NorthStar Community Daily Devotional

February 15

Scripture focus: Because of this decision we don't evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don't look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We're Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them. We're speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you. 2 Corinthians 5:16-20 MSG

“I think a big problem in our world today is religion. It’s all about trying to make us feel guilty. If we could just eliminate religion, the world would be a better place because we wouldn’t have to feel bad and could just do what we think is right for us.”

It’s cold in my part of the world; instead of jogging through my neighborhood, I head out each morning to my local fitness center and grab a treadmill. I distract myself by watching a tv screen attached to the torture machine I run on. One day I watched a program on a religious broadcasting station. I came in toward the end of his message, but as best I can tell, he promised me that God would make me rich if I would just believe it and send his church a nice donation to prove my belief to God. He was followed by a woman bible study teacher who told her audience that the reason they were not experiencing God’s blessings was because of their sin. If they would believe God and confess their sin, God would either forgive them or smite them. But they shouldn’t feel bad if God chooses to judge rather than forgive, because God is God and can do anything he wants. It’s by grace anyone is saved, so if he doesn’t pick you, you should accept your fate. You are born to sin, and you may die that way too. After all that talk about religion, I flipped over to the channel that shows movies only women like to watch. I saw the conclusion of one of those cheesy chick flicks, where it so happens that an evil small town preacher was thwarted in his attempts to seduce the village youngsters into bad behaving by a woman in the community who knew better than to attend church, but was deeply spiritual. Through her use of, shall we say, spiritually alternative means, she was able to expose this God following imposter and restore order to her community. Looking at mere mortals as a way to understand God is risky business. I understand why “religion” gets a bad rap. But according to Paul, we are not being asked to drink the “Kool-aide” and adopt a particular religion. He’s asking us to become friends with God. He’s inviting us to join him in the work of getting out his message of hope to hurting people.

Since I didn’t have a clue what this writer meant by religion, I’m afraid I didn’t have much of a response. But I did offer up the idea that for me, I need more than my own thoughts to help me figure out my next right step. I told the writer about my own struggles with guilt and shame, and how I was learning to live by grace, with God as my protector against my own personal vulnerabilities to sin and shame. I told her I thought my biggest problem was me, but that my spiritual journey was helping me move beyond myself and find a purpose for living. I didn’t hear back from her.


Click on the word comments below and join our conversation!

© Copyright 2010 NorthStar Community

---