The Big Mistake

John 17:3 And this is eternal life: that people can know you, the only true God, and that they can know Jesus Christ, the one you sent.

One of the biggest mistakes that we can make in believing in Jesus, in being a so-called Christian, is turning what’s meant to be a lifelong, indeed an eternal relationship, into a religion – into merely following a bunch of rules.

To be sure, there are rules, both spoken and unspoken, in any relationship. There are rules in a marriage about how husband and wife should treat each other. There are definitely rules around fidelity – I don’t, for instance, go out for dinner with another woman. That much is patently obvious.

But if a marriage turns into merely following a bunch of rules because that’s what you have to do, what sort of a marriage is it? Passion is replaced by obligation. Relationship is replaced by … what?

And yet this is ultimately where the “faith walk” of many a Christian ends up. As A.W. Tozer puts it:

The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world; we Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word.

That’s the biggest mistake we can ever make – reading God’s Word as though it’s a bunch of rules, rather than a love letter from Him. In His wondrous prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before He was arrested and led to His crucifixion, Jesus put it like this:

John 17:3 And this is eternal life: that people can know you, the only true God, and that they can know Jesus Christ, the one you sent.

Note please, that He didn’t define eternal life as knowing about God, but as knowing God … in other words, having a real relationship with Him in our conscious experience. And that eternal life begins here, now. Know God!

That’s His Word. Fresh … for you … today.

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