(December 12, 2011)
Prayer House News!
Another Monday!! What would we do without them. Our Staff/Elder Christmas celebration is taking place on Tuesday evening. God has given us a great group of guys on both our staff and elder board. It’s great to be able to get together with our wives and worship our king.
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Wednesday night we will have our normal schedule of classes starting at 6:30pm.
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. The Devotional for this week is taken from my message from Sunday.
=====================================
Devotional!
Religion vs. Relationships
Last week a news commentator on TV said, “Christianity is not a religion.” (Bill O’Reily). Someone challenged him and said, “Christianity is a religion, just like Judaism is a religion.” So the commentator countered with, “Christianity is a theologically based philosophy but it’s not a religion. Methodism is a religion, Lutheranism is a religion, Catholicism is a religion, but Christianity itself is not a religion even though Christians often practice some form of religion.”
I decided to do some research about the word “Religion.” It comes from the Latin word “religio” which basically means to reconnect or to bind. Religion is man’s attempt to bind himself to God or to reconnect himself to God. The problem with that is no religious act can save a man. Men are saved by grace. Religious actions may follow our salvation – but the act itself is meant to be an expression of our relationship with Christ – not the source of our salvation.
God has always sought a relationship with his children rather than just religion. However, our natural tendencies move us towards religion. It must come from our sense of gaining acceptance from God based on merit. The problem we often encounter in religion is how something that which was meant to remain simple tends to become complex. Our Christmas celebration is an example of that very thing. Christians use the fact that the three wise men brought gifts to Jesus to justify our craziness in buying gifts for others. Do you think that is anything like what God had in mind for the Christmas celebration? First of all they brought gifts to Jesus. We rarely think about what we could give Jesus do we? Something that is supposed to focus on him has become all about us.
Christmas is on a Sunday this year. For some people that is cause for a real conflict, for others it’s not even an issue. For some families – us having church on Christmas day and then a week later having Church on New Years Day really cuts into their traditions, and as we all know, traditions become sacred. I would call these folks my non-religious partiers. Sometimes that’s good – sometimes that’s not so good.
Then we have the other group who would never even consider missing church because that’s what we do – we are a Christian family and we go to church. I would probably fall more into that category. However the interesting thing about these two perspectives is that they can both be right and they can both be wrong because both of them can simply be an overblown act of religion rather than a perspective that comes from a relationship with Jesus. Everything we do regarding our worship – should come out of our relationship with Jesus, it should come out of a sense of what the relationship needs at the moment. Without a loving relationship our tendency is to turn to religion or religious acts in an effort to feel good about what’s actually missing in our relationship. Some people have such a poor relationship with Jesus that the only time they come to church is Christmas and Easter. Why come on those days? It’s an effort to make up for what they know is missing in the relationship.
Years ago I preached a message called, Legalism vs. Levity. It dealt with two extreme views of Christianity. A person can become so legalistic that they would never ever not do what a Christian is expected to do. “Of course we’ll be in church, it’s Sunday!” The other extreme is levity which is the opposite side of the pendulum. It takes such a relaxed view of the relationship with Christ that it would never ever do anything that might have a tinge of legalism to it. It’s an abuse of grace. “We might be in church – we might not – depends on how we feel.” Right in the middle of these two perspectives is relationship. It has some of each view within it but it is based on what the relationship needs at the moment rather than being adamant about any particular religious act.
It seems every year at this time us Christians try to make up for what’s missing in our relationship with Jesus by making good and proper statements about Christ’s birth. While we are out shopping we make statements about how materialistic the world is today and how their bag of goodies is much bigger than our bag of goodies. We emphasize how Jesus is the reason for the season while we get swallowed up in the secular spirit of the day. I wonder how many thousands of sermons will be preached – even today across our country – about how it’s wrong for us to forget about the real reason for Christmas. Is it wrong for that to be preached? No! Not really. However, it might just be an effort to make up for something that was missing the rest of the year.
It’s certainly not wrong for us to re-focus periodically however; I wonder how much of that is merely religion? Relationships are different than religions. Religion is an attempt to re-connect, to tie back or to bind. Relationships are a continual state of connection.
====================================================
Medication: A Merry Heart
Laundry
A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next
morning while they were eating breakfast, the young woman
saw her neighbor hanging the wash outside.
"That laundry is not very clean," she said. "She doesn't
know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry
soap."
Her husband looked on, but remained silent.
Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the
young woman would make the same comments.
About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice
clean wash on the line and said to her husband, "Look, she
has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her
this?"
The husband said, "I got up early this morning and cleaned
our windows."
