Getting rid of religion changed my life
This is kind of a special post; it’s more focused than they normally are. That’s because I have this burning on my heart to share with you, and I pray that it touches your heart or that God reveals something about Himself to you through it that you didn’t see before.
I’m going to share something with you that may seem a little strange if you don’t believe in God and a little obvious if you do. But if you fall into either of these categories (and I’m willing to bet that you do), I’d encourage you to read on because I’m going to try and put into words what’s going on in my heart right now. It is the most real, fulfilling thing I have ever experienced, and I doubt that there’s anything that can top it. You might read this and say, “I think he’s absolutely 100% nuts,” or “I’ve already been there and done that,” or “wow, I really need to take this and apply it in my own life,” but wherever you’re at with God, please hear me out because these words could potentially change your entire life.
I went to a conference in Durham, NC last weekend called Campus Harvest, expecting to get a little bit of love and encouragement to pass on to hurting lives on my campus. What I got out of it completely changed my entire perspective on God and life as I know it.
Here’s why I’m posting this. It’s obvious to most people who call themselves Christians that Christianity is “not about religion, it’s about relationship.” The idea of religion is repulsive to most people in their right minds. I’m talking about the notion of forcing yourself to live by a certain set of rules and go somewhere once a week you don’t care to go and pray to someone whom you don’t even know exists. So it makes sense that most (at least protestant) Christians I know would tell me the above quoted statement about their own personal walk with God. From my experience though, I’m guessing that about 90 percent of people who say this phrase don’t even know what they’re talking about. I’m not saying this to sound arrogant or because I think I have all the answers. Rather, I just found out last weekend that after a lifetime of being in the church, and after about two years of being what I’d call “on fire for God,” I didn’t know what I myself was talking about. And no one clued me into this for eighteen freaking years! I sure wish I could have found out what being a follower of Christ was all about a little sooner than that. So that’s why I’m writing this. I want to help YOU get to a place where you seek after God because you desperately want to, not because you feel pressured to or because you see no other choice.
Here’s the gig. Us Christians like to talk about God’s love, and how God’s love causes us to “love our neighbor as ourself”, “love our enemies and bless those who persecute us”, “take care of the widows and feed the orphans living among us”, and the list goes on. Let me tell you something from my very own experience. It’s one thing to talk about it and imagine that this connection between God’s love inside of us and our acts of love and service towards others is there. It’s a completely new level to actually experience that love in your heart, have it consume your entire mind, soul, and body, and be truly, divinely impelled from the inside to do all this love stuff. And the second way is a lot more worthwhile than the first.
Please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. The first way is NOT wrong! Actually, obedience to what Jesus has asked of us is the foundation for genuinely loving God (John 14:15). I’ve messed up a lot in my life, but one thing I have going for me (at least since I’ve been in college) is that I’ve been diligent in setting aside time to meet with God. It’s a good habit, for sure, but I’ve been doing it with the same heart that makes me get the oil in my car changed, or clean the bathroom. Not because I enjoy it, but simply because I knew that without changing my oil or cleaning my bathroom my life would come to a halt and rapidly become very disgusting. But have you ever found that doing things because you know you’ll be screwed if you don’t is not a very fun way to live? I’ve pulled a lot of all nighters in high school (and a couple in college, although I’m trying as hard as I can to avoid them) because I know that if I don’t get an essay finished or a book read by the next morning, my grade in the class will be toast. But that doesn’t mean that I had a lot of fun depriving myself of sleep and basically dying the next day. In my own walk with God, I’ve tried the whole prayer list thing where I write down all my prayer requests on a piece of paper and bring it before God, checking each item off one by one as I toil laboriously through the list. If you do that on a regular basis, and actually enjoy it, please tell me, because you’ll be the first. I’m willing to bet, though, that no one considers a forced relationship with God “enjoyable.”
That’s because it wasn’t meant to be forced! Yes, God loves and searches for a heart that desires to obey Him and do His will. But there’s more to prayer than just shutting yourself in a quiet room, forcing yourself to read a chapter of the Bible every day, and praying that Bob and Suzie get saved.
So if we love God, and obey what He commands us to do, what else could there be to God besides that?
