Romans 1:10-13

¹⁰ “always in my prayers requesting if perhaps now, at last by the will of God, I will succeed in coming to you.  ¹¹ For I long to see you so that I may impart some spiritual gift to you, that you may be established; ¹² that is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other’s faith, both yours and mine. ¹³ I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that often I have planned to come to you (and have been prevented so far) so that I may obtain some fruit among you also just as among the rest of the Gentiles.

What is God’s will? We think about it often. We hope that we can somehow guess God’s will as it relates to specific events in our lives. But notice that Paul was often in the dark about what God was allowing or not allowing in his life. Apparently, Paul had packed his bags multiple times to come see the church in Rome but was unable to do so. He did not have a secret voice telling him what to do all of the time. He lived in the present and made choices just as we do, and not everything worked out!

Paul wanted to impart a spiritual gift to the church in Rome. While we may be tempted to conclude that this gift was some supernatural ability from God, the text defines the gift as mutual sharing of what both Paul and the Roman Christians had learned during their walk with Christ. Paul was learning and wanted to share his knowledge, as well as receive knowledge, from his brothers and sisters in Christ.