2022_07_08 Insight Post- Emma Keeton
This week’s reading- Romans 1-20
As we open up the book of Romans this week, we encounter themes essential to Christianity that are centered around the gospel. The power of the gospel message is complex yet simple. It’s for everyone, but it speaks right to the heart of a person. God calls each one of us to himself, and a moment of conversion happens. From that point in time, we are changed and begin to live for something different than ourselves. God’s call on our lives demands a response.
The book of Romans has made an impact on well-known heroes of our faith. In 386 A.D, Augustine was aware that his life was full of sin and was left feeling empty and far from God. He was sitting outside one day when he heard children playing nearby. They were saying, “take up and read, take up and read!” Augustine thought this was God speaking directly to him, so he picked up the scriptures. The first thing he read was:
“not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh” Romans 13: 13a-14
That was enough for Augustine. The words of Romans hit him personally, and he turned away from his life of sin and lived for Christ.
In 1513 Martin Luther began to know Christ in a personal way through Romans 1:17. “For the gospel of righteousness of God is revealed-a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” Luther said night and day he meditated on these words until he was “reborn and to have gone through open doors of paradise.”
As you read through Romans, would you also allow the power of the gospel to speak to you afresh? Would you ask God to rekindle that desire you once had at conversion to live for something greater than yourself? I pray that God will meet each one of us personally in Romans no matter where we are on our journey with Christ.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes” Romans 1:16a
Emma Keeton
Prayer Team Lead