Romans or Todays world..........

I know that I have not written anything in several weeks and I can list a hundred excuses,  I have been busy, I've been traveling, I've started a new job, all those excuses, but none really matter.   What does matter is what is written.  So the last several weeks I have been thinking about the not writing and trying to come up with a new thought that I could turn into a devotional and share with you.  But nothing has struck me has I need to write that now.  So again today I was quietly reading my Bible and began reading Romans again and thought WOW this writing applies to today's world.  So over the course of the next several weeks I will relay those readings, all from the Message translation.  Okay all you purest reading the King James Version, the New King James Version, the NIV or whatever you think is the best translation, like I have said in the past I find this translation best for today's language in getting out the Word of God.  Especially to those that are unchurched, whom I am really trying to reach. 

So here starts the book of Romans, starting with Chapter 1 verse 18:

Ignoring God Leads to a Downward Spiral

 ^18-23But God's angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn't treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.
 ^24-25So God said, in effect, "If that's what you want, that's what you get." It wasn't long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!
 ^26-27Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn't know how to be human either—women didn't know how to be women, men didn't know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.
 ^28-32Since they didn't bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it's not as if they don't know better. They know perfectly well they're spitting in God's face. And they don't care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!