People are generally more comfortable with "religion" rules they follow to feel safe than they are trusting in the unseen Almighty God through faith.
Matthew 15:8-9 "8 ‘This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far away from Me.
9 And in vain do they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”
Isaiah 29:13 "Therefore the Lord said: “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men."
Mark 7:6 "Jesus answered them, “Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me."
Ezekiel 33:31 "So My people come to you as usual, sit before you, and hear your words; but they do not put them into practice. Although they express love with their mouths, their hearts pursue dishonest gain."
Mankind has never changed; it always has more faith in its own devices and ideas than it has in God.
Here is what God said He desires: Hosea 6:6 "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings."
Amos 5:21-23 “I hate, I despise your feasts! I cannot stand the stench of your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer Me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; for your peace offerings of fattened cattle I will have no regard. Take away from Me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps."
God said all this, and yet our church culture continues to practice feasts and holidays God never commanded, while claiming they are for Him.
Micah 6:6-8 "With what shall I come before the LORD when I bow before the God on high? Should I come to Him with burnt offerings, with year-old calves? Would the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"
The man-made rituals to appease God do not please Him. His desire is for us to walk in a lifestyle of His ever-present love. It is difficult to find this kind of love in our world today, and worse even in the church gatherings that claim to be in His name.
The grief I sometimes feel as I watch many people claim Christianity as their religion, pretending to be loving but having little understanding of what Christ's love looks like or how it operates.
While it is true love is an attitude and then an action, if the attitude is absent, then the actions are hollow and meaningless.
1 Corinthians 13:1 "If I speak with the tongues of mankind and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal."
To put it plainly, when someone expresses their pretend love out of obligation without God's kind of love, there is a sense of irritation that it is empty, shallow, causing more irritation than if the love were Godly and authentic.
1 John 4:7-9 "7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent His one and only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him.…"
Authentic love is always kind and cannot be unkind.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 "13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."
The final thought; we must seek Christ so that He will transform our hearts into His heart of love, nothing we do in effort will change us , it must be Him who works in us.
Ephesians 2:10 "10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
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