RELIGION, RITUAL OR RELATIONSHIP?

Christianity today seems to be based on clichés such as Jesus is Lord; God is so good; Satan is under my feet; I am more than a conqueror; Praise the Lord etc. no doubt you can add more of your own.

As long as we say the right thing and make the right noises we are considered spiritual or a “good” Christian, even though there is no such thing.

That is when we are in danger of trivialising what is important. God created us to have fellowship with him. Jesus died to give us a new life in the Spirit where we could have fellowship with the Father.

Reality tells us that the last thing that happens in religion is fellowship with the Father for the simple reason it is not considered important. Very few meetings we attend actually connect us with the Father.

Sometimes we do get a warm fuzzy feeling if the music is emotionally charged and that is claimed as the moving of the Holy Spirit.

The fact is, ritual without relationship is religion and that is not about knowing God. Many wonderful sermons tell us about God, but they don’t allow us to know him.

Religious ritual, and I include the Pentecostal version as it is as much a ritual as say the Anglicans, demands its own relationship with us. If we do this or do that, if you do this a certain way, you will please God and be considered spiritual.

Whilst religion fills up our week with this, that and the other, God just becomes a concept we talk about(maybe)and sing about but we never actually know him, we only know about him.

Let me tell you of an experience that changed my life. One day I was praying and I felt the Holy Spirit fill the room. As John recounted in Revelation, I was taken up into the throne room of God, the holy of holies.

There I stood in his presence face to face. Well, not exactly as no one can look at God’s face and live because he is so pure and holy. However, I knew that it was God and I was in his presence.

He put his arms around me (I felt the physicality of it) and started crying. I asked him why he was crying and he said “because I have waited a long time for this.” We hugged and enjoyed the moment.

When I had come back down to earth again, I realised something that led me to a decision. No matter whether I was good, bad or indifferent,I knew without a shadow of doubt that he was crazy about me.

I could put it another way and say that he was head over heels in love with me. This led me to a decision that I would not allow anything into my life that would stop me from enjoying that fact and I would not do anything that interfered with my relationship with him.

This meant that much of what went on in the church was now off limits because it offered nothing to bring me into a greater experience of His presence because what was important was serving the ritual, not strengthening the relationship.

My passion now is to enable others to experience the Jesus I know and I know that will not happen in meetings devoid of relationship. I now meet with people so that we can connect with and know the God of the universe as father and friend and so that we can discover the word of God according to the God of the word, not according to religious tradition.

Any man who wants to stand tall as a disciple of Christ cannot do so unless he makes a priority of his relationship with the person who is crazy about him. As the Psalmist said “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.”(42:1).

Not a longing for religion or ritual, but for God himself. That’s life!!!