Here’s my answer to that question. Throughout the Bible there is a running metaphor of God’s hand versus God’s face. God’s hand is connected with His provision, His gifts, His blessing, His strength, His power, etc. God’s face is connected with His love. What’s the difference between love and all these other things? Well, the first list is what God does for people. But love is the very essence of WHO God is (1 John 4:8,16)! The key to having an enjoyable relationship with God instead of dead religion is to not seek the WHAT, but the WHO. What God has done for you is a good place to start. But there’s much more to it than that. Believe it or not, God didn’t create us so he could save us. We as humans turned away from God, so He needed to send His son as a human sacrifice to save us from our sins, but that’s not the reason why He created us. God didn’t create us so he could provide for our physical needs. God didn’t create us to have needs! God created you to be completely fulfilled in Him alone, to know Him, to love Him. But because we turned away from Him, he stretched out His HAND (his grace and provision) and offered us a way to be reunited with Him again (salvation). The experience of salvation, however, is not the reason why we’re here! God is a jealous lover who created us–humanity–to be His lover (Exodus 34:14). So what I’m suggesting is until we begin to see past His hand (what he does for you) and start seeking His face (living to know Him more and love Him more), get this–our relationship with God will be absolutely nothing more than boring religion. Why? Because seeking his hand is a laborious duty. We see that in order to keep receiving from the hand of God, we *sigh* HAVE to put in our due diligence and spend time praying and reading the Bible. The thing is, though, God will let you live like that. He let me live like that until a week ago, when at Campus Harvest He showed me what it really means to have a thriving, fiery, passionate relationship with Him. God is no longer religion to me. God is the lover of my soul (Psalm 31:7)! I’m done with boring religion. I’m done with passionless prayer times that end because I’m hungry and I want to eat breakfast and I’m tired of muttering words and hoping God hears them. I want nothing less out of life than Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! I’ve found that nothing satisfies the longing in my soul except being in love with Jesus.
Stop for a second. If you’re a Christian in an evangelical/charismatic church, or if you’ve been around someone who is, you’ve probably heard the phrase “in love with Jesus” so much that it’s been beat to death. At least that’s how it was for me. I heard so many people talk about it without experiencing it myself that I just assumed that consistency and devotion in my “religious duties” to God (praying, etc.) was what being in love with Jesus is all about. If that’s you, I have a paradigm shift coming up for you. I don’t want you to be stuck like I was. Because keeping up with your quiet time and making sure you pray for everyone you’ve promised to pray for, albeit important, is not what it’s all about. There’s so much more!!
Here’s the tough part, though. Try as I might, I cannot POSSIBLY to justice to the idea of being in love with Jesus by expressing myself in words. Or in any way, for that matter. If you want to truly know what I’m talking about, you’ve got to experience it for yourself. I can’t give you a step-by-step instruction manual on how to do that, because God is not a machine that can be manipulated to attain the desired result. God is a lover, just like people are lovers, and it takes something more than a mechanical approach to Him to beckon His love. I can, however, tell you how this paradigm shift happened for me, not so you can copy me, but so you can get an idea of the change that has to take place.
On the way to North Carolina last weekend, we got stuck riding in a 15-passenger van loaded to capacity, and after waking up from an attempted nap against the window of the van, I could barely move because my back had so many knots in it. About a half-hour later, my friend Rachel says, “Aaron, you look like you need a back massage. Can I give you one?” Of course I took her up on it, and while I was sitting there, letting her work out the problems in my back, God just spoke right to my heart: “Why don’t you ever have this attitude when you’re worshiping me? You sit there and let your friend Rachel massage your back, but you never sit there at my altar and let me massage your heart.” Anyone who knows me very well knows that I’m very accomplishment driven, and I’ve always struggled with just sitting and inviting God to come love on me–I always want to move forward and “get my prayer done.” Anyways, Saturday night at the conference, after the evening service, there was an extended time of worship and for some reason I really felt like I wanted to stay for it, so I and a couple friends did. I moved up to the front of the auditorium, closed my eyes, and began to sing. All of a sudden the band quieted down, leaving just the piano and violin playing music. What God had spoken to me through the massage on the van came to my mind, so I just sat down, and said, “God, I’m here. I’m not going to try to earn your love anymore. Please come and love on me, come and massage my heart.” For the next 15 minutes, I just sat there, feeling a warmth in my stomach which I knew was the tangible presence of God. I didn’t sing, and I didn’t pray. I didn’t think about His mercy, His greatness, His holiness, or (my personal favorite) how he saved me from my sinful life two years ago. I simply sat there, the same way I’d sit if Rachel was there massaging my back, and I let God massage my heart. I cannot explain how AWESOME that felt. All I can say is that afterwards, I felt like I had just slept for 15 hours. I felt refreshed and renewed. I felt like I had just reached the most meaningful level of existence that I ever had before. I was just penetrated to the core of my heart with the tangible love of God.
