On Sunday mornings in churches near and far, Christians so easily sing, Our God Reigns. Yes, he does, until life demands we actually believe those words. When faced with an opportunity to accomplish something great for God, sometimes we choose personal comfort over courage. And the result?
Well, we miss the very adventures God designed for us to enjoy. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindahl describes a pioneer missionary who refused to play it safe. What dreams has God placed on your heart these days? Maybe it's time to reignite your passion for the impossible. As we read the scriptures together today, we're looking into Romans 15, beginning at verse 17 down not to the end of the chapter, but almost there.
Down to verse 29. You will find this section is very autobiographical. And here we get another glimpse of the man who wrote the letter. Through his own testimony. And he certainly should know of his life better than any other except the Lord Himself.
I'll begin reading at 15:17. Therefore, in Christ Jesus, I have found reason for boasting in things. Pertaining to God, for I will not presume to speak of anything except. what Christ has accomplished through me. Resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles by word.
Indeed. In the power of signs. and wonders in the power of the Spirit.
So that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. And thus I aspired to preach the gospel not where Christ was already named.
so that I would not build on another man's foundation. But as it is written, they who had no news of him shall see And they who have not heard, shall understand. For this reason, I have often been prevented from coming to you, but now, with no further place for me in these regions, And since I have had for many years a longing to come to you, whenever I go to Spain, for I hope to see you in passing, and to be helped on my way there by you. when I have first enjoyed your company for a while. But now I am going to Jerusalem.
Serving the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make a contribution for the poor. among the saints in Jerusalem. Yes, they were pleased to do so, and they are indebted. To them.
For if the Gentiles have shared in their spiritual things, they are indebted to minister to them. Also in material things. Therefore, when I have finished this, And I put my seal on this fruit of theirs. I will go on by way of you. to Spain.
I know that when I come to you, I will come in the fullness. of the blessing of Christ. Yeah. You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into the book of Romans on your own, be sure to purchase our Searching the Scriptures Bible Study Workbook by going to insight.org/slash offer.
Chuck titled today's message, Preaching and Traveling with Paul. I'm going to ask you to do something creative for the next few moments. To begin with, you are sitting in a very familiar place. Most of you sitting in the seat you have been sitting in for a long time. You are familiar with your place, you are familiar with the language of this area, you are familiar with the community and the cities around us.
You are familiar with what we commonly call our culture. It's quiet, it's comfortable. Everything is pretty familiar to you.
Now I'm asking you to leave the familiar. And take a creative journey with me across a bridge of time. that will stretch back 1950 years. The city where you find yourself is not quiet. It's busy.
As a matter of fact, it is a Fast moving. fast living city. Would someday come to be known as the Las Vegas of the world. Ancient Las Vegas. It's Corinth.
As William Lasso writes, if Athens was the glory of Greece, Corinth was its cesspool. Located on the trade routes where ships from the west docked. to transfer cargo to ships For the East, Corinth was a A typical Liberty port. On the hill behind the city called Acrocorinth. There was a temple.
dedicated to sensual love. Filled with prostitutes of both gender. In great number, and all who worshipped at this so-called Goddess of Love temple. Had their fill. of the prostitutes.
Look up the word Corinthianize in some of the more exhaustive dictionaries, and you will find all that Corinth held. And all it offered for those who would come. To live in the cesspool. of Greece. You're there because of your craft.
You have been asked by a man you didn't know before to do a special work. You notice his hands and his face bear the marks of age. and his body. The scars of mistreatment. Perhaps by then, around 56, 57, the winter of that year or that turn of the year.
He was no longer able to write. His hands may have been crushed. are broken by the stones. where they had hoped to end his life, but he would go on. You meet him as Saul of Tarsus.
by then known as Paul. Your name is Tertius. You're a scribe. Paul has asked you to be the one who will write this. Letter, and the more you write, the more you realize this is a profound.
piece of literature In many ways, the most significant that would ever come from Paul's mind and heart. Little do you, or little does he, realize, that this will become the magnum opus of his life, the veritable constitution of the Christian faith. Little do either of you know that this single letter. would result in millions of pages of exposition and meditation. From Origen of Alexandria in the second century all the way to Bart of Basel in the 20th century.
