WORTHLESS VS. PURE RELIGION

“Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”  (James 1:26-27 NIV)

Some religion is "worthless," to use James' precise word, in that it has no effect on us at all.  It leaves us unchanged.  The one who practices that religion "deceives himself" (a phrase that takes us back to verse 22:  "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves").  We think we're doing well, but we're not.

This is a religion that comes of prattling about the Word but not doing it.  The Word tries to act upon us, but we will not humbly receive it and so it makes no imprint upon our souls.  That religion, says James, is illusory and fanciful because it leaves us unchanged.

Pure religion shows itself in quiet, spontaneous acts of love -- looking after "orphans and widows in their distress," caring for the hapless and helpless, the mournful, the friendless, the forsaken, the ragamuffins, "the wretched of the earth."  It does what most people are unwilling to do.  It "exaggerates what the world neglects," says G.K. Chesterton.

God is on the side of the widow and orphan, perhaps because most people are not:  "Leave your orphans [with Me]," He says, "I will protect their lives.  Your widows too can trust in Me" (Jeremiah 49:11).  He is "a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows…"  (Psalm 68:5).  We are most like God when we care for those He cares for. 

-- David Roper in “Growing Slowly Wise” 

#6126

POSSESSIONS AND FAITH

It is a long-known principle that when wealth is tightly held, it waters down faith. In the Middle Ages some monks put it this way: “Discipline begets abundance; abundance, unless we use the utmost care, destroys discipline.” Evangelist John Wesley put it his way: “I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion!” Religion, he believed, must necessarily produce industry and frugality, and these produce riches. But as riches increase, so does pride, anger, and love of the world. American Puritans like Cotton Mather put it this way in speaking of his beloved New England and its spiritual decline: “Religion begat prosperity and the daughter devoured the mother.” Perhaps this is why Jesus said, “Take care, and be on your guard,” when it comes to your possessions (Luke 12:15 ESV).

If you can’t take it with you when you go, then now is the time to learn to be generous. Be generous because it is the nature of God to be generous. 

-- Donald W. Sweeting & George Sweeting in “How to Finish the Christian Life: Following Jesus in the Second Half”

#5406

THAT ALL-TIME RELIGION

“Calling the crowd to Him with His disciples, Jesus said to them, ‘If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.”  (Mark 8:34)

I am not here to please the dominant culture or to serve any all-show, no-go bureaucracies. I live to please my Lord and Savior. My spiritual taste buds have graduated from fizz and froth to Fire and Ice. Sometimes I’m called to sharpen the cutting edge, and sometimes to blunt the cutting edge. Don’t give me that old-time religion. Don’t give me that new-time religion. Give me that all-time religion that’s as hard as rock and soft as snow.

I’ve stopped trying to make life work, and started trying to make life sing. I’m finished with the secondhand sensations; third-rate dreams; low-risk, high-rise trades; and goose-stepping crusades. I no longer live by and for anything but everything God-breathed, Christ-centered, and Spirit-driven. 

-- Leonard Sweet, excerpted from his “Magna Carta of Trust” published in his book “A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Cafe”

LIVING BY GOD’S POWER

“For the Kingdom of God is not just a lot of talk; it is living by God’s power.”  (1 Corinthians 4:20 NLT)

The kingdom of God does not consist in words, but in power, the power of Godliness.  Though now we are fallen upon another method, we have turned all religion into faith, and our faith is nothing but the production of interest or disputing; it is adhering to a party and a wrangling against all the world beside -- and when it is asked of what religion he is, we understand the meaning to be what faction does he follow, what are the articles of his sect, not what is the manner of his life. 

-- Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667)

#5276

RELIGION WITHOUT THE SPIRIT

Jesus said to them… "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you…" (Acts 1:8)

More than a hundred years ago, General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, said, “The chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, heaven without hell.”

That’s as true of the twenty-first century as it was of the twentieth. Religion without the Holy Spirit is a lifeless, listless religion. It’s a religion without power. It’s legalism without legs. And frankly, it’s downright boring.

If you go after the Holy Spirit, you’ll discover that the Holy Spirit is coming after you. All you have to do is open the door to your heart and He’ll open the door to opportunity -- the door to what if. 

-- Mark Batterson in “What If: Trading Your If Only Regrets for God’s What If Possibilities”

#5192

GOD VISITED THE EARTH

“For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in [Christ], and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross.”  (Colossians 1:19-20 NIV)

The Gospel has a once-and-for-all quality. It is unique. There is nothing like it in history or in any other world religion…  God visited the earth.

That says it all! God visited the earth in Jesus Christ who lived and died and rose again for our salvation, who ascended to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to work in the hearts and community of Christian believers. That is the Gospel, the Christ-event, the foundation of our faith. It happened once and need not happen again. All that we Christians believe is based on it.

-- Rev. Dr. A. Leonard Griffith in a sermon entitled "The Faith Entrusted to Us" 


#4574

THE GOSPEL IS AS GOOD AS IT GETS

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)  “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our LORD.” (Romans 6:23)  “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

We have Americanized the gospel or spiritualized the American dream. Take your pick. But neither one comes close to the true gospel. When you try to add something to the gospel, you aren’t enhancing it. Any addition is really subtraction. The gospel, in its purest form, is as good as it gets.

We want God on our terms, but we don’t get God that way. That’s how we get false religion. It’s pick and choose. It’s cut and paste. The end result is a false god we’ve created in our image.

You only get a relationship with God on His terms. You can take it or leave it, but you cannot change the rules of engagement. 

