Religion VS Relationship

There was an editorial in yesterday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution that addressed the decline of religion in America.

I suppose the writer, Leonard Pitts, thought that religion's decline was a bad thing for he seemed to offer some suggestions about how religion could be better.

Well, religion can never be any better than it is right now and right now religion is worth the same thing it was worth yesterday and that is nothing.

You see, religion is a man-made substitute for a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Religion uses some key relationship words like worship, sacrifice, kindness, forgiveness and other things but religion uses these words in the context of Man seeking to please some deity (people worship unusual things) through Man's own efforts.

God's own Holy Word tells us that pleasing Him that way can't be done. The concept of pleasing God by what we do is a works mentality and Man falls for it at almost every opportunity. There is something appealing to Man about doing something to "pay for" his salvation rather than receiving it at the free gift of God's grace.

But God has taught us, "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast." Eph. 2:8-9 KJV

It is so easy even for Christians to slip out of the freedom of the practice of a relationship with Christ in the the slavery of the practice of religious activity around Christ.

Don't let your focus be anywhere else today but on Jesus. When He called us, He did not call us to follow a recipe for Christian living; He called us to follow Him.

There is all the difference in the world.

Make Jesus your focus today. He is all there is that is truly worth seeing anyway.

Please pray for revival. Please.
In His Love
Walter