Little do either of you know that Augustine would find the seed plot of his faith in the letter that you are writing. as the scribe of Paul. Little do you know that it will be this letter that will light the spark in the heart of a monk named Martin. Who takes issue with the established church and breaks from it. because he has come to Christ By the message of justification by faith, apart from works, according to what is written in this letter, and would later lead the Reformation across Germany.
Little do you know that it would be this letter that would strangely warm the heart of John Wesley by the 18th century and would begin to lead the great English Reformation. You, Tertius, would be the first to write. to hear the words. And to put them in a manuscript that would one day be folded into a scroll, preserved. And would take centuries to unfold in the lives of God's people.
around the world. Oh, I forgot to tell you, you're famous. Your name is in the Bible. Chapter 16, verse 22 of the letter. Paul leans over and says to you with a nod, it's okay.
You can add that.
So you put in the letter, I, Tertius, who write this letter, greet you in the Lord. What a man Paul is. What a man! Cambridge-educated John Pollock has written a piece entitled The Apostle, magnificent biography of Paul. In it, he writes this of the man.
The Paul of Corinth, AD 57, was determined to use every spiritual gift up to the very limit of his faith, which too he recognized as a gift of God. He worked for the Lord with untiring effort. And with great earnestness of spirit, keeping the inward fires well stoked. He was steady in times of distress, gloriously happy in prospect of the future. Prayer was as natural to him as breathing.
He was a hospitable, generous man. Paul loved to help people, was cheerful. Not doing his acts of kindness sanctimoniously, grudgingly, or smugly. Paul's love was genuine, unsimulated. Isn't that a good word?
Unsimulated. And he had a marked touch of sympathy, rejoicing with those who rejoiced, and weeping with those who wept. Nor did he choose his company with an eye to class, wealth, or position The humble Christian found Him ready to walk out of his way to do a good turn. to share an experience. Paul had a gift for literally counting every man as better.
than himself. How magnificent Romans grew out of a cesspool. in Greece. became a rose. that bloomed petals.
And the aroma of those petals blew across the entire world, touching even us in the 21st century. How magnificent it must have been to have been asked to be the scribe. to write the letter. For the great Apostle Paul. You can be sure that very few in the city of Corinth at that time had that opinion of Paul.
Yeah. To them he was a narrow minded, monotheistic little Jew. That had the audacity to come into the city and establish a church. To take issue with their lifestyle and to tell them of the God of love. with no prostitutes included.
A God who would give his son for them. and would die in their place. Mm. How magnificent of Paul And his thinking. to pour himself into this letter.
we have today is Romans. When we get to this little autobiographical section of Paul's writings to the Romans, beginning at verse 17, chapter 15 through verse 29 of the same chapter, we read of Paul's thinking, and then we'll read a little later of Paul's travels, and even Paul's attitude emerge from this section. First, his thinking. One of the great things about this section. Is that we're able to pull back the curtain of the man and just discover a few important realities of his life.
Regarding his accomplishments, He saw himself in one role. A servant. A servant. His accomplishments were many, but he refers to them in verse 18. I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has done.
Has a accomplished. The accomplishments were done through the power of Christ. In fact, Christ used Paul's vocal cords as his mouthpiece. Christ used Paul's hands As his writing instruments. God used Paul's feet as his messenger to take it across.
All of Asia Minor, today known as Turkey, and then across the Aegean, as we will see, and into Europe. Magnificent. But he never saw himself as all that significant. Remember the words of Jesus? If you haven't put them in your Bible yet, John 15:5, Jesus said this: Apart from me, you can't do a lot.
No, not really. It doesn't say that at all. Apart from me, you'll have a hard time. No, it doesn't say that either. It says, apart from me, what?
You can do nothing. We forget that. We are so capable, we are so able in ourselves, and if we're not, we know banks that will help us out. We know people who will come to our rescue. But Christ says, when you trust me as you should trust me, you will lean on me and realize apart from me, you can do nothing.
