Message: In Romans 10 Paul had just been talking about Jesus being the rock that God placed for the Jews to stumble over. He was talking about his concern for their salvation because they had a zeal for God but they disregarded his righteousness and attempted to establish their own because they failed to submit to him. This spoke so loudly to me because I see this so strongly in the Christian culture. We have developed a whole bunch of unwritten rules that we believe make us “Christian” and we hold others to those unspoken expectations. We have aligned Christianity with politics to tell the world who they should be without submitting our own hearts before God to change us. Because of this we have become a stumbling block to the world seeing the gospel. The rest of the chapter talks about the call to share salvation and explains why the ones who were not looking for him or calling for him found him.
Command: Don’t mistake a life full of religious activity as a surrendered heart.
Promise: If we draw near to God he will draw near to us.
Warning: Obedient activities do not surrender our hearts. We can get easily find ourselves living a life of Christian activities but find our hearts are actually far from God.
Application: Even though most of us are technically gentile believers. So much of the behavior of the Jews is mirrored in us too. I have caught myself so many times just going through the motions and living on auto-pilot. Because my life is filled with so many things that fit the Christian lifestyle, it’s difficult to realize when I’m falling asleep at the wheel. When I’m living life business as usual I can fool myself into believing that I’m doing well because I’m doing a lot of activity. I have an appearance of “zeal for God” because my life is full of church activities and I listen to worship music and I don’t say bad words and I read my bible every day and post scriptures but what God is really asking me is “how is your heart?” My question to myself today is What does God want to show me about my heart today? What am I withholding from him, or ignoring? What is making me bitter? What does God have to say to me today?
