How religious are you?

Oftentimes we don’t realize the "blind spot" we ourselves live in. The magic phrase you hear and I have to admit this had a great influence on me, sounds like this:" We are not calling people to a religion but to Jesus Christ the Son of God". Well, this did sound great and it is great (had it been the truth that a certain denomination only wants to bring Jesus Christ as He is presented in the New Testament without other traditions and doctrines).

Therefore for many years I didn’t even bother checking my set of beliefs. I just believed what my parents believed and they believed what my grandparents believed and so on until one day when I had to check my doctrines - as I was really interested in a subject - I realized that my church did not really do what the Bible said (within a major practice of the early church). I am not mentioning any denominations here as this is not the issue, the point that I am trying to make is that regardless of the front name of your church, the most important thing to realize is that you are in a danger to turn a blind eye on the very Word of God and embrace a doctrine made by people. That is a counterproductive trade!

I did not realize how easy is to just believe something for years just because you haven’t checked it. The moment you start comparing your set of beliefs, set of doctrines to the Bible and not try to push the Bible in the narrow boxes of the doctrines, that moment you realize that religion and real Christianity are two separate things.

If no one helps you see that you are indeed in a "blind spot" and you should get out, you end up with a twisted image of God that will sooner or later bring fruit in your life.
This is how decent people, with decent families trying to live up to the set of rules imposed by their religion have a constant inner struggle: "I haven’t done enough, I am not good enough, I could have done more."

I’ll use an illustration to emphasize this idea: a man died and got to the Heaven’s door and asked the guardian angel to let him in. The angel said that he first has to pass a test before entering the gate. "All right" said the man.

Then, the angel started:" Within this test you have to gather 100 points to get to Heaven."
The first question came: "Have you been faithful to your wife?"
The man answered: "Oh yes, I have been faithful to her, I never even lusted any other woman, I have been faithful."
The angel replied:"All right, that will give you one point."
The second question: "Did you feed the poor?"
The man replied:"Oh, I did feed them whenever I had the chance!"
Again the angel said:" That will add another half of point. Now, did you visit the sick?"
"I did" said the man. "All right, that makes another half of point"
He realized that in a few questions all the good deeds he has ever done were so easily comprised and said "Oh, with all my good deeds I have only got 2 points, oh Lord have mercy!"
"That’s right" the angel said," The Lord’s mercy will cover for all the other 98 points."

A religion will make us (more or less consciously) embrace self-righteousness with our good deeds like:"I go to Church every Sunday and I pray every day and I read 5 chapters of the Bible every day, I fast twice a week etc."

No amount of fasting or praying makes God love you more than He already does! He already loves you immensely and your fasting, praying and reading the Bible will only open you up and make you aware of who you are in Christ. This will renew your mind towards God and not the other way around. God has already blessed you and made you a new creature in Christ! You just have to know your new identity, you have to know who God really is and the ONLY way to do that is to read the Bible and compare everything you thought and believed of God.

Just make sure you know the God of the Bible, FROM the Bible and that will set you free of religiosity, it will set you free from sin, free to live a holy life not due to some external rules but from your heart, from a transformed heart that loves God indeed. When you get rid of the emptiness of religion and get to know Jesus Christ, you will know how to follow Him out of love and not because of fear.