Romans 1:13Plain English VersionYou know, friends, I tried to come and see you lots of times, but God stopped me every time. I want to come and work there with you and get more people to follow Jesus, just like I do at other places. See the chapter |
Think again about food plants. A worker plants the seeds, and then after they grow up to be big plants, another worker gathers the food from them. And the owner pays both the worker that plants the seeds and the worker that gathers the food. That is a picture of God’s workers. One of them tells people God’s message, and later on, another worker will help those people to believe that message, so that God will take those people into his family and they will live with him for ever. Both of those workers will be really happy when they see people in God’s family, just like both of the workers in the picture story got paid for their work.
My Christian friends, remember the story about my mob, the Israel people. A long time ago, they all followed Moses and walked out into the hot dry country. And God put a big cloud above them, and that cloud showed them where to go. Then they came to the Red Sea, and God pushed the water back so that they all walked through the Red Sea on dry ground.
My Christian friends, don’t be like little kids in the way you think. You know, little kids don’t know much about anything. They don’t understand really bad things. So whenever you think about bad things, be like little kids. But whenever you think about anything else, be grown up people. Think properly and understand things properly.
So, my friends, this is how to have proper church meetings. Whenever you church people meet together, each one of you can have something to help the other people there. One of you might have a song that all of you can sing to God. Another person might have something that they can teach you. Somebody else might want to tell you about something that God has shown them. Another person might talk in a special language, and then somebody else can tell everybody what those words in that special language mean. Do all those things to help each other be strong Christians.
Christian friends, we are going to tell you now about people that have already died. We don’t want you to be sad when you think about them. Other people, that don’t believe in Jesus, they don’t know what will happen to them after they die. So when their friends die, they get really sad. But if our Christian friends die, we don’t have to be really sad like those other people. Listen, we want you to understand this properly.
But God stood there beside me, and he made me strong, so that I could tell his message properly to everybody in that court. Those people there were not Jews, so maybe that was the first time they heard about God. In the end the judge didn’t sentence me to death, so they didn’t give me to the lions to eat.