Sharing

DEVOTION
ROMANS
SHARING
Rom 12:13
13 Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
NIV
It is a strange thing to be a believer and not think I have some obligation to give to those who are in need. It would seem this would be a natural expression of belief in Christ, yet I am not always feeling as though I should give money or things, material items in that sense. Why this is I am not sure, but maybe after looking into this verse I can see I still am compelled to give. Now the rub for me happens when I look into the Greek. The word translated into share carries a deeper richer meaning then simply to give. This same word has been translated into communicate as well as share. I know that those who are hungry should be feed, I believe in helping as I can, but I also see a sharing to those who are in need of spiritual food, starving people, dying people, doomed to perish if I do not share with them the bread of life. I know this verse speaks of God’s people who are in need and I suppose I can view this in a narrow sense to only those who are saved, yet are not all the people on the earth God’s? Did not he create all of mankind and did not Christ come to die for all of them? The rest of this verse certainly opens that to my mind, in the sense I am told to entertain strangers. That is hospitality in the Greek, to practice entertaining strangers. How can another member of the body of Christ be a stranger? I cannot simply stay confined within the four walls of the church building. But how do I share with strangers? How to I feed them? Giving through areas like Target Dayton, is one way in the material food sense, yet what about the spiritual food? What about the communicating with God’s people who are in need of salvation? What about sharing with God’s people who are in need of hearing His Word, hearing about Him? What about entertaining strangers, how can I do that? How can I fulfill God’s call to reach the unsaved? If I want to be seen stand up! If I want to be heard, speak up!