​108. It Was Never Meant to Be This Way

When I was young and sat in a hard, wooden pew, my head played a game of “how did this become that?” How did the early church morph into a list of rules, a show of pomp and circumstance? A “better show up or lose out” type endeavor?

And I know now in my heart, it was never meant to be this way.

One of our old pastors may have said it best: “Humans have an uncanny way of screwing things up.”

Well, don’t we ever.

When did we stop trusting God? When did we stop believing that the Holy Spirit would guide us through our Scripture reading and guide our walk on this (hopefully) long journey towards Jesus? When did we start putting our faith in the pope or John Calvin or the man on the Quaker Oats box to define what being a follower of Christ means?

When I was young and sitting in that pew, I found it all to be so stifling. I still do.

Church is not a game. It is not a intricate dance of “do this but don’t do that.” Our freedom is in Christ, in what He did for ALL of us on the cross, and the moment we trade that in for a list of seventy-two rules and regulations we MUST adhere to in order to be in good standing with God, we miss the point completely.

We dissect what’s holy and place it in filthy boxes.

Jesus had an issue with people who once did something like that.

Oh yeah, the Pharisees.

I pray you understand this post. How Satan takes bits and pieces of “good” and quietly sews them together with an evil underlining. He wants you to feel burdened by the Word. He wants you to feel like you have to dress a certain way or wear your hair long or show up on Sunday or otherwise you’ll write your own ticket to hell.

He wants you to be insecure and burdened by the goodness that is God.

But we can’t be burdened by an act of love so intense it brought death to life and made it no more.

It’s time to understand the truth of Scripture. To rely on Jesus to guide you through the Old Testament where His story begins to the New Testament where it’s barely getting started.

Because He will come again to judge the living and the dead, and He will call His sheep. Not the people who dance all the choreographed steps, but the ones who know His music by heart.