Romans 14

So let us try to do what makes peace and helps one another (v19)

I can imagine this verse, along with other content in this chapter, becoming fodder for someone who wants to align the Bible with moral relativism. Let’s not take things out of context. Paul is writing specifically about eating and holidays. These are rituals related to the old testament law. I think that the statement could reasonably be applied to church traditions and music, which are modern counterparts to the things he was dealing with in this time. It does not, in my opinion, extend to issues like divorce and abortion that seem to be considered “morally grey” these days. Verse 17 seems to support that the statement in 19 is limited in scope:

In the kingdom of God, eating and drinking are not important. The important things are living right with God, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Personally, I have felt the power of this whole concept in a way that crystallized verses 22-23 very well:

Your beliefs about these things should be kept secret between you and God. People are happy if they can do what they think is right without feeling guilty.23 But those who eat something without being sure it is right are wrong because they did not believe it was right. Anything that is done without believing it is right is a sin.

TMI Warning, but here we go. I struggle with knowing what God really wants for me in the area of family planning. At one point in my marriage, my husband and I both felt like God was speaking clearly that everything in our lives was ready for us to have children. The problem was that we didn’t feel ready. I don’t feel guilty about not trying to have a baby from the first night of my marriage. However, once God made it clear that He wanted something else from us, there was no end to the trouble we had with our consciences and even our relationship until we decided to comply. Once we understood that we were living out of line with God, our actions became sinful and we began paying the price in our spirits and lives. We never expected that God would follow up with a pregnancy within a month of that decision, but that was His plan.
I have since had a second child and find myself needing to make a decision about the future. I know what God has placed on my heart, but I remain afraid to act on it. Despite 20/20 hindsight of the messes I have made and miracles God has worked, I remain lured by the idea of staying in control. So remains the cry of my heart- Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Romans 13

You should be good. You should obey the law – both God’s and man’s where they do not conflict. I think that is clear and undeniable. I don’t quite know how this line works, though (v.3):
Those who do right do not have to fear the rulers; only those who do wrong fear them. Do you want to be unafraid of the rulers? Then do what is right, and they will praise you.

Obviously, people who obey the rulers are sometimes punished, and innocent people sometimes take great suffering at the hands of unjust rulers. I suppose I could make the argument that you don’t need to fear the rulers because no matter what they do to you, God will ultimately deliver you and reward you for your suffering (although maybe only in death.) I can’t get behind the “they will praise you,” part. NAS translates it this way:
For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same;

I’m still not sure how that works. Although this one is a little vague about who “authority” refers to, it still seems to me that they are talking about earthly rulers.
I also need to address verse 13:
Let us live in a right way, like people who belong to the day. We should not have wild parties or get drunk. There should be no sexual sins of any kind, no fighting or jealousy.

“Belong to the day” is continuing a metaphor of “Day” as the time of Christ’s rule on earth versus our present age, “night,” in which Satan has his own influence here.
Don’t have wild parties or get drunk, etc. This is really easy for me to check off as a married mother of pre-school aged children who is excited to get to bed by 9 p.m. I don’t think I would have found it so easy to swallow at another time in my life, though, so I have to question, “Am I ‘good’ because I have set my life up in ways that prevent ‘badness,’ or is there truly a desire to honor God this way in my heart?” Does it matter? If I am someone who loves God in a way that causes right behavior to flow naturally into my actions, am I better off than someone who loves God in a way that I seek to discipline my life to suit Him despite my contrary nature?

Romans 12

v. 9-16

Your love must be real. Hate what is evil, and hold on to what is good. Love each other like brothers and sisters. Give each other more honor than you want for yourselves. Do not be lazy but work hard, serving the Lord with all your heart. Be joyful because you have hope. Be patient when trouble comes, and pray at all times. Share with God's people who need help. Bring strangers in need into your homes.
Wish good for those who harm you; wish them well and do not curse them. Be happy with those who are happy, and be sad with those who are sad. Live in peace with each other. Do not be proud, but make friends with those who seem unimportant. Do not think how smart you are.