I thought of this the other day when I came across a darling story of a little leaguer. Who put all 60 pounds of himself behind the plate? and with one ferocious swing barely connected with the baseball. The ball scraped the bottom of the bat and it sort of tumbled toward the pitcher's mound. And the little leaguer that was pitching sort of groped and fumbled it, and the little fellow is running to first base as the pitcher, who has plenty of time to nail him at first, throws the ball way over the head of first base.
And the little slugger is running around second base. And he's panting and he's huffing. And the guy that picks up the ball in the right field throws it all the way into left field.
So the little slugger runs around to third base and he comes in home, slides in home, and sort of proudly walks away and says to his buddies over in the dugout, oh boy, he said, that's the first home run I ever hit in my whole life. That sounds like you or me? We're about as effective as the little 60-pound slugger at the base, and we happen by the grace of God to make it around the second base, for whatever that may mean. And we come to third base, and we realize God's grace has done it all. Without him, I could do nothing.
He says he has done it. Through me. I will speak of nothing except what he has done. Through me, will you always remember that? Will you spend less time in front of the mirror?
And more time. before the open book of God. Will you remember his promises? Will you trust him to get you through the things you cannot handle? He knows you cannot handle him.
That's why he put you there. It is his way of saying, turn to me. Lean on me. In fact, look at what was accomplished. I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me.
And look at what happened, resulting in the obedience of the. The Greek term is nations. The obedience of the nations by word and work, literally. By word and work. And it isn't imaginary, it isn't virtual results.
These are genuine results. Look. The genuine power. Genuine signs and wonders, those are words referring to actual miracles, not televised miracles. Not promised miracles to people whom you never see later to ask if the miracle took.
These are real miracles by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's real power. That's the real Spirit.
So that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. These are genuine miracles and genuine results, genuine people whose lives have been changed. Is it any wonder that some have come to call him Saint Paul? I read recently of a group of children that were at school at their church. and the teacher was taking them on a walk through the sanctuary.
They were looking at all the stained glass windows around the sanctuary. Try to imagine as you look around this place without windows, okay? And here was St. Matthew, and then here was St. Stephen, and there was St.
Mark, and here was St. John, and there was St. Paul. And the teacher realizes the children have talked about these windows and seen these windows throughout their growing up years, but maybe no one's ever explained that word saint. And she said, Do you know?
What that little word saint means, and one little girl raised her hand, she said, I do. A saint is a person whom the light shines through. Pretty profound, huh? The light shone through Paul. And you were never impressed with Paul.
In fact, the Corinthians say in his presence, he's nothing at all. His writings are powerful.
Some even feel that Paul lived with a hunchback. He certainly bore the marks and scars. of mistreatment. live through a stoning. Live through the rigors of years of travel.
You see, Paul. In his ministry as a pioneer. In his leadership, in his thinking, he is a servant. His ministry is marked by serving, but he's also a pioneer. I get that from verse 20.
Love this verse. I aspired to preach the gospel not where Christ was already named.
So that I would not build on another man's foundation. Remember his comment to the Corinthians? First Corinthians three, verses four through seven, you will read the words. I planted. Apollos watered, And God gave the increase.
That planting part. That's the heart of a pioneer missionary. If you love gardening, you know the first process after getting that soil prepared is the dropping of the seed. Paul put in the seed. He dropped the sea.
Apostles came along later and watered it, and others would do so, but the apostle, he was the one who planted it, not where Christ's name was. was known and not on another's foundation. I don't know the last time you looked into the world of the pioneer, but you need to do that every once in a while. One year we were holding a conference out in western a part of the country in a conference ground known as Mount Herman. And we chose for our Our theme that year, the the pioneer spirit.
And it was wonderful because part of our time together was spent doing a little work in the world of the pioneer. And I had discovered that some of those ruts that were made by the old prairie schooners of yesteryear from Indiana and Illinois and even places more eastern are still there in some places on the way out to Oregon. And you read of these remarkable people. I mean, they stood against the elements. They packed their food in salt and they shot their food on the way, and they became the food of Indians along the way as well.
