Let's be honest here...

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God & His righteousness...

It has taken me a lot of years & a lot of heartache to work my way backward from the pious platitudes of organised religion to the place that I should have begun. It's not like I wasn't told. I ran into Quakerism when I was about 10 ~ & no, this is not a denominational push. What Quakerism told me was exactly what the bible told me if only I had had the ears to hear & the eyes to see: relationship is always experiential. Religion got in the way.

The first job of any Christian is to build a relationship with God. Like other institutions churches have their lists for achieving this: daily quiet time; daily bible reading; prayer; good works; absenteeism; tithing; weekly church attendance & obligatory attendance at the mid~week prayer group & bible study...they might vary a bit from church to church or in application but the lists are pretty standard. They're a bit like the quick & easy plan to salvation: pray the sinner's prayer & ask Jesus to come into your heart. Don't get me started on that one! The awful part is that those well meaning lists are almost right. Almost. Not quite. They list the things that grow out of relationship. Churches do not make it easy or really help someone when they first come to God & are seeking to find out how to build a relationship with Him.

Prayer is nothing but drudgery when you do not know how to pray ~ or what to expect. The number of Christians I've watched lurch into prayer arrogantly battering at heaven's gates without preparing the heart, without quietness, without considering that however desperate we feel our needs are God already knows all about it; it is rude when what we should be doing first is seeking God alone, simply & purely for Himself, nothing else. There is a time & a place for all the other things that prayer is but primarily it is about fellowship.

Look at it this way. The people who drive me battiest are the ones who think conversation is a monologue. I am ashamed to admit I run from encounters with such people. I have been known to ask my children to hide me, to cross streets to avoid them & occasionally even decide to catch a later boat rather than risk being bailed up for 1/2 an hour with no possible chance of escape while my eardrums are battered incessantly by someone with no vision outside of themselves. And I have been guilty of this in my relationship with God! Ugh! I can be so ugly.

Most of my really good friendships are with people I rarely see. Catching up with them is a delight to be anticipated for weeks in advance. I save up antidotes, choice bits of gossip, funny stories, the intimate confessions I can only share with those who really know me & love me anyway. I ponder on the things I know are happening in their life & stock my pantry with delicacies I know they like...& this is how I am learning to fellowship with God.

For me religion is not a crutch. I do not want comfort or platitudes. I do not like intellectual laziness or trite & easy answers to difficult questions. For far too long that was all I was offered & I threw God out with the religion that did not satisfy. Eventually I decided that even if God & religion was complete & utter hogwash the world was a better place for it than without it & began the long unravelling of dogma & tradition from the Truth of who God is & what He wants from us.

I will probably always struggle with organised religion. It frustrates me. God does not. His Truth is robust & I have been truly blessed. God has revealed enough of Himself that I truly hunger after Him. You can keep your religion. It is God I want. I don't want youth programs or parenting nights; I am over mission teas, pot luck suppers, & fellowship get togethers. I don't need 3 hymns & a 10 minute homily, church elections or crusades. I want to grow deep into God, like a Lebanon Cedar, rooted, firm, strong, not tossed about by any wind of chance as the times grow darker & the swirling eddies begin the slow sifting of wheat from chaff.

This is no time for shallow Christians. We are called upon to mature in the Faith. That requires we actually do some work. It begins with getting to know God. You know, I've heard Here I am. I stand at the door & knock quoted so often to non~believers & yet that quote was directed to believers in the church at Laodicea. Believers! How many Christians have shut God out, quite unintentionally, because they are busy with the trappings of religion & that has crowded out time for God alone? Seek ye first the Kingdom of God & His righteousness...God first. Everything else will then fall in to place.