-- Mark Batterson in “All In”


#4470

TRUE WORSHIP

“So have you heard of the difference between religion and spirituality?” [a friend] threw out as we were chatting next to the cappuccino machine. “No. Tell me,” I replied.

“Religion is a guy in church thinking about fishing. Spirituality is a guy out fishing thinking about God.”

…True worship is not going to church and getting worship points. It is thinking about God in relation to everything else. Worship is not what you go to once a week, but what goes on in your head and your heart all the time.

“The Lord says: 'These people come near to Me with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is made up only of rules taught by men.'” (Isaiah 29:13)

-- John Fisher in "Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotional"


#4146

THE GIFT OF SALVATION

"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God -- not the result of works, so that no one may boast."  (Ephesians 2:8-9 NRSV)


A headline in the Grand Rapids Press read, "Conversion to Hindu Faith Is Tortuous."  The article stated that a German businessman had completed his conversion to the Hindu faith by piercing himself through the cheeks with a ¼-inch-thick steel rod and pulling a chariot for two miles by ropes attached to his back and chest by steel hooks.  Other converts had walked through long pits of fire, donned shoes with soles made of nails, or hung in the air spread-eagle from hooks embedded in their backs.


Aren't you glad that conversion to Christianity is not accomplished by self-inflicted torture?  In contrast, Jesus Christ was afflicted with one of the cruelest forms of torture ancient Rome could devise so that He could freely give you the gift of salvation.  Jesus paid the price for your conversion so that you could not and would not have to do a thing to earn it.  The only requirement is for you to receive the greatest gift God gave.


-- Lenya Heitzig and Penny Pierce Rose in Pathway to God's Treasure: Ephesians




#3739

FOUND AT THE CROSS

Daniel T. Niles gives us a penetrating illustration.  The Hindu temple, he says, is built in the form of a man.  The outer court is the human body.  The inner court is the mind.  The shrine is man's soul.  Man moves inside himself to find God.

The Moslem mosque is built in the form of a man.  The central dome is man's head.   The minarets are hands upraised in prayer.  Man comes to God through prayer.

The Buddhist dagoba is built in the form of a man.  The erect body, the legs crossed, the head unmoving symbolize withdrawal from the world.  Man reaches God through meditation.

The Christian Church is built in the form of a man.  The man is on the cross.  All traditional Church architecture, Romanesque, Gothic, even Byzantine, is based on a cross.  All worship centers in that cross, the place where God and man meet.  Man, therefore, approaches God through the One who died. (D.T. Niles, Upon the Earth)

To the Hindu, Moslem and Buddhist, God is removed from the human scene.  He is approached through meditation, prayer and quietness.  To the Christian, God is touched with our infirmities.  God knows the meaning of suffering.  God experiences the cross.  He is not far away.  He is there.  He is found at the cross.

-- H.S. Vigeveno in Jesus the Revolutionary


#3413

SEEING GOD IN YOU

"To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.." (Colossians 1:27 NIV)

I am weary of celebrity religion. I have had my share of honors, but when I die, unless my family can say, "There is something of God in that man," then I will have failed.

-- Stephen Olford


#3406

NO ROAD THAT WAY

"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him." (John 3:16-17 NIV)

The radical failure in so-called religion is that its way is from man to God. Starting with man, it seeks to rise to God; and there is no road that way.

-- J. Arundel Chapman  in The Theology of Karl Barth


#3280

FROM GOD TO MAN

"God sent His son, they called Him Jesus
He came to love, heal, and forgive.
He lived and died to buy my pardon,
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives." (Bill & Gloria Gaither, "He Lives")

The radical failure in so-called religion is that its way is from man to God. Starting with man, it seeks to rise to God; and there is no road that way. 

 -- J. Arundel Chapman  in The Theology of Karl Barth [1931]

 

 

#3177

A LASTING RELATIONSHIP

If God wanted us to just have religion, He would have stayed up in heaven and not come here to sacrifice His very life for you and me. He wanted us to have more than religion. He wanted us to have a relationship with Him which will last forever. He is extremely serious about it. What about you? How determined are you about living for Him? 

-- Dan Delzell


#3013

MERELY GOOD ADVICE?

Is not the popular idea of Christianity simply this, that Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher and that, if only we took His advice, we might be able to establish a better social order and avoid another war? Now, mind you, that is quite true; but it tells you much less than the whole truth about Christianity, and it has no practical importance at all. It is quite true that, if we took Christ's advice, we should soon be living in a happier world. You need not even go as far as Christ. If we did all that... Confucius told us, we should get on a great deal better than we do. And so what?... If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years. A bit more makes no difference.

-- C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity


#2597

DOWNTRODDEN AND DISENFRANCHISED

It occurs to me that one way to test the authenticity of our religion is to ask ourselves to whom we gravitate as we make our way through life: to the power brokers, the shakers and movers, the beautiful people who make us feel so much better about ourselves? Or do we move toward those who have nothing going for them in this world, and who can do nothing for us? Are we willing to befriend and listen to those awkward people others avoid? Can we love them when love seems useless, when we cannot help them? Can we care about them though they never return our affection? Can we do this in faithful obedience to God, even though no one sees or knows but He?

We can when we remember that God is the Father of the downtrodden and disenfranchised, and that includes us. We too have nothing but our wretchedness to bring to God. Only when we remember His pity for us can we speak or act in pity. Then we have a religion that God can accept.

-- David Roper in Growing Slowly Wise


#2305