4. CAMPING OUT IN ROMANS :)

Yep!  There IS gold in them Roman Hills. 

When I look back on the past, I am shocked that I was not compelled to read more of the Scriptures in big chunks.

Not reading a book through is like leaving a movie halfway through the movie.  Nobody would think of reading a book taking a few sentences from each chapter and try to put it together, but that is what we do sometimes when we read the Bible.
  It amazes me but maybe it shouldn't as to how much Biblical illiteracy exists.

Not to sound paradoxical but Romans is one of those books that although it had a big impact in life, I also tended to shy away from the portions I could not grasp because I was not staying long enough to grasp some of its big themes. It's one of those books you have to read carefully or you miss something, and I usually do miss pieces.

  This morning I listened to the NIV audio all the way through for the third time and I have read through the KJV two times since I began camping out in Romans.  Not that I want to be boasting but the results are mind changing and if I ever reach the goal as some to 50 times, I just might have it memorized.

I was making brief stopovers in Romans during times that others failed me by not being what I had envisioned them to be.  Those were times that came on the heals of great disappointments and trials in life that I found devastating at the time.

There was a time, many years ago, I thought that my salvation had been snatched away from me by some unscrupulous friend of a friend who knew nothing about me and spread the knowledge that I was not because they said so.
  It was a devastating inference that took the wind out of my sails, temporarily. 

 (Rom.10:9  If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.)

  It was during that time in my life that I began to look into the book of Romans more seriously.  Salvation doesn't stop, it continues.  There was no doubt in my mind that no one had stolen my salvation.

I found myself intimidated by those long words, election-righteousness-justification-sanctification-regeneration.

  I remember the first time I heard the word "sanctification" from one of my peer classmates in high school.  I looked at him like he had just disembarked from another planet and then tried to avoid him at all cause the rest of the year.  What kind of foreign concept was that?

  You see I first encountered Jimmy in 4th grade while on one of our furlough years.  Then while I was in high school and then he showed up at my grandparents church.  When I moved to Springfield, I lost track of him, however, never lost track of that long word.
You see, I perceived "sanctification" as a doctrine to complex to comprehend. It basically means growth if I could describe it in one word.

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The Cost of Sanctification

By Oswald Chambers

May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely… —1 Thessalonians 5:23

When we pray, asking God to sanctify us, are we prepared to measure up to what that really means? We take the word sanctification much too lightly. Are we prepared to pay the cost of sanctification? The cost will be a deep restriction of all our earthly concerns, and an extensive cultivation of all our godly concerns. Sanctification means to be intensely focused on God’s point of view. It means to secure and to keep all the strength of our body, soul, and spirit for God’s purpose alone. Are we really prepared for God to perform in us everything for which He separated us? And after He has done His work, are we then prepared to separate ourselves to God just as Jesus did? “For their sakes I sanctify Myself…” (John 17:19). The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of sanctification from God’s perspective. Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the nature that controlled Him will control us. Are we really prepared for what that will cost? It will cost absolutely everything in us which is not of God.
Are we prepared to be caught up into the full meaning of Paul’s prayer in this verse? Are we prepared to say, “Lord, make me, a sinner saved by grace, as holy as You can”? Jesus prayed that we might be one with Him, just as He is one with the Father (see John 17:21-23). The resounding evidence of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life is the unmistakable family likeness to Jesus Christ, and the freedom from everything which is not like Him. Are we prepared to set ourselves apart for the Holy Spirit’s work in us?

***********************************And THAT concludes another day of camping out in and with Romans.
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