Mutual faith

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request if, by some means, now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you. For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established—that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you (but was hindered until now), that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other Gentiles. – Romans 1.9-13

I know that I have written a lot about Paul's desire to go to Rome.  Had never really noticed it in Acts until this time through. I guess part of that comes because it came to my attention the last time I tried to preach through Romans. In Acts we saw his desire to get here, now we get to find out why.

'I long to see you,' Paul wrote shortly before his trip there, 'to do a few things - '

To impart spiritual gifts

To see you established

That we may encourage each other with 'mutual faith'

To see fruit borne in faith

There is too much here to address it all in one brief reflection. I am particularly impressed by one little phrase here. That phrase is 'that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.'

One of the great blessings of being a Christian and meeting believers is the 'mutual faith' that binds and encourages us. A few years ago Jay, Caleb, and Zeke all worked at Superquinn here in Naas. Because of that we need most of our shopping there. One day we were looking for cupcake papers and asked one of the workers there. It turns our he was Polish.  We knew right away that there was something different about him. Jay was a manager and we mentioned that he was our son. Konrad said 'Jay is a Jesus person. I am Jesus person too!' Konrad was living rough at the time. He was in a situation where he really needed that encouragement of mutual faith. Little did we know what a blessing he would be to us. He came to our church for over a year. We were able to celebrate his marriage to a wonderful Christian woman. Eventually they moved back to Poland, but those days of encouragement in the mutual faith with be a blesses part of our lives forever.

Those kind of stories could be repeated over and over again in the body of Christ. May we all learn to cherish and love those days of encouragement in the mutual faith as God brings believers into our lives.