Religion vs. Relationship

After Jesus healed the man who had the “lingering disorder for thirty-eight years” (last week’s blog) the Jews wasted no time in finding fault. “It’s the Sabbath and you have no right to pick up your bed” they told the newly healed man in John 5:10 (Amplified). Then they demanded to know who it was that healed him. When the Jews found out it was Jesus, they began persecuting Him and even “sought to slay Him because he had done these things on the Sabbath day” (verse 16).   

Every time I come across one of these incidents in the Bible where the Pharisees or other “religious” types want to kill Jesus for healing or doing something else on the Sabbath I want to scratch my head in wonderment because instead of trying to garner the bigger picture they were constantly, as Jesus put it in Matthew 23:24, “filtering out a gnat and gulping down a camel.”

If I had been there would I have done the same? Would I have failed to appreciate what Jesus was doing? Jesus had already told them He was the Lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8) yet they just couldn’t break old habits, their old traditions. Would I have overlooked the move of God’s Spirit for the sake of my theology? My religious traditions? When I actually sat down and thought about it I realized that at certain times I had done this very thing. It’s easy to get hung up on our church’s way of doing things. We are comfortable in the service that usually runs the same amount of time each week and has the same format. After all, it’s the way our church has always done things. Why change now? But what if the Holy Sprit wants to move in a special way and take a few hours longer? Or change the format? Or add a different type of music? Or maybe come with such power He brings everyone to their knees for the entire service? What then? Do we yield or do we, like those “religious” Jews, miss the moment and a chance to really interact with God?

The comfortable, the familiar can be the enemy of God. It can make us miss Him completely. We need to keep ourselves open to the Holy Spirit. We can trust Him. He will never violate Scripture but He may violate our sensibilities, our preconceived ideas. And if we cling too hard to the familiar we can end up with religion and not relationship. Relationship with the most High God who loves us more than we will ever be able to comprehend and who is always looking to do something new in our lives and take us out of our comfort zone. The question is, will we let Him?

Until next time,

Sylvia