Christianity is Not God's Plan

According to the labels of the world, I am a Christian, a follower of the religion known as Christianity. From an outside, unbelieving perspective, that makes sense, but it isn't what God wants for us. We should not label ourselves merely as Christians, but as Christ-followers. We should not simply be a follower of Christianity, but we should live as a part of the body of Christ. Christians are not just another subgroup of society, another label to throw around and apply to people with certain preferences.

Religion is man-made. It consists of rituals and regulations. It is something that man created in order to give a name and a structure to our beliefs. It makes sense to do such a thing, certainly, but we shouldn't live for Christianity, nor should we look at our faith as only a religion, for that diminishes our faith and minimizes God's influence in our lives. God is real and his promises are true; we must live for the truth instead of living simply to follow a religion. But how do we do that? How do we live for God instead of living for a religion?

Understand that God is real and that He loves you, just as you are. He doesn't only live at church. He doesn't only talk to those people who are living righteous lives, and here is the truth: none of us are living righteous lives, and no amount of religion is going to change that. We are all sinners, each and every one of us, and that sin is separating us from God. There is no power you hold and no good deeds that you can do that will erase that sin. It is there, stained on your heart, and God knows it. He sees it and yet, He love you anyway. It is only the power of Christ and the sacrifice that Jesus gave on the cross that will wash away our sin. A lifetime of good deeds won't do it, neither will following every commandment or fulfilling every religious ritual. No amount of effort on your part will even lighten the stain. Yet, in an instant, the stain can be gone, as though it were never there at all. It is not in our power to become sinless, but God has already done what is necessary to wash that sin away. All that we can do is say yes. Yes, God, I believe you are real, I believe you are more than stories and more than a mere religion. Yes, God, I believe your son came and died for me. Yes, God, I believe you have washed away my sins. Yes, God. Yes.

And then you will be saved.

It is grace that saves you, faith in the sacrifice of Christ. It is not baptism, for that is mere water. It is not communion, for that is merely bread and wine. There is no offering you can give and no service you can perform. All that can be done to save you has already been done by the son of God. You just need to believe.

Life is not about perfect living, for that is something none of us can accomplish, not even those who have accepted Christ as their savior. Yet I try to live my life in certain ways because I seek to live by God's standards, not because I live to fulfill some religious legality. I choose to live my life by those standards because I know I have been saved, and because I choose to show my love for God in that way. For instance, it was a long time ago that I decided to save myself for marriage, not because I did not have certain desires, but because I truly believed that it was best for me to wait, and that following God's commandments would bring me closer to Him. I did not do it because I felt it was the "Christian" thing to do, for living as a Christian isn't the point. I felt it was the Godly thing to do. And now, being married for almost twelve years, I know it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Righteous living will not save you, but being truly saved gives you the desire to live righteously, and to become closer to God. It is the relationship that matters, not the religion. Live righteously out of love, not out of obligation.

Church is a valuable part of life. We can worship God together and gain understanding of Him and His plan. We can form relationships with other believers and partake in Godly fellowship. Yet we must not live for church, for that is not God's plan. We must live for God. Salvation does not come from the church or any other Christian organization. Such institutions are often valuable assets to our faith and can do many great things in the world, but that must not be our focus. Christ is our focus; the church and other Godly entities are tools for God to use in our lives and throughout the world, but they are not something to live for. We must keep our eyes on God.

The Bible is not a mere guide, like a how-to book for computers or some other hobby or activity. The Bible is a God-breathed document that we should consider to be the greatest words in the world. God gave us His book to teach us and rebuke us, to correct us and to train us. We must not view it as simply another book, but the book that holds absolute and eternal truth.

In closing, we must not become wrapped up in the squabblings of religious people. God created us and redeemed us to work together as the body of Christ, and we must not trap ourselves in meaningless bickering about unimportant things. God is truth and Christ is our salvation. Let us come together not as followers of the same religion, but of lovers of the same great and glorious God, for it is the same blood that saved each of us. To God be all glory, from this day forward, into the eternity that we see before us.

Thank you God, for your great love, and for your sacrifice. Show us how to live for you. Show us how to love like you do. We know you are the absolute truth of life, and nothing we can do will ever repay what you have done for us. We love you, now and always. Amen.

The Path You Follow

You need to stop basing everything you do on what the world thinks.

The world is like a flower; here today and gone tomorrow. If we live our life to gain such temporary approval, what have we really gained? We should not base our decisions on such things. God calls us to holy lives. We must live with an eternal perspective with our eyes fixed on Christ. The world cannot offer what God can offer. Living for this life is living without purpose and is not really living; only through God can a life be real and fulfilled.

Being human, I know this is harder said than done, for we have limited minds, weak morals, and mortal bodies. It is hard for us to live for eternity, for we cannot comprehend eternity. We can see the pleasures of this life that are right in front of us, and they are easily attainable. Only through God’s intervention and with His strength can we truly begin to live as we are meant to live. We will still certainly stumble and sin, but that isn’t really the point anymore. We are saved by grace and live by faith, and when that happens, we no longer want to think like the world thinks and act like the world acts. We no longer seek the world’s pleasures. We seek the will of God in our lives, and we desire His guidance. It isn’t about being a “Christian” and living by a set of rules. It’s about being a follower of Christ and living by grace.

The world won’t lead you to Heaven, and it won’t bring you closer to God. The world is out there to destroy you. Do not be taken in by the acceptance of a shallow world. Instead, fall into the arms of God and be cleansed by the depths of His love. Christ died for each of us, and we must now live for Him. The world will not forgive us and redeem us; it will only seduce and diminish us.

The path you follow in this life is the path you follow in the next life.

God is calling.

Hope

The world today offers us a million different things to put our hope in. 

We can put our hope in our jobs and our ability to provide for our loved ones.  But, as many of us know all too well, jobs don’t always last.  What do you lean on when the pink slip comes?

We can put our hope in our looks, for those who have such things to begin with.  But what do you lean on when age kicks in or you put on a few pounds or you are no longer seen as attractive?

We can put our hope in a good retirement and the enjoyment of our golden years.  But what do you lean on when the retirement fund starts to run dry?  What do lean on when your health starts to fail and you start to see the end of your life?

What do you lean on when your friends and family fail you?  When your health fails you?
What do you lean on when your life is taken from you at too early an age?
What do you lean on when all hope is lost?

There is only one thing in the world that transcends all things.  There is only one hope that will never fail you.

When God sent his son Jesus to Earth to die on a cross, he defeated all the trials this world could throw at you.  No matter what happens, when you place your whole being in his hands, there is nothing this world can drag you through that will take away your hope.  Because your hope is no longer in this world.

As the scriptures say, we should be storing up treasures in Heaven (Matthew 6: 19 - 21).  When we put our hope and faith in Jesus, we no longer live for this world, but we live for the eternity to come.  We live for Heaven.  This world is not our home, as we are citizens of Heaven (Philippians 3: 20 - 21).  The first thing we must do is accept that we are sinners in need of a savior, accepting the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as the means of our salvation.  We then need to start seeing things as God sees them - in the light of eternity, not in the limited scope of our lives on Earth.  Life is but a vapor, here today and gone tomorrow (James 4: 13 - 15).  Why do we believe that something so limited could truly hold our hope?  No, the only hope with any staying power is the hope given to us by our creator.  Once we look to God as our hope and the stronghold of our lives, the trials of this life start to lose their grip on us.

Even though people suck and we all deserve to be telefragged, there is a God who loves us and forgives us, and he is the only hope we have in this life, and the life to come.