Religious

The other night at Live @ Webster Hall we talked about the term "Religious". What are your feelings when you hear this word? What do you automatically assume?

Some love to use the term religious. They see it as how they express themselves to God. They love their religion and get very offended when that term is used in any kind of derogatory remark at all. They hear "religious" and their minds go right to the place of worship. That intimate time with their God. The most precious time to them is expressed in the religion they hold so close to their heart. Others however, do not hear the term "religious" with heart warming sensations, but feelings of judgement, condemnation, and laws. This is the place where man has taken over for them and God's words have been abused against them. This is the place where I have come from. This is the place that freaks me out!

When I have spoken in the past I have had a very hard time not mocking the traditions, the seemingly meaninglessness of the worship schedule that seems to appear within many of the worship orders of any given Sunday morning. The people stand and monotonically read the words that are projected in front of them with no feeling or understanding of the scripture. They stand and quote the Lord's Prayer asking God to forgive them as they forgive others. Seemingly without even noticing the very next line, "For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." When I hear this seemingly thoughtlessly repeated just out of wrote memory, I just about have a conniption. "Do you not hear what is next. Please God forgive me like I do NOT forgive others. If you forgive me like I forgive others, I am DOOMED!" And lets not forget the passing of the collection plate at every service!

Then one day I was abruptly corrected. That thing that I fear from the "religious people." Those judgements, those places of being silenced, those condemning and judgmental looks, those fears were a true revealing of my own heart. I had become what I feared most from others. I was not stepping back and looking at their worship time as something that may just be their hearts cry to God. I was seeing it through my eyes and not theirs. I was passing the most judgmental look upon them and their outward appearance and seeing only the "seemingly" from my broken heart and not able to put myself in their place, (which is what I am always expecting others to do for me).

One of the things that I cherish the most about my church is the fact that we have have young and old worshiping together, in different styles, in different clothes, with different wounds, with One God. It is our belief in One God that unites us. It is our coming together to join our lives in our time of worship that unites us and gives us strength. My most precious time is my time with my family on Sunday mornings. It is my time to see that I am not alone. It is my time to hug and receive hugs from others whom I would not see on any other ordinary day. It is my time to express my gratitude to my Savior and my time to accept others in their gratitude toward Him. It is a time for my broken heart to be softened toward others who have also been wounded by the world and even by other "Christians" as well. Without those who are older than I am, who would I go to for advise? Without the young, who would offer me so much energy? It is all of us together, laying down our differences for the sake of others, that is what makes us a family.
F- forget
A- about
M- me
I- I
L- love
Y- you
I can lay down my wounds to allow you to come to your God in your way. I can set aside my fears and my misunderstandings. If I do not, it is my fault that I do not feel close to my family. If I insist on things being my way, it is my own heart that will tell on me. Then, I hope you can do the same for me. My worship style may be different from yours, but it is how my heart sings to my God. It is in those moments that I can share with you our love for Him who unites.

“The Christian faith is not a state of mind. It is not a philosophy. You become a Christian when you meet the person of Christ, when you encounter Him. When I say I know God, I am not saying that I know about Him abstractly, I know Him. I have a relationship with Him.... The certainty that comes doesn't come from the fact that my philosophical system is 100% or that I have all of my theology tied up. The certainty that I have comes from the fact that I know Whom I have trusted and I am convinced. I have a relationship with Him. So, I can speak about Him. I can explain it, and I can give it ideas, but in the end my relationship is with Him. It is not a certainty that can be found in any other religious system. All others just have someone else's ideas. Without Christ there is no Christianity(MR)...... We draw a distinction in saying we know an absolute God is not saying we know Him absolutely. There is a difference between God and us. I can know God sufficiently, truly and really, but I am not saying I know absolutes or that I know Him absolutely. That is a knowledge claim that I do not have the capacity to make, and it is not possible. I am saying that the Absolute One, the One Who does have all knowledge is capable of revealing Himself, not exhaustively, but sufficiently... and that means that Absolute Truth has made Himself known (SM).” (Fourth Presbyterian Q&A)

The Dragon Slayer

The other night at Live @ Webster Hall we talked about the terms sin and Satan. Most all of us have a weird feeling when we hear the word "sin". We don't really understand that term and have put a judgmental feeling with it instead of what it really is. Sin is that thing that has been let loose on this earth who is constantly trying to come in and destroy us. Satan was even attacked by sin and succumbed to its pressure and fell. Sin is the seed that was planted within all of our hearts, the pull to go against God and what He desires for us. It is sin that is trying to destroy us. I have always seen sin as a verb. You know, that thing that you "do" which is wrong. With the help of a new book I got for Christmas, "The Dragon Slayer" by Jim McGuiggan, I am now starting to open up and see sin as a noun also. Let me try my best to explain: We have all kinds of things that are rightly defined as sin; anger, pride, gluttony, adultery, the list can go on and on. These things that we do or that we can see others doing, those things are sin, but what if we change the action verb "sin" into a proper noun "Sin". That thing that we have always called sin now has an actual name, Sin, and it hates us. Sin is stalking us. He has come to destroy our life.

I am constantly being pursued by Sin. He is trying to trap me in any possible way. He is constantly trying to destroy my relationships and trying to get between me and God. We are all in a constant battle and this battle is for love: love of God, love of others and love for our self. If he can come in and make us fight with one another, he has won. Sin loves to make us victims. If he cannot get to us through us, he will send someone else to come in and try to destroy us by using them. He will help us hate ourselves for whatever wrong we have ever done. He knows that we who are protected under Christ, who have repented and who will never travel down that same road again, he knows that if he can at least make us live in constant self condemnation then he is able to steal our joy. Our enemy has a name and that name is Sin. He is constantly trying to drive a wedge in all of our relationships.

"Sin troubles God because it not only dishonors him, it makes victims of His beloved human family."

We are the children of God. When Sin comes into our lives, our God is very concerned. He is our Father and He desires to protect us. He knows that Sin is here to destroy us in any way that he can. God does not just look at Sin as an action that we have done. He sees it for what it really is. Sin hates us and is constantly trying to trick us into loving Sin instead of our Father. If we are constantly turning against God and turning to Sin to love us what we are really doing is loving like the love of "Stockholm syndrome". We fall in love with our abuser and run into his arms. We defend him and tell others who are trying to help us get away from him that they just don't understand. This is one of the reasons why God hates Sin so much.

"In lucid moments we saw ourselves for what we had become and weary and heartsick we wished for deliverance even while we loved our chains."

Then in steps Christ. He is our Savior. He is our Redeemer. But what we do not see is that while we innocently suffer from the attack of Sin, Christ also chose to innocently suffer from Sin. He came and was born not to the rich and comfortable, but to the poor. He came and was ruthlessly attacked. Sin abused Him. He came and said, "I am your Creator. I want you to know that I understand what hurt you're hurting from and I know who abuses you. But I want you to know something else, I am the Creator of life and there is still so much more that you cannot understand yet. Hang in there my child, for while Sin does hurt, I have conquered Sin and he no longer has any real power. Don't turn to him for love. I am the author of true love. I am the One that can truly love you through all of your hurt, through all of your doubts, Sin cannot stop Me. Please stop loving your abuser, for when you love him, you not only hurt yourself, but you hurt my other children as well. Learn to love Me and learn to live FREE. I am the Dragon Slayer!"