Bad religion is anything we think we must do or add to the finished work of Jesus. Many of us may think we know this until we see the list that many churches put on people.
1. Attend church regularly and don't dare forsake the assembling. (Believers can fellowship anywhere, and if it's just two of you, that is still assembling)
2. You must read your Bible every day. (It's good to read the Bible, but better yet, listen to the living Word, which is Jesus whom you have 24/7.
3. You must do devotions every day. (Really? God does not require devotions.)
4. Serve, serve, serve, and serve some more in the Church.(Remember, you are the church, and you can serve by giving others availability to your giftedness, whatever it may be. Be yourself and serve others in what you love to do. When we do this, we won't burn out because we will be doing only what God uniquely designed us to do.)
5. Put God first, all the time, and have your quiet time every day or terrible things will happen. (Boy, what pressure that is. What exactly does this look like? God automatically is first, and He doesn't need us doing things to prove that we are putting Him first. He is in us 24/7. We can have quiet time in our thoughts with Him anytime of the day, no matter what we are doing. He is not the giver of bad things, but always the giver of all that is good.
6. You must keep short accounts with God. (Again, I say, really? To live thinking this way is torment. God is not an accountant keeping track of our sins. Our account of sin is closed. He has chosen to remember our sins no more. We can talk to Him throughout our day about anything, even while we're knowingly sinning. In fact, He wants us to talk to Him, especially in those moments. But if we don't and we forget or choose not to talk to God, He still talks to us. There are no short accounts we need to keep track of.
7. We must keep confessing our sins to stay forgiven. (How are you doing with this one? Let me tell you, if you believe this, you had better remember every little one. Our confession of agreement with Jesus that we need Him to save us, is a one-time event. We don't need to keep begging God to forgive us because He forgave it all at the cross. We thank Him for the forgiveness we already have, especially when we mess up. Making a whole doctrine out of verses taken out of context has really jacked people up.)
8. You should only listen to Christian music. (Uh, no! Not all music is bad, in fact, there are all types of wonderful music that are not labeled as Christian. Is it important what we listen to? Yes, absolutely, but even some of our Christian songs are bad because they have lyrics that are Old Covenant focused and imply that we are separated from God. He's out there, and we must do something to get Him here or make Him happy. Many of the songs are just flat out not Biblically correct.
9. You can't involve yourself in the pleasures of this world.
(We are not to love the system of the world that tells us we must do to become and seek out ways to define our identity apart from God. Everything in this world was given for our pleasure by our Creator. He set specific boundary lines for some of these pleasures for our well-being being and so we would prosper. He wants us to enjoy our life here and experience pleasure.
These are just a few of many things we buy into because we have heard it so much. We start out believing there is nothing we need to add to what Christ did, or that we need to do to stay in good standing with Him, but slowly over time, bad religion gets into our minds from those propagating it. But many of us are breaking free from bad religion into the freedom God intended us to live in
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