We search for God in order to find him with greater joy, And we find him in order to keep searching with greater love -Augustine De Trinitate 15.2
Many faith journeys revolve around 2 stories: One,when I was seven years old I accepted Christ. This story revolves around when one gets saved. There is nothing wrong with this story and for most Churches and Christian groups this is the goal…get-em saved. Not a bad goal, but I think it produces saved Christians, but not followers of Jesus. We have believers who are shallow, superficial or fake. It can produce those who are “born again:, but that is it…
Part two tells the story of what to do now that you are, “saved” It is a list of activities like, read your Bible, pray, go to Church(every Sunday) and make sure you witness to people. Part two also leads the “saved” to define themselves by the things they do and things they don’t do…All of these practices are good and valuable, but have unintended side effects. When these practices become disconnected from the larger picture of God we tend to loose Jesus and we discover legalism. We begin to find our faith, or place our trust in these practices and not in the life giving message of Jesus.
If the call of our lives is to matter, then our faith must matter. If the way we are livng out our faith is leading us to fake faith wrapped in legalism, it sure seems meaningless…like it doesn’t matter. This is when we see people begin to search for significance in other areas like unhealthy relationships, the party scene or the American dream…because it feels like the dream of Christ is leaving us empty…
Hang on for a while longer..We have been feed to wrong dream! Get saved, read your bible and be a “good” Christian is bull crap…(I would use a much more powerful word, but I am not sure who is reading my blog…)
Think…is this the version of faith you have been living? You may not even realize it…I’ll add more to this thought soon…because Jesus has way more to say