Prayer House News!
Another Monday!! What would we do without them. Our Staff/Elder Christmas celebration is taking place on Tuesday evening. God has given us a great group of guys on both our staff and elder board. It’s great to be able to get together with our wives and worship our king.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday night we will have our normal schedule of classes starting at 6:30pm.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
. The Devotional for this week is taken from my message from Sunday.
=====================================
Devotional!
Religion vs. Relationships
Last week a news commentator on TV said, “Christianity is not a religion.” (Bill O’Reily). Someone challenged him and said, “Christianity is a religion, just like Judaism is a religion.” So the commentator countered with, “Christianity is a theologically based philosophy but it’s not a religion. Methodism is a religion, Lutheranism is a religion, Catholicism is a religion, but Christianity itself is not a religion even though Christians often practice some form of religion.”
I decided to do some research about the word “Religion.” It comes from the Latin word “religio” which basically means to reconnect or to bind. Religion is man’s attempt to bind himself to God or to reconnect himself to God. The problem with that is no religious act can save a man. Men are saved by grace. Religious actions may follow our salvation – but the act itself is meant to be an expression of our relationship with Christ – not the source of our salvation.
God has always sought a relationship with his children rather than just religion. However, our natural tendencies move us towards religion. It must come from our sense of gaining acceptance from God based on merit. The problem we often encounter in religion is how something that which was meant to remain simple tends to become complex. Our Christmas celebration is an example of that very thing. Christians use the fact that the three wise men brought gifts to Jesus to justify our craziness in buying gifts for others. Do you think that is anything like what God had in mind for the Christmas celebration? First of all they brought gifts to Jesus. We rarely think about what we could give Jesus do we? Something that is supposed to focus on him has become all about us.
Christmas is on a Sunday this year. For some people that is cause for a real conflict, for others it’s not even an issue. For some families – us having church on Christmas day and then a week later having Church on New Years Day really cuts into their traditions, and as we all know, traditions become sacred. I would call these folks my non-religious partiers. Sometimes that’s good – sometimes that’s not so good.
Then we have the other group who would never even consider missing church because that’s what we do – we are a Christian family and we go to church. I would probably fall more into that category. However the interesting thing about these two perspectives is that they can both be right and they can both be wrong because both of them can simply be an overblown act of religion rather than a perspective that comes from a relationship with Jesus. Everything we do regarding our worship – should come out of our relationship with Jesus, it should come out of a sense of what the relationship needs at the moment. Without a loving relationship our tendency is to turn to religion or religious acts in an effort to feel good about what’s actually missing in our relationship. Some people have such a poor relationship with Jesus that the only time they come to church is Christmas and Easter. Why come on those days? It’s an effort to make up for what they know is missing in the relationship.
Years ago I preached a message called, Legalism vs. Levity. It dealt with two extreme views of Christianity. A person can become so legalistic that they would never ever not do what a Christian is expected to do. “Of course we’ll be in church, it’s Sunday!” The other extreme is levity which is the opposite side of the pendulum. It takes such a relaxed view of the relationship with Christ that it would never ever do anything that might have a tinge of legalism to it. It’s an abuse of grace. “We might be in church – we might not – depends on how we feel.” Right in the middle of these two perspectives is relationship. It has some of each view within it but it is based on what the relationship needs at the moment rather than being adamant about any particular religious act.
It seems every year at this time us Christians try to make up for what’s missing in our relationship with Jesus by making good and proper statements about Christ’s birth. While we are out shopping we make statements about how materialistic the world is today and how their bag of goodies is much bigger than our bag of goodies. We emphasize how Jesus is the reason for the season while we get swallowed up in the secular spirit of the day. I wonder how many thousands of sermons will be preached – even today across our country – about how it’s wrong for us to forget about the real reason for Christmas. Is it wrong for that to be preached? No! Not really. However, it might just be an effort to make up for something that was missing the rest of the year.
It’s certainly not wrong for us to re-focus periodically however; I wonder how much of that is merely religion? Relationships are different than religions. Religion is an attempt to re-connect, to tie back or to bind. Relationships are a continual state of connection.
====================================================
Medication: A Merry Heart
Laundry
A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next
morning while they were eating breakfast, the young woman
saw her neighbor hanging the wash outside.
"That laundry is not very clean," she said. "She doesn't
know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry
soap."
Her husband looked on, but remained silent.
Every time her neighbor would hang her wash to dry, the
young woman would make the same comments.
About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice
clean wash on the line and said to her husband, "Look, she
has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her
this?"
The husband said, "I got up early this morning and cleaned
our windows."
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