¹ I com­mend to you our sis­ter Phoebe, who is a dea­con in the church in Cenchrea. ² Wel­come her in the Lord as one who is wor­thy of honor among God’s peo­ple. Help her in what­ever she needs, for she has been help­ful to many, and espe­cially to me.³ Give my greet­ings to Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in the min­istry of Christ Jesus. ⁴ In fact, they once risked their lives for me. I am thank­ful to them, and so are all the Gen­tile churches. ⁵ Also give my greet­ings to the church that meets in their home.

Greet my dear friend Epene­tus. He was the first per­son from the province of Asia to become a fol­lower of Christ. ⁶ Give my greet­ings to Mary, who has worked so hard for your ben­e­fit. ⁷ Greet Andron­i­cus and Junia, my fel­low Jews, who were in prison with me. They are highly respected among the apos­tles and became fol­low­ers of Christ before I did. ⁸ Greet Amplia­tus, my dear friend in the Lord. ⁹ Greet Urbanus, our co-worker in Christ, and my dear friend Stachys.

¹⁰ Greet Apelles, a good man whom Christ approves. And give my greet­ings to the believ­ers from the house­hold of Aris­to­b­u­lus. ¹¹ Greet Hero­dion, my fel­low Jew. Greet the Lord’s peo­ple from the house­hold of Nar­cis­sus. ¹² Give my greet­ings to Tryphena and Tryphosa, the Lord’s work­ers, and to dear Per­sis, who has worked so hard for the Lord. ¹³ Greet Rufus, whom the Lord picked out to be his very own; and also his dear mother, who has been a mother to me.

¹⁴ Give my greet­ings to Asyn­cri­tus, Phle­gon, Her­mes, Patrobas, Her­mas, and the broth­ers and sis­ters who meet with them. ¹⁵ Give my greet­ings to Philo­lo­gus, Julia, Nereus and his sis­ter, and to Olym­pas and all the believ­ers who meet with them. ¹⁶ Greet each other in Chris­t­ian love. All the churches of Christ send you their greetings.

Mak­ing It Personal

As Paul wraps up his let­ter to the church in Roma, he shares some per­sonal remarks. I have to admit, it’s one of my favourite parts of Paul’s let­ters. He takes time to men­tion some of the indi­vid­u­als who have help him serve the church.

Let’s face it, no one is suc­cess­ful in min­istry alone. I think it’s easy to for­get that. So much is said about Paul and how suc­cess­ful his min­istry was, and yet Paul rec­og­nizes that he doesn’t do it on his own. There are so many who stand with him, encour­age him, strengthen him, bless him. With­out those peo­ple, who knows how suc­cess­ful Paul would have been.

God has called each of us to serve in part­ner­ship with oth­ers. We all have a role to play. Suc­cess­ful min­istry hap­pens when we do our part and rec­og­nize the value of the oth­ers who serve along­side us.

Who are you serv­ing with? Have you taken time to thank God for them? Per­haps now is a good time to do just that.

My prayer: Lord, I thank you for those who serve beside me in achiev­ing all you’ve called me to do. From my wife and chil­dren, to the lead­er­ship team at Bik­ers’ Church, and all the mem­bers who ful­fill their role each and every week, I am blessed to have great peo­ple at my side. And so, thank you for each one of them. Amen.

Until tomor­row.

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³⁰ Dear broth­ers and sis­ters, I urge you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to join in my strug­gle by pray­ing to God for me. Do this because of your love for me, given to you by the Holy Spirit. ³¹ Pray that I will be res­cued from those in Judea who refuse to obey God. Pray also that the believ­ers there will be will­ing to accept the dona­tion I am tak­ing to Jerusalem. ³² Then, by the will of God, I will be able to come to you with a joy­ful heart, and we will be an encour­age­ment to each other.

³³ And now may God, who gives us his peace, be with you all. Amen.

Pray For Me

Do you ever ask oth­ers to pray for you? I know some peo­ple who seem to ask for prayer about every sin­gle lit­tle thing. If I’m hon­est, some­times I get tired of hear­ing them when we ask for prayer requests. There are some weeks when I won­der if they ever have any­thing they want to thank God for, or are the always just ask­ing for some­thing else.