These were the verses that the best man read at my wedding. He read them in a different translation that I think conveys more exactly what we wanted to impart on our relationship, but I like the way they sound in NCV. If two people abide by just these simple lines – except maybe not the brothers and sisters part – how could a marriage go bad? If we love each other with a real love, keep God in the heart of it through prayer, and focus on what we can do for others, I think we could get through anything. This is all much easier said than done, of course, but clearly God knew what he was talking about when he made this plan.

Romans 10-11

This has been a rough month for me. I’m going through something that I have been through before and will probably face again down the road. Actually, there are two things going on in my life that fit that description. I am being vague not to be secretive, but rather because the details aren’t important. We all have our “somethings” that come up again and again in our lives and wear us down. When I reached a breaking point in prayer this week, God told me that He would be “mighty” in this struggle. I don’t know what that means, but I expect to find out.

I don’t have very much to say about these books in Romans. God chose the Jewish people to be His children – to be saved by His covenant with them. In the Old Testament, the Jews are that “something” that has come up again and again for God, rejecting His ways over and over despite his continual calling of them. Romans 11 says that we as Gentiles are now grafted into the tree whose root is Israel. We are now part of the blessing, but aren’t we also now part of the problem? Aren’t we just as much a “stiff-necked” people who turn away from God at the slightest temptation?

Taken together, these chapters are also about the Mightiness of God. Like the song, our God is Mighty to Save. Even now, he is orchestrating events to widespread for us to put together that will bring about His will for His people. All this grafting and cutting off is just an illustration of the millions of works He is doing in the world to bring us to Him.

Yes, God's riches are very great, and his wisdom and knowledge have no end! No one can explain the things God decides or understand his ways. 11:33

Romans 9

Lately I am struggling with deflated-ness. That’s not a real word, but it’s so descriptive of this place where I find myself a little too empty on the inside and a little too soft to the touch on the outside. A balloon that is full will bounce back when you poke at it, but I’m more like that balloon that kind of sucks your finger in and gets a wrinkly little scar thing when you pull it out.
I am watching the lives of people around me fall apart. I am watching the hearts of people I love get broken. I am looking at my own life, my own mistakes and great failures. It all makes me feel incredibly humble, and somehow reluctant to place myself before God. I don’t really like what he is doing with my friends, and I think it is making me want to hide from Him. It makes me wonder when it will be my turn to walk through the fire again, and what my particular fire might be.

So what should we say about this? Is God unfair? In no way. Rom9:14

There are places where I can see that God is tearing down houses built on sand, forcing their owners to move on and seek a life with a solid foundation. There are places where I recognize that God is working for ultimate good to the great pain of the people He is working in. There are places where all I can see is destruction, things that seem to stand in opposition to God’s will despite the cries of his children to make them “right.”
Romans 9 is not about bad things happening to good people and good things happening to bad people. This is a story about the Jewish people and the Gentiles, and how God has used them to show the sovereignty and righteousness of His will. Ultimately, no matter what happens, our only hope is in God. He is the one thing He has promised us in this life.

As it is written in the Scripture:
"I will put in Jerusalem a stone that causes people to stumble, a rock that makes them fall. Anyone who trusts in him will never be disappointed." Rom. 9:33

This does not address the “why do bad things happen to good people question,” – it obliterates it. Jesus (via Isaiah via Paul, here) is making a promise that anyone whose ultimate trust is in God will never have that trust broken. He is not denying the pain and suffering of these things that leave us so empty inside. He is claiming that whatever happens, His Will remains and therefore the sum total of the universe is Good. Good does not equal “what I like,” even if I am the nicest, the most loving, and the most spiritual person on earth. He I promising that when we are empty, He will always be there to fill us up- as long as “Him” is what we really want to be filled with. I know what I need to find myself “re-flated.” I know that it is Good. Now I just need to want it. Here we find ourselves, once again – Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

Romans 6

Paul is addressing the inevitable question: “If all your sins are forgiven, why do you need to ‘be good?’”

His answer is, (in part and channeling a friend of mine who kindly fixed up my new computer last night,) “That would be like running Windows on your new iMac.” You could do it, but you would be undermining the greatness of the work of Christ and ultimately cheating yourself out of the gift He has given you.

Paul addresses Christ’s resurrection, the work which grants us eternal life, in verses 8-10 in order to draw a parallel between victory over death and victory over sin.
in verses 5-7, he makes this point:

Christ died, and we have been joined with him by dying too. So we will also be joined with him by rising from the dead as he did. We know that our old life died with Christ on the cross so that our sinful selves would have no power over us and we would not be slaves to sin. Anyone who has died is made free from sin’s control.

The gift is of Christ is not only freedom from death, but also freedom from sin. It is only in freedom from sin that we can be free from death, but I don’t want to overlook the magnitude of that second freedom in and of itself.

Looking at this from another direction, if someone is asking, “Why should I be good if I am forgiven for being bad?” what they are really fighting against is letting go of something they enjoy in life that is contrary to God’s will as they understand it. As a twenty-something (admittedly barely hanging on to that title,) the people in my life are usually talking about “partying” in some form. Whether that is alcohol, drugs, sex, or just plain irresponsibility doesn’t make any difference. Why would these people, or anyone, want “freedom” from the lifestyle they are enjoying so much? Paul’s answer is easy to refute and impossible to deny:

Surely you know that when you give yourselves like slaves to obey someone [or something], then you really are slaves of that person [or thing.]

The mouth says: I’m not a slave to drinking. I’m not a slave to smoking. The heart echoes the truth: Why is it that sometimes I just don’t feel right until I have that drink?Why did I spend more on cigarettes this month than I paid on my credit card debt, even though that debt is keeping me up at night?

The specifics of my own don’t matter, because the cycle is familiar to anyone who has wrestled their own demons. I felt bad- depressed, bored, insignificant, stressed- I turned to my self-help of choice, I felt “better.” The next day, I was about as glad to be done with the cure as with the sickness, and I was haunted with the knowledge that the next time I felt bad, I would most likely find myself going down the same path. The truth is that even as they brought pleasure, those dark little things brought pain because I knew in my heart I was enslaved. If I really faced the truth, I knew that without them, there would be a hole in my life that I couldn’t fill. It is torment to know that you are not complete without some ugly thing that must be bought, made, done, added- over and over again- that is not you but less than you.

It’s not like that with God. God fills that void with Himself - something not you but greater than you, something that is not made or bought or done, but given. That is what freedom from sin is all about. It’s about the power to overcome that which makes us less than what we desire to be, because ultimately, we desire to be beautiful, pure, and wonderful, and that is what God desires from us as well.

Romans 4-5

All week, I have been thinking about how grumpy I am. I have been wondering about this "joy of the Lord" business. If the Joy of the Lord is supposed to be my strength, my lack of it is clearly the reason I keep failing at doing what I want to do. Then, what do you know? Right there in my reading for this entry, Romans 5:1-5 is all over me:

Since we have been made right with God by our faith, we have peace with God. This happened through our Lord Jesus Christ, who through our faith has brought us into that blessing of God's grace that we now enjoy. And we are happy because of the hope we have of sharing God's glory. We also have joy with our troubles, because we know that these troubles produce patience. And patience produces character, and character produces hope. And this hope will never disappoint us, because God has poured out his love to fill our hearts. He gave us his love through the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to us.

We have joy with our troubles because of the hope we have of sharing God's glory. What am I supposed to do with that? I read another blog this week where the writer wrote an interview with a dead friend. He does not seem to believe in Christ or heaven, but at the same time, he was grappling with the idea that everything can be really bad in "life," but it's still OK in the big picture. That's what this is all about. God does not think my problems aren't bad. He is saving every tear in a jar. It's just that he knows that everything is also OK, and He has given me a way to plug into that. It's my choice whether I want to take the small view and have sorrow alone, or take the larger view and have both sorrow and joy, knowing that someday I will have only the joy.

Easier said than done. I've heard a dude by the name of Zig Ziglar put this concept this way - not a quote, just my paraphrase:
The transition from believing that God promises life to having faith in that promise is like the change in how a girl thinks of her wedding day when she becomes engaged. Every little girl, to some degree, dreams of being a bride. She looks at magazines and imagines what it will be like for her. Girls used to keep a "hope chest" of all the things they collected for thier future wedding day. Then, one day, a man puts an engagement ring on her finger, and all the hopes and "ifs" become possibilities and "whens."

I was not the girl who had fantasies of being the Princess in my wedding gown, and when I got engaged, I started looking on e-bay for a dress. Maybe that's why I'm having such a hard time with this joy thing? I don't have a huge capacity for dreaming of "happily ever after." Still, the second part of the verse resonates with me. I have felt hope, and I have felt love. These things are what sustains me, and I have always thought that they were enough. I guess I'm starting to question that now.

Romans 1-3

Confession: I had to look at the schedule to see what book I was supposed to read next. I was a little dis-heartened to see that I am 2.5 months behind schedule already. Hmph.
So. ROMANS!
Anyway....every time I read verses like this one:
Romans 3:10
As the Scriptures say: "There is no one who always does what is right, not even one."
I think of this video I saw (no, I'm not going to imbed youtube again) of Kirk Cameron interrogating strangers on the street about whether they had broken any of the Ten Commandments.
"Have you ever stolen anything?" Of course, almost everyone said no.
"Have you ever lied?" Most people failed that one, but some still held out. That's how God defines not taking his name in vain, according to Kirk, which is a commandment. This goes on by degrees, but he eventually gets down to the question no one can deny - "Have you ever lost your temper with someone?" (or something along those lines), which, as it turns out, Jesus defines as breaking the comandment not to murder (Matthew 5).
When I watched this, I remember equating it with crazy evangelism - aggressive, over-the-top, unreasonable. Then one day I found myself sitting at day spa getting a facial. O.K.- just stay with me. I had never had a facial or any other beauty-treatment thing before, but my dad got me a gift certificate and there I was. The esthetician was about my age, and somehow got onto the topic of this Bible study she had joined. She was a "seeker," and had never really looked into Christianity before. She had randomly joined this Disciple class, which is a super-intense, start-to-finish Bible study program, and she thought it was interesting, but she didn't really relate. When I asked her what she meant by that, she told me that they just kept talking about how we were all sinners, and she didn't feel like a sinner. Then out of my mouth comes this Kirk Cameron-esque drivel about sin being "anything that separates you from God." God is holy, so sin is a comparison to holiness, not some relative "good-person-ness." And as I sat there thinking she was going to spit in my avacado mask, I realized that this was resonating with her. We had a really good conversation for the rest of the hour, and I was just amazed.
The more I encounter people who are hostile toward Christianity, the more I find out this is the big hang up. No one wants to think of themself as a "sinner." For some people, like the facial lady, it's just a mis-understanding of sin. These people know they are not perfect, but they also know they are not worthless, and they are ready to have those two things reconciled. Then there are the folks who really think they are perfect and are down right insulted at the thought of needed anything from anyone, much less salvation from God.
I enjoy reading Julie's motherhood chronicles at mothergoosemouse.com, but she is a somehwat aggresive atheist, and I am often taken aback by her posts. Last week, I got caught up in the comments to this post, and the two topics that I have been struggling to unite in this one post were confirmed:
1- people don't like aggressive evangelism
2- people really don't know what the Bible says about sin and salvation, but they think they do
Oh, and by the way, God made it our job to tell them the truth, whether they like it or not (1:16)
I am not ashamed of the Good News, because it is the power God uses to save everyone who believes—to save the Jews first, and then to save non-Jews.