Here’s the bottom line. Ecclesiastes 3 says that there is a time for everything under the sun. A time to laugh and a time to cry; a time to live and a time to die. There’s a time for every spiritual discipline–prayer, fasting, intercession, the list goes on. God calls His people to all these things. But if you elevate your earthly calling above your ETERNAL calling, which is to worship God, soak in His presence, and let Him love on YOU, chances are you’re going to have a pretty miserable Christian walk. If you’ve read some of my earlier posts about living on the Lord’s strength, this is what I’m talking about. Yes, the Lord did give me strength to carry out the tasks I took on, but in making my top priority to be doing stuff for God, I missed the actual point of it: so that everyone on the Earth may know and love God! And how do I dare try to get everyone else to make knowing and loving God their top priority when it’s not my top priority?
Prayer should not be a chore, it should actually be fun. Worship should not be a laborious service you sit through once a week. Worship should be something you actually look forward to! By the time Sunday rolls around each week I am so hungry to worship God because the presence of God is what I’m made for! Being in the presence of God is the fullness of joy (Psalm 16:11) that we’re made for, and there is no denying that we as humans are designed to seek pleasure.
If you don’t consider yourself a believer or a follower of God, this next part is for you: I apologize from the bottom of my heart that we as a church have turned Jesus Christ, the most amazing person who ever walked this earth, into a boring religion. He’s not a set of rules. He’s not a code you have to follow or a class you have to attend. He is the purest form of love you’ll ever find, and if you get Him in your heart, He will change your entire life. He will turn you into a new person–a better person. He will wipe away all your tears and all your pain from all the times you’ve been hurt by someone. It doesn’t matter what kind of baggage you’re carrying around with you or things you’ve done in your past that you feel there’s no way He’ll forgive. Psalm 65:3 says, “Though we are overwhelmed by our sins, you forgive them all.” Check this out! It goes on in verse 4 to say: “What joy for those you choose to bring near, those who live in your holy courts. What festivities await us inside your holy Temple.” Haha, festivities? A party in the house of God? Did you ever imagine you’d find such text in the Bible? But there it is. Being in the “holy courts” (that is, the presence of God) isn’t a boring thing! It’s not something that you have to deny pleasure for. It is the greatest source of pleasure you’ll ever find! And Psalm 16:11 says that in God’s right hand are pleasures forever. There are lots of pleasurable things on this Earth, but I sure haven’t found any that last very long. The pleasure of being in God’s presence is eternal, because God is eternal, unchanging, the same yesterday, today, and forever!
One word of advice to anyone who has read this and wants to seek a deeper relationship with God, free of all religious connotation. Don’t seek the pleasure. That’s reducing God to a mere hand once again. Seek God’s face, and peace, joy, fulfillment and pleasure will follow. Shut yourself in a quiet room, but instead of forcing out some words from your mind, pray to Him with all your heart. Love in Him with all your heart. Tell Him that He can have everything. Sing your love to Him in the form of a love song, maybe someone else wrote it, maybe you write it on the spot. Do whatever it takes. What matters is that your heart is expressing your love to the One who saved your soul. Don’t be afraid to let your emotions express the groanings in your heart that your words cannot. Let Him massage your heart. Open your heart to Him, and I guarantee He’ll come in! How do I know that? Because Revelation 3:20 says, “I stand at the door and knock! If anyone hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come into Him, and dine with Him, and He with me.” The door is the door of your heart, and dining is the best metaphor I think the writer of Revelation could have chosen, because it represents nothing more than hanging out with God, enjoying what He’s given you while you also enjoy the most important thing in the world: His presence.
Christian, agnostic, atheist, or something else, if any of this has touched your heart, or maybe upset it a little bit, don’t let yourself down. I’m here and happy to talk. 
