If God is for me

"If God is for us, who can be against us?" Romans 8:31b

I've always had a great problem with church division, denominations, high-powered leaders and the like. I have a hard time with many people, believing many different, sometimes very contradictory things, all attaining eternal life. I have a hard time being wrong.

But here's the thing, and please correct me if you disagree. We think that if we pray, if we read God's word, if we give our money and time and follow as dedicated followers of God that we will always be right about the important stuff. Now this may be an overgeneralization but I know it's pretty true in my life. It seems we've taken the above verse out of context. If God is for me, who can be against me is the feel-good phrase we've taught our youth to courageously fight off spiritual bullies. And with even just the change of "us" to "me" it still holds the same value and definition. But the problem I've found is that when we believe ourselves to be firmly planted in Jesus we think that our way is the right way. We unconsciously change the "if" to "because" or just leave it out altogether. Is God really for us all the time? Is God really for me when I intentionally commit some ugly sin, well aware of what I'm getting myself into? Is He for me when I do very human, dumb things? I'm not asking if He forgives me, He knows me utterly, but I'm asking if He's for me in those ugly moments rooting me on in what I'm doing.

I don't believe He is. I believe He'll never leave me or forsake me. I believe He knit my inward parts and He knows all the sins I'll ever commit even before He called me to Himself. I believe He's an all-knowing, all-loving, all-encompassing God, and I believe He's cheering for me to root me out of those deep, dark places of sin. But I don't believe He's for my actions in all circumstances. But I think that's the difference in our often human definition of this passage and God's point. If God is for us, who can be against us? First, we have to look at the "if" and figure out if we're in a situation where God is for our actions. Second, we've got to divide God being for us and being for our actions. Those are two separate things. God is for the rescuing of our souls and He's always "for" us in that capacity. He's not always for our actions (and mine that's most of the time!). The last point I see here is piecing together who actually is being referred to as candidates that would be against us.

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" Ephesians 6:12.

We're not fighting other people. We're not fighting ourselves. We're not fighting our church, our government, our neighbors or our people adversaries. We're fighting evil. We're fighting the darkness and the power it takes on. Those people that you're fighting right now, yeah they don't apply to this verse. It doesn't necessarily mean you're fight is in vain, but it needs to be contextualized to find if it's really worth the effort you're putting in to be right and for them to be wrong. It all needs to be contextualized to see if our pride is really the thing getting in the way of making peace in our churches, in our neighborhoods, in our nation above what we think is the narrow way to eternal life. We need to come back, refocus and find out what God is for and stick to those things to advocate.