Religion vs. God

The witness of the church in America has not been as strong as it could be for several reasons. One of the main reasons for the American church's weak witness is our preference for religion over God. There are thousands and thousands of people in this country that go to church on Sundays. They more than likely would profess to be Christians, but the problem is they don't know God.

What religion does is take the concept of God and wrap it around doctrine and dogma that is designed to regulate the behavior and thinking of the adherents to that particular faith system. What we've done in the church is defined this faith system as Christianity. However, it's really not Christianity, it's church religion. Christianity is about having a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ.  True Christianity isn't about "living right," it's about knowing God. And unfortunately, there's more than a few Christians that understand church religion, but they don't know God.

Why do I say this? Because when you have a personal relationship with God, you understand that God loves you in spite of you. You're not trying to "earn your way to heaven" because you stopped a few sins. You understand that you'll never be good enough to go to heaven. But the Grace of God says that Jesus' Blood has already made you good enough. Hallelujah! That's called Grace and that's knowing God. But religion will tell you that if you don't "get it together" you're going to hell.  This is not of God, and this is not Christianity.

It's time we stop embracing the religion of church and adopt what true Christianity is: knowing God the Father through the Redemptive Work of His Son, Jesus the Christ. Once we get to know who God really is, the church will have an authentic witness and we will in turn change the world.