Monday

ROMANS 1:18-25

1. Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. Read the text until you can understand what it says. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down.

2. V18: The wrath of God is hostile to godlessness and wickedness. How would you differentiate the two? 

3. Vv19-23: The slippery slope that leads to the depths of sin begins with marginalising God. How much does God figure in your life? 

4. Vv19-23: The next stage is to replace God with gods that we can control, who will tell us what we want to hear and give us what we ask. Who are the key influencers in your life?

5. Vv24-25: “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts.” Is your life shaped by God’s desires or your own?

6. Write down a prayer in response.

Tuesday

ROMANS 1:18-25

1. Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down.

2. Read the passage. Review the answers/thoughts you wrote down yesterday. Is there anything that you need to respond to?

3. Review the past day. What concerns/joys/events occupy your heart?

4. Write down a prayer in response.

Wednesday

ROMANS 1:26-31

1. Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. Read the text until you can understand what it says. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down. 

2. Vv26-27: In this example of sexual abandonment, Paul illustrates how sin draws us deeper into the abyss. Do you think when we allow sin space in our hearts it will control us and draw us deeper in?

3. Vv28-31: Paul tells us how sin corrupts the mind (and heart) and fills us with evil. In his list of examples Paul talks about murder and deceit, but also about gossips and those who disobey their parents. Why does he lump all these together?

4. Do you think you are under the control of sin or you have full control of yourself?

5. Write down a prayer in response.

Thursday

ROMANS 1:26-31

1. Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down.

2. Read the passage. Review the answers/thoughts you wrote down yesterday. Is there anything that you need to respond to?

3. Review the past day. What concerns/joys/events occupy your heart?

4. Write down a prayer in response.

Friday

ROMANS 1:32

1. Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. Read the text until you can understand what it says. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down. 

2. “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death.” How do people know good is good and bad is bad? Do you think God’s law — the wages of sin is death — is righteous and just? 

3. “They not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” Notice that this is at the very end of Paul’s description—this the bottom. When this happens, how will people know good from bad?

4. On this slippery slope that Paul describes, where do you think you are: Not there at all; just beginning; in the middle; at the bottom? 

5. Write down a prayer in response.

Saturday

ROMANS 1:32

1. Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down.

2. Read the passage. Review the answers/thoughts you wrote down yesterday. Is there anything that you need to respond to?

3. Review the past day. What concerns/joys/events occupy your heart?

4. Write down a prayer in response.

Sunday

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE INTO THE ABYSS

We know it in theory and we agree that sinful man deserves death. In the day-to-day though, sin rarely bothers us. We don’t murder, we don’t commit adultery, we don’t steal; we do lie but only white and harmless ones. 

But Paul in Romans 1 is talking about us all. He doesn’t mince his words and perhaps we should consider what he has to say about the horror of sin.

It starts with a disposition of sidelining God and moves to allowing other voices in our hearts to dominate, telling us what we want to hear and giving us permission to do what we like. When we diminish the voice of God and trivialise his Word in our hearts, that is sin. Everything else is consequence. These consequences may be to our minds small and inconsequential or ugly and evil but they all come from the same sinful heart.

The wages of sin is death. Not only in terms of hell, but here and now in terms of a deadening of our heart towards God and all he stands for. This is not what God does to us (He loves us!) but what we do to ourselves. When we know and ignore what we know, at some point we will no longer know. And then we are at the point of no return (except by the grace of God).

We fool ourselves when we think we can be in control. If God does not occupy the throne of our hearts, then sin will. With God there is life abundantly. With sin there is only shame, destruction and death. 

Let us never diminish God’s voice and trivialise his Word in our hearts. 

1. Take time to be quiet, until you can focus on being in the presence of God. If you have any initial thoughts, write them down.

2. Review the answers/thoughts you wrote down in the past week. What conclusion can you draw from the passages of Scripture you have been considering? Is there anything that you need to respond to?

3. Read the short sharing above. Does it add anything to your conclusion? 

4. Review the past week. What concerns/joys/events occupy your heart?

5. Write down a prayer in response.