Relationship Not Religion

I was talking with my aunt recently about her experiences growing up in a time where children studied the Bible in school.

It suddenly occurred to me all the things that this religious education didn’t involve.

It didn’t involve learning how prayer can help in difficult times when you are scared or worried or sad. It didn’t involve learning to listen to how God speaks in the lives of believers guiding them and helping them. It didn’t involve learning to recognize when a prayer has been answered.

These are all the things that I feel are important to share with my daughter and all the things that seem to be missing from a lot of traditional, religious education.

It’s no wonder people dismiss it as a boring, man-made book when the way it’s often been pushed in mainstream society is completely lacking in understanding of what a genuine, spirit-filled relationship with the living God is.

Christianity is not religion. Jesus himself was killed by religious leaders. Christianity is a vibrant relationship with a living God, with a supernatural book. The words come alive when they are read in the context of relationship. Yet so often ‘religion’ kills belief before it even gets the chance to flourish.

The words of the Bible can be the beginning, reading a single phrase can be enough to be filled with the Holy Spirit. But there has to be a willingness, an openness, a free will choice to explore if the words are more than just words and if they are in fact a pathway to God.

‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one comes to the father but through me.’ - John 14:6

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ John 1:1