The Lord reminded me recently (thru a sermon on Sunday) that Christianity is first and foremost about having a RELATIONSHIP with God. When Jesus prayed with his disciples for the last time before he was crucified, he revealed this
"Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." (John 17:3)
So, Christianity is really not about being good, reading the bible, praying daily, going to church, etc... Instead, it is about knowing God and having a loving relationship with Him. All these other practices come as we react naturally to the relationship that we have with God. They can may sometimes be used as a measure of whether we truly love God, but they do not define what being a Christian means. E.g. a measure of loving God is how much love we show others. ("Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." 1 John 4:8)
Too many people say "All religion teaches people to be good, so they are all good and all the same." Well, the bible says differently, it fact the bible is very clear that our God is a jealous God (Exodus 20:5, Exodus 34:14, Deuteronomy 4:24, Deuteronomy 5:9, Deuteronomy 6:15). Surely our God is not a petty God, so why is He a jealous God? Part of it may be what gets lost in translation, but jealousy is very closely linked to having a passionate relationship with someone. It is impossible to be passionate about someone without feeling some level of jealousy, and God loves us so much, has so much passion for us, that He is actually jealous for us. Think of the girl/boy of your first love, and how you wished she/he would be jealous for you, and perhaps how jealous you felt when she/he was intimate with someone else. Young children sometimes feel jealous when their parents shift their attention to other kids or other people around them, and the reverse is true when our kids grow up and find us a little less "cool". I think the jealousy referred here is something like that.
The bible also tells us that we were made to worship God - i.e. to have a personal relationship with God - our maker, our father, our friend. When Jesus was asked how can one be saved in Luke 10:25-37, and when he was asked which is the greatest commandment in Matthew 22:34-40, his answer was the same - to love God and to love one another. How are we to love God? With all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength and with all our mind (Deuteronomy 6:5)! This indicates that love is not an emotion we feel, it is not the warm fuzzy feeling, the butterflies in the stomach, etc. It is instead an exercise of our will to love and honour God with our body, mind and soul, and to do so requires an Intentional process of applying Discipline to our actions, our thoughts and our emotions. We have been made to love God, which means having a meaningful, passionate relationship with Him, and until this is so, we cannot find rest and peace - hence the importance of practicing Intentional Discipleship in our lives.
"He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty." Psalms 91:1
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