This week will be a lengthy passage with a set of questions/challenges to follow. Read the passage and reflect on its content.
Romans 1:20-32 20For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. (NIV)
Questions/challenges:
1. List the parts of this verse that are prophetic and relevant to today’s Culture.
2. Where are some specific areas in our culture where you see this going on?
3. How related are these things to the “depraved mind”?
4. How does it make you feel that God gave them over to a depraved mind? Why do you think God would do such a thing?
5. Chapter starts out talking about passing judgment about these people and that we would be passing judgment on ourselves as well. From the above passage, what parts of “list” can you own about yourself?
6. What has to change in order to move away from the life/lives described above?
7. What can you do to make a difference in our current culture?
8. Ask God this week to reveal to you a vision or plan to make a difference in our current culture. Keep in mind the first few verses of chapter 2 as you look for ways of making a difference.
9. Although this devotional thought tends toward the negative, in what way can God be glorified through what has been learned today?
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