Right Game, Wrong Clothes
Most of us have great memories from our youth where we dreamed of emulating our favorite sports heroes. Who doesn't wanna aspire to play baseball like a Barry Bonds, basketball like LeBron James, hockey like Wayne Gretzgi, or football like Tom Brady?
Pass any park on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and you're likely to see a bunch of kids tossing a football around, running plays, and tackling each other to the ground like the Superbowl championship was at stake.
Maybe for Christmas or your birthday one year, your parents bought you a football uniform, complete with helmet, pads, and a jersey and pants from your favorite team. You'd have looked like a regular little football player.
Eventually, though, you'd have likely discovered that a football uniform does not make one a football player!!! You can't just dress up and make it so.
Some of us sitting in church pews today are not so unlike those young kids dressing up like their sports heroes. We want to be Christian. We wanna be a good Christian, maybe even a great one.
We come to church each Sunday dressed in our Sunday best. We carry our Bibles or our iPads with the latest Bible app. We maybe even mount the stage to lead songs of worship and praise.
We do all of the expected things of a church goer. But just as the old saying goes: Just because a mouse is in the cookie jar, it doesn’t make the mouse a cookie!!!
The only way we can be properply suited up for this thing we call the Christian life is to have a personal RELATIONSHIP with Jesus Christ the Risen Savior through faith in Him and His completed work on our behalf!
Don't show up to the right game in the wrong clothes. We need to be clothed in HIS righteousness alone!
"I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels" (Isaiah 61:10, NIV).
"... for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ" (Galatians 3:27, NIV).
"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV).
The Day of Fools
Mark Molloy with The TELEGRAPH reports:
A motorist from south London was left stunned when he woke up and found a disabled bay painted around his car, along with a £110 fine ($158 US Dollars) on his windscreen.
Matt Armstrong, who lives in West Norwood, thought he had been the victim of an April Fool’s Day prank when he stepped outside his door and saw the ticket.
The theatre worker said he was “absolutely livid” with Lambeth Council over the penalty charge notice.
“It must have been on March 31 they painted round it, because I saw it on April Fool’s Day,” he told Mail Online.
Ever feel like you’ve awakened and it’s a different world, a world where the old rules have been rewritten, where what was once right is now wrong, and what was wrong is now right? Do you ever feel like someone has repainted all the lines? No, it’s not April Fools Day, but it just may be the Day of Fools!
“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20, NASB).
New Study, Religion Doesn't Make You Righteous
Science is finally catching up to the Bible when it comes to the reality that "religion" does not make people more "righteous," says BELIEFNET, citing a study recently referenced the the HUFFINGTON POST:
Sure-to-be-controversial new research shows that religious and non-religious people are equally likely to misbehave. The only difference between the groups is that religious people show stronger emotional reactions to moral and immoral deeds. …
For the study, a team of researchers, led by psychologist Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Hofmannof the University of Cologne in Cologne, Germany, recruited 1,252 men and women between the ages of 18 and 68. The study participants, all of whom were from the U.S. or Canada, completed an initial survey to indicate their level of religiosity -- from "not at all" to "very much." The survey also showed where the men and women fell on the political spectrum, from "very liberal" to "very conservative."
The subjects then received surveys via text message several times a day over the course of several days asking them to report on their behavior, both good and bad, among other things.
What did the researchers find? Religious and non-religious people alike reported experiencing around the same number of moral acts. Furthermore, no difference was found between liberals and conservatives. People reported committing good deeds more often than bad ones, and reported hearing about bad deeds more often than good ones.
Ultimately, their conclusion was that religion did not play a significant role in the behavioral habits of the participants.
The flaws in this kind of thinking are myriad. For starters, religious vs. non-religious persons will certainly define good and bad deeds and behavior quite differently. While the religious might report the use of foul language or feelings of lust, etc. as bad behavior, the non-religious might think nothing of it all.
But for all the flaws, the bottom-line conclusion is both true and biblical: Good behavior is not what makes a person righteous! It is relationship, NOT behavior, which defines moral justification--relationship with the Person of Jesus Christ.
As so aptly summarized on BELIEFNET:
Science is just now catching up with timeless truths revealed in the Bible, which illustrate that human nature is inherently flawed. It is only after we trade our nature with the infallible nature of God that we have the ability to experience true righteousness. … Religion can exist on the surface, it can masquerade at church functions, pray lofty pious prayers in public, but only relationship demonstrates the sincere walk of a person truly following God.
"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).