"You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me." John 5:39
One of the main things religion loves to do is disguise knowledge as relationship. It tries its absolute best to lead us to believe that if we know tons of stuff about God, then we must actually know God. So we go to church weekly to get our heads above water, even read the Bible before bed here and there, and try our best to obey the rules until next Sunday. Then by the end of the week we realize that we feel kind of discouraged once again, that reading the Bible felt more like a chore than anything else, and that we didn’t really obey the rules that well at all. But we stay on this religious train week after week, expecting different results, because we think we’re doing what God wants us to do. But the truth is, religion has successfully deceived us into the belief that having a schedule full of religious activities means we are spending time with God; and that knowing a lot about God means that we actually have a relationship God.
If a wife’s relationship with her husband was going to a building once a week to listen to some guy on a stage talk about how awesome her husband was, and throughout the week she read a few pages of a book about her husband, and daily tried to do her best to obey what the book and the guy up on stage said her husband would like her to do, we would question if these two people were even in a relationship at all. It would confuse people who were looking from the outside in. Because the people on the outside know that relationship means things like communication, connection, working through hardships, hanging out…the stuff people do together.
Falling into the deception that knowledge of God is relationship with God leads us into giving people a message rather than a person; principles to live by rather than the Spirit that enables them to live out the principles; and Bible stories about a miracle working God in the past rather than a demonstration of a miracle working God in the present. It’s religion masked as God and people are right to not want what we’re giving them if what we’re giving them is this.
Relationship has always been the point. Relationship is what God had with humanity in the beginning, and it’s what we have complete access to now because of what Jesus has done. It’s what we were created for. It’s what He’s always wanted, and under all of the lies we sometimes believe, we find it’s what we’ve always wanted. And as we grow in true relationship with Him, we’ll become more like Him. And as we become more like Him, we’ll be able to more accurately represent who He truly is to the world. And as we do that, more and more people will begin to see under all of the lies they have formerly believed, and realize that it was Him they wanted all along.
So let’s allow knowledge to lead us into relationship, not replace it.
One of the main things religion loves to do is disguise knowledge as relationship. It tries its absolute best to lead us to believe that if we know tons of stuff about God, then we must actually know God. So we go to church weekly to get our heads above water, even read the Bible before bed here and there, and try our best to obey the rules until next Sunday. Then by the end of the week we realize that we feel kind of discouraged once again, that reading the Bible felt more like a chore than anything else, and that we didn’t really obey the rules that well at all. But we stay on this religious train week after week, expecting different results, because we think we’re doing what God wants us to do. But the truth is, religion has successfully deceived us into the belief that having a schedule full of religious activities means we are spending time with God; and that knowing a lot about God means that we actually have a relationship God.
If a wife’s relationship with her husband was going to a building once a week to listen to some guy on a stage talk about how awesome her husband was, and throughout the week she read a few pages of a book about her husband, and daily tried to do her best to obey what the book and the guy up on stage said her husband would like her to do, we would question if these two people were even in a relationship at all. It would confuse people who were looking from the outside in. Because the people on the outside know that relationship means things like communication, connection, working through hardships, hanging out…the stuff people do together.
Falling into the deception that knowledge of God is relationship with God leads us into giving people a message rather than a person; principles to live by rather than the Spirit that enables them to live out the principles; and Bible stories about a miracle working God in the past rather than a demonstration of a miracle working God in the present. It’s religion masked as God and people are right to not want what we’re giving them if what we’re giving them is this.
Relationship has always been the point. Relationship is what God had with humanity in the beginning, and it’s what we have complete access to now because of what Jesus has done. It’s what we were created for. It’s what He’s always wanted, and under all of the lies we sometimes believe, we find it’s what we’ve always wanted. And as we grow in true relationship with Him, we’ll become more like Him. And as we become more like Him, we’ll be able to more accurately represent who He truly is to the world. And as we do that, more and more people will begin to see under all of the lies they have formerly believed, and realize that it was Him they wanted all along.
So let’s allow knowledge to lead us into relationship, not replace it.