
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS INCLUDING FAMILY GROUPS
Sermon Quick Summary
-For further explanation of any statement in the Quick Summary, review the discussion and questions under the heading for that statement.
Today’s message acknowledges the reality of living through perseverance in a hard chapter that many of us are facing
-When you hear the word “perseverance” what comes to mind? How has perseverance played a role in your own life, especially during difficult seasons?
The Apostle Paul explains in Romans 8:18-25 the sure, confident hope of believers in the midst of suffering
-In Romans 8:18, Paul says, “What we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory He will reveal to us later.” How do you understand this in light of your current struggles? What does it mean to hold on to hope in the midst of suffering? In consideration of Paul’s similar declaration in 2 Corinthians 4:15-18, what is the glory revealed in and to us later?
Creation, including believers in Christ, is groaning
-Both creation and humanity are described as “groaning” for the full restoration of God’s Kingdom (Romans 8:21-23). How does this resonate with you? Why does Paul enlarge the perspective to include the whole creation, not just believers in Christ? How has creation been subject to “death and decay” (verse 21) since the fall of Adam and Eve that brings groaning? Why did Paul use the example of childbirth to demonstrate hope and freedom from groaning?
The Holy Spirit intercedes for us
-How does knowing that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us (Romans 8:23, 26-27) impact the way you approach God during seasons of hardship? How can you practically rely on the Holy Spirit’s guidance when you feel too weak to pray?
Pastor Tammy Long shared parallels between Paul’s message of Perseverance and the African American Experience
-The sermon draws parallels between Paul’s message and the African American experience. How do stories of historical perseverance inspire your own faith journey? Can you think of other examples (either personal or historical) where faith in God helped people endure trials?
Lyrics to the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing” also parallel Paul’s message of Perseverance
-As you listen to the lyrics of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which lyrics speak to your life of moving to the next chapter when life is hard? Why?
 (1) Lament: Bring Your Pain and Suffering to God
-Why is embracing lament to bring your pain and suffering to God not a sign of weakness, but it is a pathway to healing and persevering?
(2) Embrace God-Given Distractions in Shifting Your Focus
-Why is it important to embrace God-given distractions that remind us of God’s presence and the guidance of the Holy Spirit in moving forward with perseverance?
(3) Lean into Community Support
-Why is it so important to intercede for one another, lifting each other up in times of need?
Practical Ways to Persevere: Lament, God given distractions, community support
-Which of the three ways to live out perseverance resonates most with you? How might you implement one of these in your life this week?
Apply to your life the benediction of moving forward with hope and trusting God
-In what ways can you apply to your life the benediction (blessing) of perseverance in moving forward with hope and trusting God as expressed by Paul in Romans 8: 35-39 and the closing song, “Through It All?” When have you trusted God and experienced God’s faithfulness during hardship? How might remembering past experiences help you in your current or future struggles? What is a step you can take this week to keep moving forward in hope, even if the road ahead feels difficult?