A “short” is simply a devotional from my journal notes I use when I study scripture.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” – Romans 1:16
I want to say it loud right along with Paul. But I don’t think I can, once I’ve sat with it and let it sink into me a bit.
Being unashamed of the gospel means he did not shrink back from sharing it. He didn’t hide it from anyone, or dress it up to look more appealing.
I’ve done all of that.
As I sat here with God and this deeply convicting sentence, I asked myself, not why have I not lived unashamed of the gospel, but why did Paul live unashamed? Frankly, I know myself and the coward that lives in me. I wanted to know why it was so different for Paul.
The answer is in the rest of his statement.
“… for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…”
Maybe part of the reason Paul lived unashamed of the gospel is because he didn’t make it about him.
I could probably stop right here and we would all get the point. The hot, searing point that can make us all suddenly realize we have somewhere else to be and other things to do, so peace out.
But I am a glutton for conviction and I still have a few more words in me, so let’s keep going.
This understanding that I have made sharing the gospel about me—my nervousness, my fear of rejection, my fear of getting it wrong, my fear that it will scare them off—gives me both an opportunity and a choice.
An opportunity to repent, and a choice to let God shift something in me. Burn away something in me, and change me from the inside out. What makes that hard is that I’ve walked with Him long enough to know that it can be a most unpleasant process to be changed by God.
But I’ve also walked with Him long enough to know that every bit of the unpleasant, and even painful, process of changing my heart from stone to flesh, is so very good. And if I want to walk closer with Him, love Him more deeply, trust Him more fully, then I must be willing to be awakened by conviction rather than lulled to sleep by comfort.
Father, I have been pierced by Your Word. Help me be in full surrender to the rest of the work to align my heart with Yours. Get me out of my own way, Lord, so that I too can live unashamed of the gospel, as Your co-laborer in the harvest field that is my family, my neighborhood, my community, and unto the ends of the earth.
Karla Jo Wasion 