Seek Christ Not Religion

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DAILY VITAMIN

- Seek Christ Not Religion

“…Seek you Me, and you shall live. But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nothing. Seek the LORD, and you shall live…” (Amos 5:4-6)

Why would God instruct His people to focus on Him and not events or places? Because He knows man well enough to know men can make a religion out of anything. So He said seek the real deal. Seek Him.

The concept of religion, if you look across all borders, is the searching of a way to perfection. Peace. Completeness. That’s what it entails holistically: man’s pursuit for what might be missing between what is and what he senses can be. Whether it is the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists; even atheists and agnostics, all have a religion that seeks the ultimate answer to all of life’s questions.

And so requires a certain level of devotion to principles; fidelity to a state of conscientiousness and pious attachment. So even if a god is included in the equation or not, we can term all these practices religions.

But is that what Jesus came to give us? No. Not a religion. Religions existed even before He came to the earth and it couldn’t help mankind. It and its many traditions of men were nothing but a pursuit of shadows capable of nothing as it regarded man’s redemption or peace. Thus, what then did Jesus bring to us? Life . True life that brings with it peace, redemption and wholesomeness. The very life of God. Life in Himself. He said He came that we might have this life in abundance (John 10:10). And this life assures us of a peace the world can never know (John 14:27; 16:33). He came to give the fullness of the God-life. Our predecessors had a foretaste in the Old Testament, but by the Spirit in us He’s given us the real thing.

Hence, all through His time on earth, He wasn’t obsessed with the idea of chasing after these shadows. Sleep in the synagogue for a week to get a miracle, recite a prayer all night to get God to answer. No. He came to change our lives by giving us His. So we are no longer in pursuit of a way because we already have the way in us. He is the way (John 14:6); all we’ve got to do then is get to know Him better each day. That is what is most important; nothing more, nothing less. “…for them to seek God, if they might grope for him and really find him.” (Acts 17:27). That has always been what He wanted of us. To know Him (Jeremiah 9:24). And this is why the theme scripture urges us not to search for supposed significant places but to search to know Him. He is not our religion, He is our life; and this is far more powerful, more rewarding, more fulfilling, more real than any religion there might be.

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