Sometimes I get a slap on the wrist from other Christians if I call my faith "my religion." As the expression goes which we often repeat, "it's not a religion - it's a relationship with Christ." That's the absolute truth. All human rituals and superstitions are dissolved by Christ's sacrifice on the cross and we can have a personal relationship with God the Father through Him and His atoning death and resurrection. And, I suppose another reason Christians don't like for Christianity to be called a religion is due to the world's habit of lumping all beliefs in all deities of any kind or source into one big hasty pile called "religion." God is holy, a word meaning set apart; I can certainly understand, in that respect, why my brothers and sisters in Christ may wince at our faith being added to the pile of religion.
But for me personally, I hope to be religious in the most literal and spiritual sense. The word religion means "bondage." I yearn to be, as Paul was called, "a bondservant of Christ." I want to be fettered to Him with chains I couldn't break if I tried - and I do try, all day and all night sometimes, to break "the ties that bind" Him to me. My natural self craves things harmful to me and others, and harmful to my relationship with God; so my flesh claws at the chains that keep me attached to Jesus. And though it is an "easy yoke, a light burden," He strengthens the shackles for my own good.
I want to be a slave of Jesus Christ, my heart fettered to His.
Thank God for these bonds! The fleshly, worldly mind would object, "I don't want to be a slave! I want to have freedom in my own thoughts, my own desires! What about what I want?"
I'm scared to death of my own thoughts and desires. I'm such a rotten and wretched man without Christ and His Scripture that any thought or deed I've done apart from Him, anything I've done or said in which I had to run from Him with an unsteady, shackled trot, has been selfish, greedy, lustful, bitter, hateful, bigoted, racist, arrogant. All the things Christ despises, all the things He died to cleanse me from. My imagination is one of my worst enemies.
When humankind is left to its own devices, we come up with the most miserable and vile things we can imagine. We murder, rape, torture, bicker, hate, fight, covet, exploit, abuse, turn a blind eye to injustice and want, indulge in the safety of ignorance, and find a hollow solace in the thought that we're following our own course, the course of human history, governed by humankind's own majestic imagination.
I don't want that. The rest of the world can have its freedom, but I want to find my liberty and peace on the narrow way described by Jesus. It's not fun - it's gritty, it's painful, it's boring, it invites criticism and humiliation. But I would desperately rather be a slave to what is good than a free subject of sin, leaving a wake of hurt and despair wherever I roam.
The most frightening thing God can to do someone is to let them have what they want.
Lord, chain me to Your heart!
But for me personally, I hope to be religious in the most literal and spiritual sense. The word religion means "bondage." I yearn to be, as Paul was called, "a bondservant of Christ." I want to be fettered to Him with chains I couldn't break if I tried - and I do try, all day and all night sometimes, to break "the ties that bind" Him to me. My natural self craves things harmful to me and others, and harmful to my relationship with God; so my flesh claws at the chains that keep me attached to Jesus. And though it is an "easy yoke, a light burden," He strengthens the shackles for my own good.
I want to be a slave of Jesus Christ, my heart fettered to His.
Thank God for these bonds! The fleshly, worldly mind would object, "I don't want to be a slave! I want to have freedom in my own thoughts, my own desires! What about what I want?"
I'm scared to death of my own thoughts and desires. I'm such a rotten and wretched man without Christ and His Scripture that any thought or deed I've done apart from Him, anything I've done or said in which I had to run from Him with an unsteady, shackled trot, has been selfish, greedy, lustful, bitter, hateful, bigoted, racist, arrogant. All the things Christ despises, all the things He died to cleanse me from. My imagination is one of my worst enemies.
When humankind is left to its own devices, we come up with the most miserable and vile things we can imagine. We murder, rape, torture, bicker, hate, fight, covet, exploit, abuse, turn a blind eye to injustice and want, indulge in the safety of ignorance, and find a hollow solace in the thought that we're following our own course, the course of human history, governed by humankind's own majestic imagination.
I don't want that. The rest of the world can have its freedom, but I want to find my liberty and peace on the narrow way described by Jesus. It's not fun - it's gritty, it's painful, it's boring, it invites criticism and humiliation. But I would desperately rather be a slave to what is good than a free subject of sin, leaving a wake of hurt and despair wherever I roam.
The most frightening thing God can to do someone is to let them have what they want.
Lord, chain me to Your heart!
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