Are you Religious?

Here I sit getting ready to head out the door to church. Just Cole & I since Ed & Aimee are on their way to Kentucky to basketball camp until Wednesday evening. Cole leaves today at 2:30 to go to his Dad's for a week. I think I am going to take some much needed quiet time with God.



Aimee's tournament was cancelled because of the storms that hit Indianapolis hard so we got to go to Jasper and visit with some friends of our that Aimee used to play with it. We had a good time. They are really good people. It is amazing to me how many people you meet and lifelong relationships you will make through this. It is a blessing.



I had a statement said to me that had really made me ponder it though and I am really struggling within myself over it. I am sure it was a God thing. I had a person say to me "We knew you went to church all the time, but until we read your blog we didn't know you were religious." