Today Our Daily Bread Romans 15 ++

Scripture selections are taken from the Rock Church Daily Bread Reading schedule for each month. “Lena’s Journalin’” are Lena’s comments on the specific passages from her Daily Journal.

If the e-mail text you receive is encrypted at all, just scroll down to the end of all of the text and click on Lena’s Journalin’ , which will take you directly to the web-page where you will be able to read the text quite clearly in it’s purposed form.

Romans 15:1-33
Living to Please Others
1We may know that these things make no difference, but we cannot just go ahead and do them to please ourselves. We must be considerate of the doubts and fears of those who think these things are wrong. 2We should please others. If we do what helps them, we will build them up in the Lord. 3For even Christ didn't please himself. As the Scriptures say, "Those who insult you are also insulting me." F84 4Such things were written in the Scriptures long ago to teach us. They give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God's promises.
5May God, who gives this patience and encouragement, help you live in complete harmony with each other—each with the attitude of Christ Jesus toward the other. 6Then all of you can join together with one voice, giving praise and glory to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
7So accept each other just as Christ has accepted you; then God will be glorified. 8Remember that Christ came as a servant to the Jews to show that God is true to the promises he made to their ancestors. 9And he came so the Gentiles might also give glory to God for his mercies to them. That is what the psalmist meant when he wrote:
"I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing praises to your name." F85
10And in another place it is written,
"Rejoice, O you Gentiles, along with his people, the Jews." F86
11And yet again,
"Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles; praise him, all you people of the earth." F87
12And the prophet Isaiah said,
"The heir to David's throne F88 will come, and he will rule over the Gentiles. They will place their hopes on him." F89
13So I pray that God, who gives you hope, will keep you happy and full of peace as you believe in him. May you overflow with hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Paul's Reason for Writing
14I am fully convinced, dear brothers and sisters, F90 that you are full of goodness. You know these things so well that you are able to teach others all about them. 15Even so, I have been bold enough to emphasize some of these points, knowing that all you need is this reminder from me. For I am, by God's grace, 16a special messenger from Christ Jesus to you Gentiles. I bring you the Good News and offer you up as a fragrant sacrifice to God so that you might be pure and pleasing to him by the Holy Spirit. 17So it is right for me to be enthusiastic about all Christ Jesus has done through me in my service to God. 18I dare not boast of anything else. I have brought the Gentiles to God by my message and by the way I lived before them. 19I have won them over by the miracles done through me as signs from God—all by the power of God's Spirit. In this way, I have fully presented the Good News of Christ all the way from Jerusalem clear over into Illyricum. F91
20My ambition has always been to preach the Good News where the name of Christ has never been heard, rather than where a church has already been started by someone else. 21I have been following the plan spoken of in the Scriptures, where it says,
"Those who have never been told about him will see, and those who have never heard of him will understand." F92
22In fact, my visit to you has been delayed so long because I have been preaching in these places.
Paul's Travel Plans
23But now I have finished my work in these regions, and after all these long years of waiting, I am eager to visit you. 24I am planning to go to Spain, and when I do, I will stop off in Rome. And after I have enjoyed your fellowship for a little while, you can send me on my way again.
25But before I come, I must go down to Jerusalem to take a gift to the Christians there. 26For you see, the believers in Greece F93 have eagerly taken up an offering for the Christians in Jerusalem, who are going through such hard times. 27They were very glad to do this because they feel they owe a real debt to them. Since the Gentiles received the wonderful spiritual blessings of the Good News from the Jewish Christians, they feel the least they can do in return is help them financially. 28As soon as I have delivered this money and completed this good deed of theirs, I will come to see you on my way to Spain. 29And I am sure that when I come, Christ will give me a great blessing for you.
30Dear brothers and sisters, I urge you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Do this because of your love for me, given to you by the Holy Spirit. 31Pray that I will be rescued from those in Judea who refuse to obey God. Pray also that the Christians there will be willing to accept the donation I am bringing them. 32Then, by the will of God, I will be able to come to you with a happy heart, and we will be an encouragement to each other.
33And now may God, who gives us his peace, be with you all. Amen.
FOOTNOTES:F84: Ps 69:9. F85: Ps 18:49. F86: Deut 32:43. F87: Ps 117:1. F88: Greek The root of Jesse. F89: Isa 11:10. F90: Greek brothers; also in 15:30. F91: Illyricum was a region northeast of Italy. F92: Isa 52:15. F93: Greek Macedonia and Achaia, the northern and southern regions of Greece.

