2012 Day 220 – Romans 14

07 Tuesday Aug 2012

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Sometimes we as Christians like to base our moral beliefs on our opinions or cultural bias rather than God’s word. When each of us stands before God, we won’t have our friends, family, or neighbors there with us. We will be accountable for our own lives and not that of anyone else’s. Verses 10-12 makes it clear, You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written: “ ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’ ” So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God. In the end, we will all stand before God and our eternity will be based on our own merit and the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

2012 Day 219 – Romans 13

06 Monday Aug 2012

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Verse 9 in today’s reading clears up a lot of confusion about Christian love, The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Paul is simply saying we should use love as our gauge for all that we do. If we love others first, we will always do what is right. We need to focus on treating others the way we want to be treated. Do we want to be fed, clothed, and have housing? Then we need to work on those same things for others around us.

2012 Day 218 – Romans 12

05 Sunday Aug 2012

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It is good to have a healthy self-worth. We should never think of ourselves as being less than what God has created us to be. At the same time, it is important to take an accurate assessment of ourselves and know that our identity comes from our relationship with God. Verse 3 says, For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. We are only as good as the measure of faith we have in God. We can never have true success without the Father. We may be successful in the eyes of the world, but our true measure comes from how we compare in the light of eternity.

2012 Day 217 – Romans 11

04 Saturday Aug 2012

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Never once has God ever been caught off guard when I needed to receive His grace. Verse 32 states this as being part of His perfect plan, For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. God owes us nothing, yet He has given us everything we need. Verse 35 hits me right between the eyes, “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” God’s grace is not owed to me, but it is a gift I do not deserve and receive gladly. His love is always so amazing to me!

2012 Day 216 – Romans 10

03 Friday Aug 2012

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I have a very simple thought today and it comes from verse 11, As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” I pray that God reminds me daily to show His grace and mercy to everyone around me no matter who they are or what they have done. It is easy for me to pick out the big sins and feel they are different than any other form of disobedience. But God’s mercy and grace spans the spectrum of all sin. May I be reminded daily when I react to people’s imperfections around me. The truth is, my imperfections are more like planks when compared to their thorns.

2012 Day 215 – Romans 9

02 Thursday Aug 2012

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Verses 14-16 in today’s reading are tough ones for me, 14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. Don’t get me wrong, I trust in God wholeheartedly, but my human understanding sometimes gets in the way. Earlier in the chapter, Paul uses the example of Jacob and Esau; one of the twins He had mercy and the other He allowed to be hardened. It doesn’t make sense to me, but God’s plan is perfect. He does things for a specific purpose in mind and I need to accept it and wait to see how it plays out. As I get older, I am beginning to understand there are something’s I will never understand. There are some things I don’t need to understand. I simply need to trust God and know He can turn what seems to be a bad thing into something that is used for His glory. More importantly, grace comes from God alone. There is nothing I can do to receive any more or less of it. It comes from one source, and that is God’s perfect sovereignty.

2012 Day 214 – Romans 8

01 Wednesday Aug 2012

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I have a couple of thoughts today from a couple of different verses. The first one is from verse 17, Now if we are children, then we are heirs–heirs of God and co‑heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. My thought is simple in that I feel privileged to be called a co-heir with Christ. I am so undeserving of this, yet Christ willingly provided it to me through His sacrifice.

The second thought is from verse 26, In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. My pastor talked about this verse a few weeks ago. Even when our minds are troubled to the point where we don’t know what to ask God in our prayers, the Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf. This doesn’t mean I should be lazy about my prayer life, but it does mean I don’t have to be perfect in the way I communicate with God. In fact, I don’t even have to use words as long as I make myself available to Him. The Holy Spirit is so powerful in my life and yet I feel like I don’t even use a fraction of what He is capable.

2012 Day 213 – Romans 7

31 Tuesday Jul 2012

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When I read verse 15 I am encouraged and depressed at the same time, I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. If Paul feels like he has trouble controlling the influence of sin in his life, what hope do I have? To top it all off, Paul goes on to say in verse 24, What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? If Paul had left it there I would be completely without hope. However, Paul does give us hope by concluding the chapter with verse 25, Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Because of God, through Jesus Christ, we are free from the power of sin. This doesn’t mean we won’t sin, it just means we don’t need to let it control us. In yesterday’s post, my friend Brian made a great comment. In essence, he made the observation that we must seek out our Master daily so we can know His desires for our lives. The daily renewal of our minds (Romans 12:2) is what frees us from the control of sin in our lives.

2012 Day 212 – Romans 6

30 Monday Jul 2012

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In our modern world we don’t often think of the implications of slavery anymore. We mostly see it as our past and the lessons we can learn from our history. But when Paul talks about slavery in this chapter, he is speaking from a first hand perspective. Slavery was common in his day and when he talks about sin being you master in verse 14, he is also talking about being set free from sin because we are under grace, For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. Since we are no longer under the law, grace has set us free from focusing only on controlling the individual sins in our lives and allows us to focus on the big picture of concentrating on having a relationship with God. Verse 16 goes on to talk about what we should be slaves to, Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey–whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? In the end, it is much better to focus on being a slave to righteousness, not because it is a requirement of salvation, but because God wants what is best for us which is why He sacrificed His Son for us in the first place.

2012 Day 211 – Romans 5

29 Sunday Jul 2012

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Romans 5 is all about the story of redemption. From verses 1-11, Paul talks about how we are justified through Christ’s blood. In verses 5-8 Paul explains how unwilling most of us would be to die for a righteous man and how much less for an unrighteousness one. But Christ died for us, all of the unrighteous ones. No matter how good we think we are, we are simply not good enough and without Christ’s sacrifice we are unrighteous in the eyes of the only one that matters; God, our father, the creator. In verse 11 Paul concludes by saying the words we all need to hear, Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. In God’s eyes we are reconciled. We are now righteous in His sight and that is all that matters. The world may see the sin and imperfection in our lives, but God our father sees us clean and worthy of being called righteous through Christ’s blood. While I don’t feel worth at times, I praise God for His mercy and grace.