My personal goal for this challenge has been to add depth to my devotional experience. I wanted my devotions to have some direction and be more than watching the "10 minute clock". So I decided to use Romans as my study material and I resurrected my prayer journal. My Prayer journal's more of a "spiritual" diary/journal. Instead of "Dear Diary" it's "Dear God" and I write out some of my prayers... and I use it as a processing forum for whatever I just read. And so far so good... Instead of checking the clock to see if it's 10 minutes yet, I look up at the clock when I'm finished and find that I'm usually over the 10 minutes! Skipping devotions on a day (like today) when I did my stretching routine was not an option. And I've been finding myself doing devotions sometimes twice each day...when I wake up and before I go to bed. Romans, though, is one of those books that seems to beg discussion. So I thought that ever so often I'd post here to get some feed back.
Romans 10:9 says that if you confess Jesus as Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead that you're saved. Thought to myself that it seems pretty simple. Then the questions started coming.... Theme so far of the book has been saved by grace and not by works. It's grace that saves us. Not what we do. How does this fit in, though, with the concept that if your "tree" isn't producing "fruit" you get chopped down or something? I mean, why isn't obedience included in the being saved text? Is it assumed that if one truely believes obedience will follow?
And why does Chapeter 9 make God seem so random? Like he picks and chooses who to show mercy on?
