Relationship over religion.

I’ve been caught up in religion for too long. 

God has been teaching me that I should be striving for relationship, not religion. 

For so long, I was so consumed by the idea that if I didn’t do everything right, that God wouldn’t love or accept me. 

I’ve never been so wrong. God can’t not love me. He is love. He can’t not love us.

When you look at the Bible as a whole, the whole book is filled with love. From the very beginning, God created everything and said it was good. He continually gave us free will, so that our love towards Him wasn’t forced. He sent His only son to die for us, out of His extreme love for us. He wouldn’t have sent Jesus on the cross to die for us if He didn’t ultimately love us. God has never looked at one of His children and thought they were a waste of time.

Something I’ve noticed about the people that have rejected God, is that most of the time, they are rejected from the church. As the church of Christ, are we representing Him well when we resent and judge people for their race, for who they love, for their tattoos, for their divorces, for their crimes, or for their hatred towards you? Are we representing Christ well when all we do is go to church on Sunday, but treat people like they aren’t worth of love because of their past? Where is our love?

I’ve never understood the resentment that Christians have had towards God’s own creation. God loves each and every one of His children, whether they are perfect christians, or murderers on death row. How could you call yourself a Christian if you are hating the one thing that God truly loves most. He actually loves us so much, but because of our broken church, we have prevented so many people from feeling His true love. Everyone is deserving of God’s love, regardless of whether you think so or not. 

I am currently reading through the book Gentle and Lowly. It is so amazing, I 100% recommend. So far, it has talked a lot about the character of Jesus. Once you have accepted Jesus in your heart, there are no works, no words, no sense of striving that can change how close he is to you. He is living inside of you always, it just depends on if you are paying attention to him or not. Jesus is closer to you now than he was close to anyone on his time on earth. He is actually always with you, and will never ever leave you. 

“If we love our Christian brothers and sisters, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who had no love is still dead. Anyone who hates another brother or sister is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them. We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also give up our lives for our brothers and sisters.” 1 John 3:14-16. 

All I want is to be consumed with God’s love. 

How could you not want everyone around you to feel the ultimate joy that Lord gives? Truly, how can we love God if we can’t love His creation? 

1 Corinthians 13

“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endured through every circumstance. Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever — faith, hope, and love — and the greatest of these three is love.”

I encourage you to replace the word “love” in every sentence with “God”.