7 To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul’s Longing to Visit Rome
8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. 9 God, whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you 10 in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.11 I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong— 12 that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. 13 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,[d] that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.
Paul learnt tremendously, he switched from killing Christians to building a relationship with them! How different he became! He now believes that God is the Father and Jesus is the Son. And he is blessing others, Christians and Jews alike. We see that Rome is just like the mission trips that we will be going. Going to another land to do God's work. The desire for Paul was great, his desire to come to fulfill the spiritual needs of the people in Rome. Then you ask, why does he have great desire? It is because he has the heart for people, the heartbeat of God. He spoke even more, he spoke about a harvest among the people in Rome. The harvest refers to a spiritual breakthrough.Besides the desire for people's heart, his home country was Rome and that was drawing him to come back. Something that is close to his heart. Moreover, he was leveraging on the fact that he was both a Jew and a Roman citizen to share the word. God may have bestowed upon us these privilege and it is our calling to use those talents to do God's work.
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