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“I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world.” – Romans 1:8
I have mostly fond memories of church camp when I was a kid. A small collection of songs in my head came from these camps, including one called “Pass It On.” The first line of that song goes, “It only takes a spark to get a fire going.” The song’s message is that God’s love is something so amazing, you want to pass it on to others.
But some who claim to be followers of Jesus don’t pass it on. It makes me think of another song from my younger days that you may not be familiar with called “My Room.”
Here’s one verse from that song:
I read in my room, memorize in my room
I am removing myself, I am moving quietly
Those without the secret, keep on knocking
At the door, disturbance from this wicked, wicked world
The person speaking in this song is saying that they believe in God and read His word, but they also remove themselves from the wicked world to protect themselves. It’s a rebuke to Christians who know the secret about the good news of Jesus but don’t share it with others.
In the verse above, Paul is celebrating the fact that the faith of the Christian church in Rome is spreading like wildfire all over the world. Later in that same chapter, Paul says that he is “unashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone.” That is the central message of the entire letter to the Romans.
That also makes me a tad uneasy. Is my faith being spread all over the world? Probably. Am I unashamed of the gospel? I think so. But am I passing it on, like the camp song suggests? Maybe not with the same zeal that Paul writes about, and so I feel convicted. The question should never be “am I supposed to pass it on,” but rather “how am I passing it on?”
But if COVID has taught us anything, it’s how easy it is to remove ourselves from the wicked world. “Just me, God, and YouTube on Sunday” is what more followers of Jesus say these days. The number of people congregating together once a week is down from a decade ago. And most importantly, if we remove ourselves from the world, how will they hear of His love? Romans 10:14 reads, “How then are they to call on Him in whom they have not believed? How are they to believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?”
So, many of you know the truth about God’s love. Praise the Lord. But to not share that knowledge with the world is the equivalent of committing a crime. We are called to go and tell. And the value of that is when you do, what you share becomes part of a spreading fire throughout the world and takes on a life of its own.
And that’s definitely worth celebrating.