Pray:
Ask God to orient or reorient you to Himself. Confess any known sin. Thank Him for His forgiveness. Be still and reflect on Jesus and His sacrifice for you. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart and mind to God’s Word. Pray for others in your life that they, too, would know and love God today.
Read:
Today as we finish out the week, I want us to back up to verse 18 in chapter 4 and start from there. Our passage below comes out of Phillips New Testament in Modern English. Phillips is a paraphrase, not a full translation. I love to supplement my reading with this paraphrase and others like The Message, because it helps me to better grasp the text.
Romans 4:18-2,
Abraham was a shining example of faith
“Abraham, when hope was dead within him, went on hoping in faith, believing that he would become ‘the father of many nations’. He relied on the word of God which definitely referred to ‘your descendants’. With undaunted faith he looked at the facts—his own impotence (he was practically a hundred years old at the time) and his wife Sarah’s apparent barrenness. Yet he refused to allow any distrust of a definite pronouncement of God to make him waver. He drew strength from his faith, and while giving the glory to God, remained absolutely convinced that God was able to implement his own promise. This was the ‘faith’ which ‘was accounted to him for righteousness’. Now this counting of faith for righteousness was not recorded simply for Abraham’s credit, but as a divine principle, which should apply to us as well. Faith is to be reckoned as righteousness to us also, who believe in Him who raised from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, who was delivered to death for our sins and raised again to secure our justification.”
Understand / Application
Think back to a time in your life when hope was dead within yourself, yet you went on hoping in faith. How did the truth and power of the Gospel sustain you through that time?
Abraham drew strength from his faith. In what ways does your faith give you strength? What does that look like on a daily basis?
What does it mean for you personally to have faith counted for righteousness?
How do these verses encourage you to live for Christ’s glory? What will that look like today?
Take some time now and thank God for His grace and mercy.
*From what you have just read and considered: What is a personal implication/application for your life today?
Live:
(Personalize this prayer today; make it specific to the circumstances that face you.)
Ask God to lead you through His Spirit as you go through your day. Ask Him to bring to mind the truth of the gospel and its implications for what you will encounter today. Tell Him “Yes” to His will and ask Him for His power and protection to live this “yes.” Ask God to create and reveal opportunities to proclaim the good news today. KEEP PRAYING THROUGHOUT YOUR DAY.
Inspiration and insight for the devotionals came from the following books: Reading Romans with John Stott; The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World (The Bible Speaks Today Series), Stott, John; Romans (The NIV Application Commentary Book 6) Moo, Douglas J.; Encountering the Book of Romans: A Theological Survey (Encountering Biblical Studies) Moo, Douglas J.; Believers Bible Commentary; The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, with the New International Version, Romans through Galatians; NIV Application Study Bible. The Pursuit of God, Tozer, A.W.