~Lena’s Journalin’~
I like how these verses say, “accept” each other (vs 7) as Christ accepted you! We think we’ve accepted Christ and truly we have embraced faith in Him. The real deal though is He came after us, chose us, no matter what we were like or what was going on in our lives, He loved us, received us (rather than rejecting us). Think of how ugly we may have been or how separated from God’s ways we were! It was not that pretty of a picture as sin never is. Have you ever read Isaiah 53?
Who has believed our message? To whom will the LORD reveal his saving power? 2My servant grew up in the LORD's presence like a tender green shoot, sprouting from a root in dry and sterile ground. There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him. 3He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way when he went by. He was despised, and we did not care.
4Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows F116 that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins! 5But he was wounded and crushed for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace. He was whipped, and we were healed! 6All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God's paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the guilt and sins of us all.
This passage shows us how sin looks, it looks so grotesque that people walking by would be ashamed to look at it, It is so ugly looking that God turned His face from Him ( not only because of the ugliness mind you), but the point- sin is ugly, even if you look pretty on the outside, even if you are fashionable and were born with a physical attractiveness. Remember we are spirits, who have souls and live inside of bodies. God sees the real us, the inside person, the heart. He sees it as it is, no matter how much work is done on the outward person’s body, the inside is pretty or ugly based on whether it is renewed by the saving power of God or not. Because of Adam & Eve’s sin, curse came upon each human born and their spirits are dying, as they get closer and closer to eternity, they look worse and worse (Melinda- your dream).
Did anyone see Pirates of the Caribbean? I LOVE that movie because that is what the effect of sin looks like, even though our bodies may look good, be dressed nice, or even have make up on and a new hairdo, we are in darkness without God and we are dying, rotting away in the spirit. IF we do not come into the Light of Jesus Christ and under the covenant blood shedding that paid the price for our salvation, we will continue to die in sin, our bodies will follow suit. BUT when we receive the blood sacrifice of Jesus and become born again, we get life and life more abundant, that means the further we head towards eternity, the better we look.
So, in all of our ugliness He was able to save us to the uttermost! He looked beyond the death that was affecting us daily, trying to bring us to eternal torment, to hell. He chose to save us in that state! He chose to see what we could be and would be in Him instead of our outer crust. When others walk our way they may have to turn their heads, but God through Jesus, stopped to look at us face to face and see inside of our spirit man and make Him new!
It DOES NOT matter who we were, it matters now who we are, or IF we are IN Him, have we found ourselves In Him? Have we heard Him calling us to Himself? Have we seen Him come our way? Have we “accepted” His invitation to “accept” us and change us?
Absolutely, without any doubt, NOW is the TIME. Don’t mess around with sin and death, no matter who you are or what state you find yourself in right now, Jew or Gentile. Raised with some sort of faith or no faith. Now is the time to Give it ALL up. And selfishness will all be set aside very quickly as there are many, many others who also need this message of being saved from death (think Pirates in the darkness) and brought to life through the blood saving power of Christ. We are the message, the preachers of that message of salvation. The more of us who know this and tell this the more chance God has of changing the world for His glory, reversing the death sentence of sin placed on the earth. Why did Jesus come? To save you alone? No, one man came to save all men from the edict of sin. Be a bearer of the Daily Good News ”Journal”! This is well pleasing to the Lord, what ever can we do to respond to what He’s done for us? Going and telling is fine “reciprocation”. LIVE, I say unto you who was dead- LIVE, your life as a light before others, LIVE.
Give everything you were and who you are and every dream of what you’d ever become, to God’s life plan. Give your money and time and strength to God and His work in the earth. We only have a short time left in the light of eternity. Even if we knew all of this and were engaged at a young age, we’d still only have a limited amount of time to Go tell in comparison with eternity.
There are two great commands in which all others stand:
Love God- with ALL of you Mind, Strength & Heart (that’s every part),
and
Love His people as much as your tendency is to love yourself. ( Do you have a tendency to speak badly about yourself a lot, or deprive yourself comfort and peace, or do you neglect yourself or fight and argue with yourself and do you protect yourself? Do you feed yourself, etc…God wants to heal and restore self’s so self’s can love others as He does) Be healed by the Stripes Jesus took, Amen!
I Love You

Proverbs 27:17-19
17 You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another. 18 If you care for your orchard, you'll enjoy its fruit; if you honor your boss, you'll be honored. 19 Just as water mirrors your face, so your face mirrors your heart.
Psalm 122:1
1 When they said, "Let's go to the house of God," my heart leaped for joy.