But there are oth­ers who seem to never ask oth­ers to join them in prayer. And I know why many of peo­ple are like this, because I can be guilty of it.

Pride. Some peo­ple don’t ask oth­ers to pray for them because in ask­ing, we think we are admit­ting to being weak and in need. We can han­dle it on our own so we don’t bother invit­ing oth­ers to join us in pray­ing for a need. It’s pride. And in the end, we miss out as a result.

Jesus said that when two or three agree together on some­thing, it will be done (Matthew 18:19–20). And yet, we remain silent. We go at it alone. And we miss out on a pos­si­ble blessing.

If you’re strug­gling with some­thing, I encour­age you: ask oth­ers to pray with you.

My prayer: Lord, I know that some­times my pride can get in the way of me ask­ing. When I’m tired or dis­cour­aged, I often carry that alone. I don’t invite oth­ers to carry my bur­dens with me. It really is pride. For­give me. I know that you pur­pose to work through com­mu­nity, and when I carry my cares alone, I turn my back on the very rea­son for that com­mu­nity. Per­haps I need to ask oth­ers to pray for me to break that pride. Amen.

Until tomor­row

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²³ But now I have fin­ished my work in these regions, and after all these long years of wait­ing, I am eager to visit you. ²⁴ I am plan­ning to go to Spain, and when I do, I will stop off in Rome. And after I have enjoyed your fel­low­ship for a lit­tle while, you can pro­vide for my jour­ney.²⁵ But before I come, I must go to Jerusalem to take a gift to the believ­ers there. ²⁶ For you see, the believ­ers in Mace­do­nia and Achaia have eagerly taken up an offer­ing for the poor among the believ­ers in Jerusalem. ²⁷ They were glad to do this because they feel they owe a real debt to them. Since the Gen­tiles received the spir­i­tual bless­ings of the Good News from the believ­ers in Jerusalem, they feel the least they can do in return is to help them finan­cially. ²⁸ As soon as I have deliv­ered this money and com­pleted this good deed of theirs, I will come to see you on my way to Spain. ²⁹ And I am sure that when I come, Christ will richly bless our time together.

We Are Not Alone

Dur­ing my road trip in late Sep­tem­ber, I spent the night in Roswell, New Mex­ico. Roswell, of course, is famous for the sup­posed crash of a UFO in 1947. As a result of that claim, the town has become a tourism hotspot. In my blog update of that day, I had a lit­tle fun with the idea of being in “Alien Country.”

When you make the state­ment, we are not alone, in a place like Roswell, it means some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent than what I am try­ing to sug­gest today.

Paul is shar­ing an incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful story of how churches from dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties have come together to sup­port one another. While each church had their own chal­lenges and issues, they rec­og­nized that they are not alone — they are part of a big­ger Church fam­ily. They saw a respon­si­bil­ity to stand together.

And so, churches that had more gave to those who had less. They didn’t expect any­thing in return. They did it because in the end, they rec­og­nized the value of hav­ing strong, healthy churches in many dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties. I love that.

I also love that there are churches today who get that. Today, we find churches that go out of their way to be a part of the larger church com­mu­nity. Churches that offer their resources, mate­ri­als, and finances to those who are in need. I think it’s great, and I hope that Bik­ers’ Church will always be one of those churches ready to give to others.

And yet, there are still some who think they are the only ones that mat­ter. Churches who are so inward think­ing that they for­get about the larger church com­mu­nity. Their inse­cu­rity causes them to believe they are in com­pe­ti­tion with the other churches in their community.

Of course, every church is made up of peo­ple. The churches that Paul men­tions in today’s pas­sage are sim­ply groups of peo­ple in those cities. Each indi­vid­ual decides if they will be part of a larger Church or if they will turn inward.

What kind of per­son are you?

My prayer: Jesus, it was you who prayed that your fol­low­ers would be one. Your heart cried out for unity. I want have the same heart. I want to see the Church as big­ger than just the one con­gre­ga­tion I am blessed to be part of. I want to see the diver­sity and unique­ness of the greater Church. Thank you that because of the larger Church fam­ily, I can claim to have broth­ers and sis­ters all over the world. It is true, I am not alone. Amen.

Until tomor­row.

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