Not a Recreational Religion: Part 4 — 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 morning. We’re talking all this week about the fact that Christianity and the Christian life is not a recreational religion. It’s not just a weekend show of going to church and then maybe going to small group during the week and having a Bible study. No, it’s about total commitment to a way of life that puts God at the centre of your life.

And what God calls you to is not always the pleasant things. Sometimes as Christians, when we talk to people who don’t yet have a relationship with Jesus Christ, we try to give this impression that everything will be awesome and wonderful and happy and great if you choose to put God at the centre of your life and turn in faith to Jesus Christ, but that’s not reality, is it?

Reality is God sometimes calls us to difficult things, to hard things, and the point of life is not to get God to do what you want Him to do.

The point of life is to live God’s way of life, to find out what God wants to do in you and through you, and then throw your life into that. When you do that, then God works in the other areas of your life and helps them come into right perspective. He guides and leads your life and blesses your life. But only when you put Him first at the centre of your life. And so often as we look at the lives of the people who were following God in the Bible, we see that life was not easy for them. Following God meant some hardship. Look at the apostle Paul. And as so many of the letters that the apostle Paul writes that now are part of the Bible are written from prison as he’s being persecuted for his commitment to Jesus Christ. He writes to the Philippian Christians, for example, in the book of Philippians in the New Testament of the Bible, and he’s writing from prison and he tells them all about it, that he’s in prison, and he’s asking them for prayer for him.

He says this starting at the end of verse 18 (Philippians 1). He says:

Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayers and the provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

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According to my earnest expectation and hope that I will not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness Christ will even now, that is while I am in prison, even now, as always, Christ will be exalted in my body. Listen, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful work for me, and I don’t know which to choose, but I am hard pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, which is what will happen if he dies, for that is very much better.

Yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith, so that your proud confidence in me may abound in Christ Jesus through my coming to you again. Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

Well, what a perspective the apostle Paul has on his sufferings. He says, in my life, my great goal is that Christ will be honoured whether by my life or my death, as I’m sitting here in prison for my stand for Jesus, and he says, because to me to live is Christ. That is, that’s what life’s about – representing Jesus in this world, asking Jesus for His agenda for my life, and then throwing myself into that. And to die is gain. If it ends up with me dying, I’ll go to be with Him, and that’s going to be so much better than being here alive in this life. This is a different perspective than we’re used to, isn’t it?

The idea that it’s better to live for Christ even with persecution or hardship than it is just to take it easy and look for only God’s blessings in my life, and God is saying to us, no, my blessings come with my purpose.

Build your life around me and my purpose for your life, and you will experience my blessings, and there’ll be so much joy, so much meaning, so much purpose, because joy and meaning and purpose don’t come from just happy experiences, they come from putting God first in your life.

I’m John North.

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