Not a Recreational Religion: Part 5 — 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. I wonder if you realise how much God wants to be involved in your life. God is not just some distant being somewhere in the universe or outside the universe who is watching what’s happening here in your life just sort of as an interested bystander or like watching a show on TV to see what happens.

No, God is here in your life with you right now, even as you’re listening this morning. He is there in your room with you or in your car with you, or wherever you are. He is there and not wanting to just see what’s happening, but wanting to be totally involved in your life.

Maybe you think, well, I would kind of like for God to be involved in my life. There’s several things I’d like Him to do for me. Well, just remember that life and the Christian life is not simply about getting God on the page with your agenda for your life.

No, God wants you to get on the page with His agenda for your life, and this is what it means to have a living relationship with God. It’s recognising that He is God and I’m not, and that it’s my job to find out what His agenda is for my life and then to be totally committed to that, and I can only do that if each day I’m listening to Him.

Paying attention to what he’s saying to me. Reading the Bible, saying, God, what does this mean for my life, and then building my life around that. And if you have been evaluating your relationship with God based on what He has done for you, what He’s doing in your life today and tomorrow, well, I suggest that you reevaluate how you measure your Christian life because the Christian life is not a recreational religion. It’s not something that just adds on to what you already are doing and planning for your life.

The Christian life works when you go all in.

In your commitment to God, this is the way God has designed the Christian life, and I guarantee that you’re frustrated in your relationship with God and in your Christian life wondering what’s gone wrong, why it’s not working for you like it works for some other people if you have not put God at the centre of your life.

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Listen to how the apostle Paul describes his walk with God. He says this in his 2nd Letter to the Corinthians in the Bible in chapter 5, verse 14. He says:

For the love of Christ controls us. Having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died, and he died for all. That’s you, right? Jesus died for you to make a way for you to start this amazing relationship with God. But listen to this. He died for all, so that they who live, that’s you, might no longer live for themselves but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.

And Paul then says, Well, what does that look like if you don’t live for yourself, but you live for God? He goes on to say, therefore, from now on we recognise no one according to the flesh. Because we live for God, we know God wants to use us in the lives of the people around us, so we don’t just think of these people in physical terms or how they come across in a conversation with us. We think about them and where they are spiritually, what’s going on in their inner life, how do they need to meet God.

He says we recognise no one according to the flesh even though we have known Christ according to the flesh. Now we know Him in this way no longer. If any one is in Christ, he’s a new creature. The old things passed away. New things have come, and these new things are from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and then gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

I just want to remind you today that God has a plan for you as a Christian. He has got involved in your life. He has changed your life. He’s forgiven you. He’s removed the barriers that stood between you and Him. He’s enabled you to start a whole new way of life with Him in it. Old things passed away. New things have come.

But now as you build your life around God and look for His involvement in your life, recognise that comes as you embrace His purpose through you in the lives of the people around you.

As you consider the lives of the people in your family, the lives of people in your neighbourhood, people that you work with, what is going on in their inner life, ask them questions that help them to open up and let you see the pain, the brokenness that’s in their lives, because only Jesus Christ can fix that. He designed their lives, and He can fix their lives as He’s doing in your life.

So build your life around God and ask Him to use you in the lives of people around you. This is the Christian life. It’s not a recreational religion.

I’m John North.

To go deeper in your faith, visit AFCI.com.au.

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