Avoid Powerless Religion
For as long as I can remember, I have tried my best to avoid dead, powerless religion, though it is very deceptive. Let me explain what I mean by dead, powerless religion.
2Ti 3:1-5 But know this: difficult times will come in the last days. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the form of religion but denying its power. Avoid these people!
From my youth, I hated religion. I went to church every Sunday, but knew that the lives that most Christians led at church was different from their lives away from church. Though I disliked religion so much, I didn’t know any better. and thus, didn’t really have a relationship with God myself. I knew that sinning and wearing a mask to cover it up, was wrong. I needed a revelation of Christ.
The first thing that is spoken in the scripture above is “lovers of self” and the last thing spoken is “lovers of pleasure”. These two things go hand in hand and are probably the biggest things that are found among those who bound by dead, powerless religion.
I rebel against dead, powerless religion in my life. I do my best to make sure that my heart is connected to God with everything that I do. Going through the motions is the best way to know that we need a heart change. We need to continually be checking our motives.
We need to realize that this scripture is taking about those who call themselves “Christians”. It says AVOID people like this. How do we know we are denying the Power of God? We know because we do not allow ourselves to be changed. Let me paraphrase this verse…
“… going through the motions of religious tradition without allowing God to change their heart.”
It is not that doing the form of tradition is wrong, but rather the lack of power to change. Most can agree that there is not very much power in the Body of Christ today. There are probably many reasons that there isn’t. To find some of the reasons, we need to look at the verses again. If we can avoid the things found in those verses, we can be sure that we are walking in the Power of God. I truly believe that we cannot avoid all these things listed without God’s help.
I am not the best speaker, nor do I know how to relay my thoughts very well, but I hope that you can see how we need to be continually on guard to make sure that our hearts are open and connected to God in all that we do. I leave you with the lyrics from one of my favourite songs…
“I don’t want to go through the motions. I don’t want to go one more day, without Your all consuming, passion inside of me. I don’t want to spend my whole life asking, what if I had given everything, instead of going through the motions.” – Matthew West
I hate it too. Religion sucks.