Inputs and Outcomes
Student Ministries Pastoral Letter | June 2025
Dear Student Families,
I love how God’s Word constantly surprises me. Reading through the latter part of Romans last week, this verse jumped off the pages:
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
Romans 15:13 ESV
Here’s what caught me off guard. At least in this particular passage, joy and peace are inputs – not outcomes. We tend to think of joy as something we experience after something goes really well. In a similar way, when I close my eyes and try to picture peace, images of calm, serenity, and beauty fill my mind.
Paul is encouraging us to consider an alternate reality – one in which joy and peace are God’s gifts to us right now, in the midst of our troubles – not on the other side of them.
How do we know that that’s what Paul means? Look again at how this verse ends…“so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” Paul longs for the believers in Rome in 60 AD (not to mention you and I today) to know that their present trials are temporary, and ultimately for their good. And we need not wait for the finish line to experience true joy and peace. They are ours today in Christ!
Great God of hope, fill us now—right now—with the joy and peace that Jesus has won for us in his perfect life, substitutionary death, and powerful resurrection. Fix our eyes on the confident hope that there is coming a day when all things will be made right and let that hope fuel us for the hard but good works you’ve entrusted to us. Amen.
For the kingdom,
Ryan Carson
Interim Pastor of Student Ministries