And they themselves were working their way toward what? A dream. A hope, a future. Not building where anyone else had built before. What that is to our history.
Paul is to the Christian faith. I remember reading about David Livingston when he applied as a missionary at the London Missionary Society. He was asked, you volunteered, but where would you like to go? His answer, indicative of a pioneer, was, I'll go anywhere.
So long as it is forward. James Stalker, in a fine work on Paul, writes this of Livingston. There are many men who like to grow where they are born. To have to change into new circumstances and make acquaintances with new people is intolerable. But there are others who have a kind of vagabondism in their blood.
They are the persons intended by nature for immigrants. and pioneers. And if they take to the work of the ministry, they make the best missionaries. In modern times, no missionary has had this consecrated spirit of adventure. in the same degree as that great Scotchman.
David Livingston. When he first went to Africa, he found the missionaries clustered in the south part of the continent, just within the fringe of heathenism. They had their own little homes by then, their own little gardens, and their little families and their small congregation of now born-again natives, and they were content to stay there. Livingston moved at once away beyond the rest into the heart of heathenism. and dreams of more distant regions never ceased to haunt him till at length He began his extraordinary tramps over thousands of miles.
where no missionary had ever been. In today's study, we're learning that our greatest achievements await not in the safety of the familiar, but in the adventure of a vision that's fueled by faith. You are listening to Insight for Living, and an in-depth study of Paul's letter to the Romans. Stay with us, because Chuck Swindahl has some encouragement for us coming up in just a bit. On Thanksgiving Day, we celebrate God's goodness and grace to our families and to our nation as well.
Today's also a pivotal day, because tomorrow morning we'll begin looking forward to Christmas. In that spirit, we're excited to offer you and your loved ones a brand new Advent devotional published by Insight for Living. It's called Everlasting Light, and it's written by our Spanish pastor, Carlos Sasueta, with his friend and mentor, Chuck Swindahl. In a moment I'll tell you how to request a copy. But first a few words from Chuck.
My friend, can you imagine releasing your only son? God demonstrated his love for the world in the most profound way. through the sacrifice of Jesus On the cross. That's love beyond our comprehension. This Advent season I want to remind you Love is more than just a feeling.
It's an action. When you give financially to insight for living, you're actively proclaiming. I love you. to those who haven't yet heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's powerful.
Your gift becomes your voice reaching into places you'll never physically go. This Christmas, we celebrate Jesus. the baby born in Bethlehem, who is our everlasting light. He came as the ultimate expression of God's everlasting love for us. And just as Christ fully gave Himself for us, your year-end gift embodies a deep, sacrificial love.
Every contribution becomes a tangible expression of your devotion, sharing the love of Jesus where it's most needed. Here's our central goal at Insight for Living. To ensure that everyone experiences the love and light of Jesus Christ. We do this through our daily broadcasts heard around the world. Through paws and tails.
our wonderful podcast for children. Through pastoral training resources that equip church leaders. and through a wide variety of helpful publications. But, friend, we can't do this alone. When you give generously at year end, you give You're infusing a supernatural source of love into someone's life.
You're extending God's own heart to people who are desperately searching for love. that will never fail them. Together, let's share his everlasting love to a world longing for his presence. Follow these simple instructions. And I look forward to hearing from you today.
As you give a year-end donation, be sure to request the 25-day Advent devotional called Everlasting Light. You can be an agent for the everlasting light and spread the good news far and wide by making a generous contribution. Address your letter to InsightForLiving. Post Office Box 5000. Frisco, Texas 75034.
You can also call us at 800-772-8888. That's 800-772-8888. Or you can give your donation and request the Advent devotional Everlasting Light by going to insight.org/slash donate. Courage or Comfort, which will you choose? I'm Bill Meyer, urging you to hear Chuck Swindahl's challenging message Friday on Insight for Living.
The preceding message, Preaching and Traveling with Paul, was copyrighted in 2008, 2010, and 2025, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2025 by Charles R. Swindahl, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.
