Another aspect of our spiritual life relates to religion. Now inasmuch as religion can sometimes muddy up the waters, religion is legitimate and authentic when it helps our faith, hope, and love of God grow and mature, and when the practice of a religion helps unite us to complete union with the Lord God Almighty! As we said yesterday regarding complete faith and trust and belief in Jesus Christ, religion must be used as a means to being completely in love with and completely trusting of God. When religion focuses on anything else but this, religion denigrates itself and steps away from its intended goals instituted by Christ. To claim unilaterally that any one religion is alone authentic demeans the desire of God to draw all creation into complete and total union with Him!
Consider this text from John 3: “5 Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” John 3:5-8. May the Lord’s Spirit move and have It’s Being where It chooses, and may the Spirit of God draw us to complete faith and trust in Him!
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on us a sinner.
From the Bible:
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” James 1:27.
“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” John 14:6.
“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” Micah 6:8?
“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” Romans 14:7.
“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. Whoever says ‘I know Him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in Him, but whoever keeps His word, in Him truly the love of God is perfected.
By this we may know that we are in Him” 1 John 2:1-29.
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