Tagged by Ric Booth for a very cool conversation starter:

What is your favorite book of the Bible?

Not to over think it, I had to really ask myself, “What is my favorite book?”. If I am really honest with myself, this is different than asking:

Favorite prophet: Isaiah
Most quoted from: Jeremiah
Most identifies with: Hosea
Mark myself against: Mark
In Awe of God: John
Wraps up everything about God: 1 John
Absolute giddy about: Ezekiel, Daniel and Revelation
Thinks is not boring: Numbers, Deuteronomy
Keep going back to: Acts
Currently stuck in: Psalm
Taught by: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon
Could spend a year on: Genesis

Even despite my constant temptation of getting Isaiah 53 tattooed on my back in Hebrew and English, my favorite book has to be Romans.

When I think of what I am placed on this earth to do, nothing but absolutely nothing is more important than sharing the gospel of my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

It is this Epistle to the Romans that two things are established:

• Puts everybody on the same playing field when approaching the Most High God - It removes all excuses. Not only it establish how we stand with God but it challenges us into answering one very important question.  That question is not whether we can be saved but rather do we think we need to be saved. In other words, how is salvation possible if you don’t think you need to be saved.
• Despite it laying out the path to salvation in order to get to God, this letter is written out to believers - It essentially lays out the basics of Christianity: hope, faith, love, spreading the gospel, promises of His love, His holiness and righteousness, wrestling between flesh and spirit and the dismantling of religiosity by separating law and spirit. One way I have heard it put: The Gospel According to Paul. It is very good news, indeed.

Above all, Romans contains the single greatest passage in the Bible, in my opinion. We can put our faith in that when all else fails and everything is being destroyed around us, it is just God and us and nothing can separate us from His love:

Romans 8:31-39 (ESV) What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.