The Frustration That Nothing Stays Fixed | Romans 8:20-21

You solved the drummer problem in March. You recruited, you trained, you sat through eleven rehearsals teaching where the fills go, and by June he had moved to Charlotte. You solved the cable problem by labeling every single one. Somebody borrowed three for a youth event and they have not come back. You wrote the onboarding document. Nobody read the onboarding document. And under all of it runs a low hum you would be embarrassed to say out loud in a staff meeting. Does anything I fix stay fixed.

Paul is about to tell you the instinct is accurate, and then tell you what it is for. Romans 8:20-21. World English Bible. "For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God."

Vanity. Futility. The condition of things not holding. Paul says creation was subjected to it, which means the not-holding is not your imagination and it is not a personal failure of your systems. It is the current setting of the world. Then look at the two clauses he bolts on. Not of its own will. And in hope. Those two phrases are the entire difference between a Christian reading of decay and a cynical one.

I lived a version of this for years. I knew the vision of our church. I helped create the vision. I helped design the graphic of the vision and the t-shirt that had the graphic printed on it. And then in execution, week after week, the whole thing would bend around whoever was not on board with doing it that way. Nothing I built stayed built at the shape I built it. For a long stretch I read that as evidence that I was bad at my job.

Somebody in our survey wrote a sentence I have not been able to improve on. Not seeing fruit. I know the farmer who planted the acorn will never see the shade from the oak tree, but it is hard not to get discouraged. That is verse twenty and verse twenty-one in one breath, from a worship leader, without any of the Greek.

Paul will not leave you in the diagnosis. Delivered, he says. Into liberty. Creation is not being managed toward slightly less decay. It is being delivered. The reason your fix did not hold is the same reason a better morning is coming. This is not the final arrangement.

What have I been calling my failure that is actually just decay? Name one, out loud, and set it down.