Today at The Gathering we started a brand new series entitled “7 Lies of Organized Religion; Exposing the subtle deceptions of dead religion.”
We began the series today with the message, “Obey us or we’ll cut you off.”
In this talk we learned about the radical differences between religion and Jesus. In days past, religion was kind of a harmless thing. It was a good thing to do, like going for your yearly check-up or keeping new tires on your car. But today, that harmless, nice activity called “religion” has turned into something deadly. We now know that religion can harbor evil, ill will, dissension, and death.
So it’s more important than ever, for those who are followers of Jesus, to make a distinction between what is merely religious and what is truly the outgrowth of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Because, let’s face it, even though we live in a brave new world, we’re still trying to avoid the God answers. But no matter how many books are published about God being dead or irrelevant to our culture, we’re still hopelessly religious.
Our longing for God is burnt deep down in our soul. We can’t get away from it by simply ignoring it. It was the great missionary, Paul, on his trip to Athens speaking to a gathering of people searching for truth, who said, “I see that you have an altar with the inscription to an unknown God. Now what you worship is something unknown, I’m going to proclaim to you.”
The only way he could proclaim it is that he had been given that message. God had truly revealed Himself. And that’s what we have in Christianity, as a revealed faith from God; something God told us we couldn’t have deduced or assumed on our own.
Another interesting point is that Paul attributed to what these people were doing as worship. Isn’t it interesting that worship isn’t just something we do on Sunday? Worship is what we are. It’s what we do, what we were made to do. And the truth of the matter is, our lives will be defined by what we worship.
Next weekend we’ll be dealing with Lie #2, “The worse you feel, the godlier you are; The shocking truth about God they’re hiding from you.”
It was great to see all the new faces this week, and all the volunteers, and of course Brittini Black and Sandra Lee leading worship. I can’t wait until next week!