Not a Recreational Religion: Part 2 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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“I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Amos 5:21-24

Transcript

Good Tuesday morning. I love the fact that every weekday morning at this time we start the day by coming to God and saying, God, we want to hear from you. What do you want to say into our lives? How do you want to shape us?

If you don’t know God, I want you to know that there is nothing better than building your life around Him and what He wants to do in your life, because life just doesn’t work properly without Him being at the centre of it. That’s how our lives were designed to be built around God and what He wants to do in them.

And I hope that these times each weekday morning are helping you to build your life around God and His activity in your life. I know for me, coming each weekday morning to these times and opening God’s word is like listening to God, right? It’s what opening the Bible is, God speaks to us through it. Sure, He gave these words thousands of years ago, but God is alive and He’s active in this world, and He speaks into our lives through these words.

The Holy Spirit of God takes the words that were given so many years ago and reaches right into your heart and life and speaks to you about these things.

Well, we’re talking all this week about the fact that the Christian life is not a recreational religion.

It’s not something you just plug in to your life to make you feel a little better or because it’s an activity that you enjoy and you like being with other Christians and singing the songs together, talking about the Bible together. No, that’s not what Christianity is all about. I want you to think about this question.

Why do you think Jesus died on the cross for you and rose from the dead and is in your life today?

Do you think it’s simply so that you can feel a little better about life and a little more comfortable as you encounter the difficult experiences of life and go through life with the name Christian tacked onto your life. No, that’s not why Jesus died for you.

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And if you look at your Christian life and you think, well, it’s not all that it could be, it’s not really transforming my life. Or if you’re not a Christian and you’re looking at your life and you’re saying my life’s a mess, I need help, and I know only God can help me. Well, if you’re either of those people, I have good news.

There is a way of life that is completely different than that. Let me read you a few verses out of Romans chapter 14 in the Bible, starting in verse 7. It says this:

For not one of us lives for himself. And not one dies for himself, for if we live, we live for the Lord. Or if we die we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lords, for to this end, Christ died and lived again. That he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

Why did Jesus go through what he went through at the cross for us?

I’ll tell you this, it’s not so that you could tack him on to your existing way of life like a fridge magnet stuck onto a fridge that gives a little decoration but has nothing to do with how the fridge actually operates.

And isn’t that so easy to do in our lives as Christians, to reduce our Christianity and our relationship with God to this outward thing, this outward activity of going to church, going to small group, reading the Bible, praying together, and then coming home to just life as if God didn’t even exist. It’s so easy to drift into that pattern of life, but as you have no doubt experienced, that way of life does not work.

God has designed the Christian life so that it only works when He is at the centre of it. To this end, Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord, both of the dead and of the living. So whether we live or die, we are the Lords.

I just want to encourage you, as you think about your life today, if you want your life to come together to have wholeness, fullness, to be what you were designed to be, take the first step of putting God at the centre of your life. Come to Him and say, OK, God, I’ve been tacking you on. I’ve been sticking you on my life like that fridge magnet, but I want to experience the real thing. I’m going to put you at the centre of my life. What do you want my life to be?

I don’t just want you to bless my plans for my life. I want to know your plans for my life. And even before I know them, I want to say to you, yes, Lord, that’s the way I’m going to go.

I’m John North.

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