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Just A Thought: Jesus First!

July 21, 2019 0 comments

Posted in: Just a Thought

Religion is a dangerous thing! First of all, let me explain that true Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. But often, people will go to church and be involved in “Christianity”, but they will miss Jesus.

The Pharisees were very religious people. They could be key leaders in most churches. They were in church every week, and were passionate about telling others how to follow God’s law. But the Pharisees had forgotten that their “religion” was supposed to be about a relationship with God. They had reduced knowing God down to a long set of rules a person must keep.

Then Jesus shows up in John 5 and messed up all their rules. He healed a man on the Sabbath, the holy day for Hebrew people. God had said to “remember the Sabbath to keep it holy,” and in their interpretation, healing on the Sabbath was not acceptable. But the crazy thing is that they missed the forest for the trees. The Pharisees were so caught up in their rules and religion that they completely missed the fact that a man who had been crippled for 38 years was up and walking around, completely healed! They should have been rejoicing!  Praising God.  But somehow, their religious rules clouded their vision so that when God in the flesh did a miracle among them, they couldn’t even see it.

We can sit here and say we are a lot different, but are we? Mike Yaconnelli - tells a story of a young man’s first youth ministry in a small church that had a room with carpet donated by the Jones family. They did an event for teenagers. A large group of students showed up, and during the evening, some of the kids hung out in the room with the “Jones Memorial Carpet.” Some of the students became followers of Jesus that night, their lives changed by God. But the youth minister was fired from the church because kids spilled Kool-Aid on the Jones Memorial Carpet. The church building had become more important than people and God’s work. Religion is easy to spot in other people, and so hard to see in ourselves.

Careful… Jesus first!

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