Welcome to the Bible Study. I'm Stephen Lawson, President of One Passion Ministries.

And each week I will teach verse by verse through the passage of scripture

so that you can better understand the word of God

and put it into practice in your life. Join me now as we look together into this

section of the Bible. I want to begin by reading what is our one verse, verse 17. And as I read this verse,

let me just make this introductory comment, you'll note verse 17 starts in the middle of

a sentence.

So this does not even start with a new sentence, whether you have New American Standard

or E.S. V. We're actually picking this up in midstream.

So this is a continuation of a flow from verse 16 and what verse 17 is and it's a very important verse we're

going to spend our whole time in just verse 17. Verse 17 is a transitional bridge that reaches back to the previous verses that talk about being a child of God and then they reach forward

to the suffering of this present world.

So verse 17, In a child of God and that presently as children of God, we suffer with Christ as we look ahead to the glory that we will share with

him.

So let's begin now and I guess I really should begin at the beginning of the sentence which is

verse 16 but it's really verse 17 that I want us to look at.

So verse 16 begins, for the spirit himself

testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.

We talked about last time how the Holy Spirit brings the internal witness of the assurance of

our salvation.

That's what the Spirit of God, one of his many ministries in our lives right now is to

testify to our heart that we are a child of God. So that's 16. So now

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