Place Your Life Before God
So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Romans 12: 1-2 (The Message)
Religion is a bad thing. Really it is, you see religion tricks people into thinking and feeling that they are okay with God...without ever consulting God. Religion also gives people list of rules and doctrines that convinces you if you follow those rules and doctrines you will be okay, even if those very rules and doctrines contradict what God has spoken to us in His Word. Religion gives you work to do on the outside to appear righteous...but that was never God's plan for us. Instead God desires that we come to Him in relationship, through His Son Jesus Christ. Through this relationship with our attention and focus on God He changes us from the inside out, removing the stony parts of our heart.
Today's Challenge: Resist the urge to take the religious route! It may make you feel righteous and Holy...but it doesn't bring you any closer to God and it doesn't make you any better. Draw near to God...Focus your attention and Him and by doing so, you will find the freedom to be who he has called you to be and you will discover the new life that springs from a new Heart. It's All About Knowin Him...and then Makin Him Known to others...Ya Heard!
Cross Movement - Huh What!
