September 25, 2002
Reading: Romans 15:1-6

 

“My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” Phil 4:19

 

I was born in England during the height of WW II. I lived in a town that lay between Germany and London and many flying bombs fell around us as they fell short of their target. Of course, I knew nothing of the danger to which we were exposed every day, not of the sacrifices my parents endured so I could be fed and clothed. As I learned later, they were living on “ration stamps.” Everything was rationed, and when you ran out of stamps you could not buy anything else until the next months stamp allotment arrived – which was not very regular. When I look at my baby pictures I see a child who was well fed and clothed. Rationing did not affect me because my parents met all my needs even when it meant going without themselves. My father wore his wedding suit for twenty years before he could afford to buy a new one.

Our spiritual welfare is both similar and different to my experience. It is similar because God has promised to supply all of our need. It is different because that need is met out of His riches, not rationing stamps. Whatever we need in our Christian walk, God will supply. Romans 15 gives us a wonderful insight into this truth.

In our reading, the apostle addresses the need for us to get along with each other. To do this we need to exhibit “patience and comfort” (4). He immediately points us to “the God of patience and comfort” (5). He presents God in the very character in which we need Him. The will of our own patience is very shallow and will soon run dry, but the patience of God will never run dry because it is His character – it is who He is.

Paul continues to speak about the gentiles and the hope we have in God (12), for without God we have no hope (Eph 2:12). The need is hope, and again God is presented exactly as we need Him, “May the God of Hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (13).

At the close of the chapter, Paul asks for prayer that his enemies will be kept at bay (30-31). His need is peace, not confrontation with those who oppose him and his message, so he speaks of God as “the God of peace” (33). He repeats this when speaking of those who cause division and offense in the church (16:17). They need the God of peace (16:20), and it is to the God of peace that Paul directs them.

Whatever we need - patience, hope, peace, or anything else, we have to turn in simple faith to God and find it all in Him. He is the one grand and all-sufficient answer to our every need, from the starting point of our Christian walk to its conclusion. May God grant us the faith to look to Him whatever our need.