Well, it's Christmas Eve. Just settled in to watch a movie with my wife and kids. Looks like it might be a little "Hallmarky." Oh well... I'm a little preoccupied tonight. I was reminded again today of the vanity of religion and the danger of pledging allegiance to anyone or anything other than God. It is sad to me that we have missed the mark of conformity to Christ by such a huge margin. How quickly we tend to replace that which is essential to vibrant, abundant life and worship rightly directed toward almighty God with tidy things that fit more neatly into the religious box that we have constructed in our imaginations. I think, sometimes, that Satan has us right where he wants us - neutralized, powerless and ineffective. We pose no threat to him or his agenda. Instead we waste our time comparing ourselves to the wrong standard. We are critical of those who worship differently than us. If they pursue Christ with more or less emotion than we do... well. Instead of pursuing Christ with the scripture as the guide we dogmatize personal preferences and deify our religious grace-denying thought processes. We want religion that costs us nothing and soothes our conscience. What Jesus offers is radically different. It costs us everything, everything that is religiously comfortable. But in exchange we get deep, rich relationship with Christ. Relationship that satisfies and brings joy. My prayer personally and for those in our faith family is that we move forward. That we leave the emptiness and vanity of religion behind and go hard after that which is authentic and fruitful and satisfying.
Lord, give me passion and strength to make a priority of my relationship with God during the year before me.
I say Amen. I too was preoccupied with the vanity of that which I like to call followership ,but is actually a thinly veiled religious attempt to ease my conscience - especially this time of the year.
ReplyDeleteFather, please cut away the web of religion that I tend to weave for myself. Free me to move forward with you, no matter how that might look. Help me to burn the box that I try to put you in.
Your vanity is the astounding thing I notice from this post. you put yourself on a pedestal and contend that anyone that thinks differently than you do is somehow less of a Christian than you when the reality is you're the one with a closed mind. You're not willing to listen to counsel that is different from what you want to hear and your first instinct is to malign their motives as if you can read their mind.
ReplyDelete