Why I Hate Religion: 10 Reasons to Break Free from the Bondage of Religious Tradition (6 page)

Now that you know you have the
right
to be righteous, let’s look at the benefits of righteousness. Contrary to popular belief, righteousness does not give a person a license to sin. Some Christians grab hold of 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” and use it as a “Get Out of Jail for Free” card. They’ll say, “Lord, forgive me for taking those drugs,” then at the first opportunity they get, they get high again. They try to use the righteousness and mercy of God to continue living a sinful lifestyle.

Please understand, Christians shouldn’t be looking for a way to sin, but instead, they should be looking for a way out of sin. When you have a revelation of God’s grace, which empowers you
not
to sin, you will find yourself walking in perpetual victory over
those mind-sets and behaviors that held you back in your walk with God. Your righteousness doesn’t allow you to sin, but it does allow you to have confidence in knowing that God has forgiven you when you do miss the mark. Also, when you know you are righteous, you know that you don’t have to sin if you don’t want to. Jesus has made you free from the law of sin and death, and you are no longer in the prison of sin. You are in the prison of righteousness!

Missing the mark is inevitable at first. Even mature Christians miss it at times, in one area or another. As much as a person wants to walk perfectly before God, that doesn’t always happen. Please know, just because you’re righteous doesn’t mean that issues won’t come up in your life that will tempt you to get out of line. Some situations will even cause you to stumble and fall. But the important thing to remember is to avoid getting stuck in a fallen position. The Bible says to arise, or get into a new position. You can’t stay on the ground, beaten and defeated. You have to brush yourself off and keep going. As a child of God, you have a blood-bought right to forgiveness of your sins and the ability to stand in His presence free of all guilt.

You have a right to go to your heavenly Father when you miss it and say, “Lord, help me. I repent. Clean me up,” and keep on going. God doesn’t act the way we do when we are hurt by others. People tend to hold on to offenses. We may say that we forgive a person, but we’ll keep remembering what he or she did to us. On the other hand, once you repent, God chooses not to remember your sins anymore. Psalm 103:12 says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” God has separated you from sin so that you can come boldly to His throne, but you’ll back away from it every time
if
you don’t allow righteousness to dominate your thinking.

Some people think that because I am a pastor, I must be
perfect. They think that I float on a cloud when I walk and that I never make a mistake. My wife, Taffi, will be the first to tell you that that is far from the truth! I’m far from perfect, and I’ll occasionally miss the mark. Yet I am open to receive correction from God or from my wife when I’m wrong. In doing so, I’m growing, learning, and preparing for the next obstacle that comes my way. I’m passing the tests that are before me so I can graduate to the next level. You have to use temptations and conflicts as opportunities to learn and grow instead of allowing them to be stumbling blocks and hindrances to God’s perfect plan for you.

There are people who think they’re no longer born again because they repeatedly miss the mark. No! As believers, we already knew going into this thing that we are not perfect. That’s why we had to go in through Jesus. He is the only one who is perfect. Once we made this connection with Jesus, we received an Advocate with the Father through whom we can have forgiveness of our sins. As a result, when we miss the mark, we can receive forgiveness made available by the blood of Jesus, which has already been applied to cleanse us from all of our sins. For this reason, we can continue to move on in the righteousness of God.

There are some people who think, “Well, you know what? God’s not going to use me or speak to me because I sinned.” That’s simply not true. I can go through Scripture after Scripture and show them all the people whom God spoke to right after they missed it. Look at King David. He was an adulterer and a murderer, yet God called him a man after His own heart.

If you condemn yourself and continue to say, “I’m not worthy or perfect enough to hear from the Lord,” you disqualify yourself from being used. Do you have to be flawless in order for
God to use you? No! If you’ll take advantage of the blood that was shed by Jesus and stand with confidence in your righteousness, He will.

So you sinned. Now what? Most people start to wallow in a “pity party” and feel guilty for what they did. Don’t even go there. Right in the midst of your situation, before your pity party starts, begin to thank the Lord for His forgiveness. Say, “Thank You, Jesus, for being here for me. Through You, I’m saved, and I have the grace of God to be forgiven.” I’m telling you that by the time you finish bringing the issue to God, He will be speaking to you!

Instead of people getting back in God’s presence to hear His answers, the Body of Christ wants to get to God through their good works. Understand, you can never be good enough, work hard enough, or do enough charity work to get into heaven. You must go through Jesus; He’s the only way to the Father. This revelation didn’t come to me right away. Like others who grew up in the church, I thought good deeds were the key to getting into heaven. Then one day I realized that wasn’t right, and that it wasn’t biblical. I thought to myself:
As hard as I work to be flawless and perfect, my righteousness isn’t dependent upon my actions, because even if I were perfect, without Jesus, I still wouldn’t be good enough.
I’m not righteous without Him. I can’t hear without Him. My faith can’t work without Him. That’s why it’s nonsense for people to think they can earn their way to heaven through good works. Everything is based on your acceptance of Jesus.

Have you ever heard the argument from a person who says, “I’m a good person at heart. I don’t drink alcohol, smoke, or take illegal drugs. I’m kind to others. So why do I need to know Jesus?” People who say that are generally law-abiding citizens with what the world considers good morals. They think that their many gifts of time and money given to charitable organizations and good causes make them good enough to go to heaven, despite the fact that they haven’t accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. They are in for a rude awakening when they reach hell and realize that they had been living a lie.

