Could it have been God who inspired this drunken stupor called â??religion?â? No, God would not encourage men toward something that makes them to forget Him.

Such is the madness of religion in general, that it drives its adherents to call darkness â??lightâ? and misguidedness â??progress.â?

It is a good thing if we want to know the truth. However, discovering truth is only useful to whatever degree that it leads us toward knowing, honoring and obeying God.

Therefore, if we genuinely desire the Presence of God among us, we should quit trying to solve religious â??secretsâ? or â??codesâ? in favor of pouring all our time and energy into simply knowing and obeying Jesus Christ.

The most basic thing we western churchgoers can do to start knowing Christ is to acknowledge our true relation to Him as a whole, western church. This is step number one. After Christ has grown us up enough to embrace the truth about our sorry spiritual estate then He might also wean us off of our religious addictions and grow us up into full, spiritual adults.

All things considered, our best spiritual plan of action is to give ourselves the least benefit of the doubt. We should prefer to fall on our faces in desperate surrender to Christ instead of relying on our own strength or know-how. Christ works out His salvation in us by making up for every way we fall short. But this news shouldnâ??t be too shockingâ?¦ this sums up our general relationship to God in any case.

There is a Spirit-led expectancy that honors Christ. If God approves of us in Christ, then it we will not be conceited of us to embrace this fact and act like we believe it. As long as weâ??re on the same page as Christ, it will be impossible for us to led astray by smugness or pretension. Not that weâ??ll ever earn the right to know Christ better, but letâ??s not make excuses for ourselves either. If God is commanding us to give up our synthetic versions of obedience, then we had best give them up.

And, no matter how drastically impossible the task that God is calling us to perform may seem, His expectations will never exceed whatever abilities or capacities He has given us. This means that whatever He is commanding us to do or stop doing is doable. We have lifelong encouragement in God’s reasonableness.

by Patrick Roberts

www.BooksByPatrick.com