The God of the religious

Love is the opening door, love is what we are here for,
Do you know what I mean? Have your eyes ever seen?

It was these words, sung by a pretty girl, that touched my inner being and, Saul like, calmed the demons within. Love is the key, the means, the reason and the hope. It is the touchstone by which the leaden reality of my inner, secret and despicable man, is turned into the purest gold.

It is for this reason that so many keep God in His little box and go to the many conferences and watch the endless TV programmes and DVDs and listen to the CDs in their little lives in their little boxes made of tricky tacky (until they get put in boxes themselves). They want to know how to control God. They want to know how they can get it The God) to lay that golden egg for them.

And so they listen to the Princes, Wommacks, Meyers, Hinns and whoever it is that is 'the' teacher of the day as they are caught up in the desire to 'release the blessing and claim what is theirs' as if they have a right to it! But of course, because it is theirs by right they have no right to it! Now there's a conundrum to engage with.

If you feed your God with worship songs (no matter how trite or banal they are)
If you pays your money (on the plate, direct debit or cheques to Vic ...)
If you come broken and contrite (weeping and wailing is good here)
If you come expecting a miracle (because The God needs you to be expecting)
If you come confessing sins (real or imaginary)
You'll get what you desire!

God HAS to deliver because that's how it works. It's like keeping chickens or cows: you feed Him and, once you've done it sincerely or with integrity or with 'true' worship or with whatever it is that the teacher tells you that you need (adding your donation, live offering or whatever it's called to them) - then you gets your egg or milk or whatever shape the idol that you have made your God into produces. It us a simple as that.

But what of the God who chooses to live outside your box? The one who denies our deus ex machina thinking! The one who lives as Paraclete as neighbour as spouse and lover! The God who seeks to act as God Almighty - singing His songs over us and dancing to His own tunes whilst remaining constant and us changing and yet never the same as we might have perceived Him! How the hell do we live in a heaven like that?

I have to say that I wish I knew for sure - but I have an inkling that's it's not to be found in religion; that set of rules we can never keep; those rituals which merely obscure our fleeting glimpses of God (aided by the all too obvious 'Worship Leader'); those methodologies that are designed to force feed The a God to deliver the Golden egg.

It's not in the errors of the permissive who, seeking the approval of the world around them, approve all and every attitude, lifestyle and error in denial of God's heart (although they tell The God what it believes and means continually)  and put aside the written word and deconstruct and decontextualise all that The God is, was, and always will be.

It's not in the rigidity of the fundamentalist or 'orthodox' believer either. Those who would limit The God and make Him in their own imaged (God forbid) and expel the immoral and the weak in their desire to maintain what they will never see in themselves or their piddling little gatherings.

What does The God desire of us?
He desires us to be:

Those who will love as He (The God) loves.
Those who will deny themselves to worship and obey Him.
Those who will take up their cross and follow the footsteps of Jesus, the Christ.
Those who recognise their weaknesses and failings and, struggling daily with them, continue faithfully along the road.
Those who will see others as more than themselves and displaying true humility serve and support them.
Those who seek to reconcile those distant from the Father with Him through the atoning work of the Son by the power if God's Holy Spirit.

Simple really isn't it (so shy don't I do it?)

How you doing?