Sunday, March 30, 2008

Book Review Friday: Romans 7-10

If you do not know what Book Review Friday is and would like to check it out, you can see my sidebar for all the details. Feel free to jump in and join us where we are. :)

First things first, we will read Romans 11-13 until next Friday. Please forgive me if you have been waiting to see what chapters we would all be on. This really is the first moment I've had to let you all know. If you would like to be reminded of all my woes and complaints as to why my timing is off for everything in life please check out my 'Confessions of a milk maid post' and you'll hear it all. :)

I'm so glad that as I read these few chapters this past week that I had a pen and paper beside me. I didn't know that I would be just as squeezed for time this week as last week, and that means that book reviews can get lost in the shuffle. This won't be anything special but here are a few points I pondered in chapters 7-10.

(I would like to say flat out to y'all right here that I really have no clue if I'm understanding all this law stuff right. If there are any Bible scholars reading this please understand, I am just a regular wife and mom reading her Bible, excited about it and desperately trying to learn much. Forgive my lack of spiritual understanding if I'm getting it all wrong, please!)

Glad to get that out in the open. :)

Romans 7:6 "But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter."


When we are saved the law becomes written on our hearts. The law doesn't change, it becomes part of us so that we don't live by it, we now have the perfect law with in us. We are the law. (Romans 2:14,15)

Romans 7:25 "I thank God-through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but wit the flesh the law of sin."


The 10 verses before this all talk about knowing to do the right thing but always ending up doing the exact opposite of what you know you should, and want, to do. I can so totally relate. It is one thing to know what is right and talk about it and tell other people, and a completely different thing to live it. It is just like 1:21-23. Did I mention that one before??? I loved it so I'll tell it to you again.
"...although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to b e wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man"

We can know who God is. And then we can live like it.

And because of verses like these I am humbled. I get caught up in my own wisdom and knowledge forgetting that I have it all yet to learn. My heart is deceitful and we cannot trust our own wisdom. Remember 1:22 again and how we 'know' who God is and therefore think we've got it all figured out, but we do not glorify Him in true belief. We take things into our own hands and do not live like God is God. We do not submit to His righteousness because our righteousness has overtaken.
We aren't so smart as we think we are.

And after that lame review (but I finally did one) I would love it if anyone else had a review to add to Mr.Linky 2 days late. I doubt it since not one soul mentioned it at all even though it was sooo late. What do you think girls, is it going to take a while for Book Review Friday to take the world by storm? :)
Here's Mr.Linky.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Shannon I just got to read your review. Like you the things that really stood out to me were in Chapter 7. I can't say this is new to me as I have struggled with this passage for as long as I can remember reading it. I ask myself everytime why, when I know what is right to do, WHY don't I get to it. I wish that I had done a review as well, there is so much in Romans. Please don't give up on me, even if there is no review from me I am reading the chapters. I also just read your farm and dog blogs. I LOVE dogs too. Sorry!!!:):)