This type of thinking isn’t limited to the world either. There are those who have gone to church all of their lives, yet have not accepted Christ. They feel their place in heaven is secured because they are faithful in the choir or have served in the church for twenty years. These kinds of people work their fingers to the bone in ministry positions and do good works in the community, but don’t realize that it’s all in vain if they don’t invite Jesus into their hearts.

People must realize that being good without having God doesn’t equal going to heaven. God must be behind everything that you do; He must be your motivator.

According to a 2000 Barna Research Group survey, 57 percent of all adults and three out of five teens (61 percent) who don’t
attend church believe that if a person is generally good, or does enough good things for others during his or her life, that person will earn a place in heaven. In addition, a study by the same group in 2004 found that more than half of all adults (saved and unsaved) also agree with that statement. This is a sad statistic. So many people have been deceived by wrong religious teachings. The church must rid itself of all traces of religion and get busy spreading the truth of salvation and the gospel of grace if these people are ever going to be free from bondage.

When the church begins to understand that no amount of service can outweigh Jesus’ sacrifice for you or me, people will begin to live their lives differently. Good works would be performed to glorify God instead of trying to get attention from Him. People’s hearts would change as well as their motivation for the things that they do. The best benefit of understanding your righteousness is knowing that even though you may mess up and sin, God still loves you, and you have a right to cry out to Him, “Abba, Father.” He will be there to help you every step of the way.

Remember, it’s not your good works that open the gates of heaven. Jesus is the key, and unless you go through Him, you’ll never see that promise: “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Accept Him today and receive the best gift you could ever have—right standing with God.

W
hy is it that when a person is faced with a tough situation or things aren’t going his way in life, he is quick to blame God? People often ask, “Why is the Lord doing this to me?” From their car breaking down to being laid off from work to being diagnosed with a major illness, people have always placed the fault on God when things don’t go right. Before I ever received revelation and understanding of the Word, I would think the same thing:
Why does God punish people?
Because of a lack of understanding, people quickly fall into a traditional mind-set and say, “Well, God must be trying to teach me something,” or “Maybe He’s punishing me for something bad that I’ve done.” But that way of thinking is wrong. The truth is: God doesn’t operate that way. Because of people’s religious view of who God is, they automatically assume that He’s behind everything—good or bad.

Religion has taught people that God is an irate dictator who rules the world with an iron fist. It teaches that He is just waiting for you to make one wrong move so He can punish you by sending you through a series of difficult tests and trials. Religion
also implies that God is not above using sickness, financial woes, and even the death of a loved one to develop a person’s patience or faith. Because believers feel that God is the one causing all the trouble in their lives, they happily put up with these situations, as if they’re doing their Christian duty to suffer, instead of taking authority over the situations.

This false view of God has created a doctrine of suffering that has been seared into the minds of believers and unbelievers alike. People willingly suffer through troubled times and wear their battle scars as a badge of honor. They believe that it is God’s will for Christians to suffer, and they have also been conditioned to accept struggle and hardship as part of the package deal for serving God.

Hearing numerous songs and sermons glorifying the plight of the Christian has built mental strongholds in the minds of many people. These strongholds perpetuate the idea that every trial a person faces and suffers through is all part of God’s perfect plan for his or her life. Sickness, lack, spiritual bondage, and even death are all generally accepted as God’s will. There is no acknowledgment of the devil, or even people’s own bad decisions. The truth is that God never intended for His people to suffer; that’s just not who He is. He loves us, and He wants the very best for us, which includes an abundant life of success and fulfillment.

God is a loving God, unlike many of the predominant deities of other religions. In Greek mythology, Zeus, the chief god, was said to hurl lightning bolts down in judgment at those who
angered him. Islam says that sometimes bad things happen to believers for their own good, giving them a chance to think about what they’ve done wrong. But when you serve the one true God, you can take comfort in knowing that He doesn’t hand out disease to those who commit adultery or dish out financial disaster to those who lie. Our God is forgiving and just when we repent. He even shows mercy to us when we don’t deserve it. Everything good that He does is designed to bring us into a closer relationship with Him.

Please understand, there are consequences that come with sin; however, those consequences are more about the natural progression of continuing down the wrong path than they are about God doling out the punishment. When we open the door to the enemy through disobedience, he can gain a foothold in our lives, which is why God doesn’t want us participating in sin. The key to remember is that God does not use evil to bring about good because that would go against His very nature.

Look at what Jesus had to say to the Pharisees. They had accused Him of casting out devils, healing the sick, and restoring sight to the blind with the assistance of Satan. Jesus said, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand?” (Matt. 12:25–27
NIV
). Jesus took the evil—sickness and bondage—off these people and gave them complete restoration. Evil cannot be used to produce good; it’s just not possible.

The fact of the matter is that the true culprit behind evil is Satan. In John 10:10, Jesus says, “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Satan is the thief. He is the one who steals, kills, and destroys. Jesus’ goal is for you to have an abundant life—one that overflows with goodness.

The proof that God doesn’t want you to suffer can be found throughout His Word. Psalm 35:27 says that He takes pleasure in the total life prosperity of His people; therefore, He will not use evil to teach you lessons. God’s ultimate goal is for you to be healed, set free, happy, rich, and living an abundant life instead of being sick, broke, busted, and disgusted. God is happy when you are fully supplied, and He wants to show you His goodness. However, He’s not just good to believers. The Bible says that He’s good to all: “The Lord
is
gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy. The Lord
is
good to all: and his tender mercies
are
over all his works” (Ps. 145:8–9).