Thursday, February 21, 2008

"It's not about religion...

...it's about relationship."

A friend of mine said this at church on Wednesday night. I was praying just now and remembered this and it really got me to thinking.

He, my friend Mark, said that our walk with God isn't about rules and religion like a lot of people make it out to be. Someone can be the most religious person in the world and follow all the rules out there and still not know Christ. Mark also said that God loves us the same no matter what we do. Once we are saved and have Christ as the savior of our life if we do something wrong or bad he still loves us the same. We tend to feel like we have to do something to earn back God's love but it's a free gift of love so we can't do anything to "earn" it. According to him this means that once God is in our life we are always saved.*

I am all for this relationship thing. I was raised in church from the time that I was 9 months old. I have the religion part down...but I'm not so sure about the relationship part. That's actually what I was working on tonight, just talking to God. Not trying to repent or ask for something, I was just talking to Him about what is going on in my life right now and what I'm thinking about. It felt really nice and kind of makes me want to do better at living my best life to show my love for God and His love to others. I know that when I mess up God still loves me the same, He may not like what I did, but He still loves me. I'm reminded of the puppy example...you get a puppy, you love the puppy, puppy pees on carpet, you still love puppy but don't like that it peed on your stinkin' carpet :)




*I'm not yet sure how I feel about the once saved, always saved thing... I was raised in a hardcore Pentecostal church which is now an independent church (long story, details some other time). I attend a couple of Baptist churches when I'm at school for various reasons. My Pentecostal background leads me to believe that if I mess up then I have to repent and turn away from that mistake before I was back on the Heaven list, so to speak. My take on the Baptist thing is if I mess up it's ok as long as love God, etc. I've always wondered, well what if someone lives for God then goes crazy and kills someone... do they still get the once saved, always saved thing because that's kinda scary. Then tonight I had this thought- A sin is a sin. We are not to judge and if I sin and the murderer obviously sinned then in God's eyes we're on the same level... I think I'll stop pondering on this now and ask my pastor about it sometime.















Wow...that was a lot of church-y talk. It's just what I'm thinking about. I promise my next post won't be so deep and won't include the words pee and murder or my Penti-Baptist ways of thinking :)

2 comments:

Courtney said...

I'm with you on the peeing dog thing!!!

Great posting. It's a nice take on religion. I like the word Penti-Baptist. :)

The Random Muse said...

Very well said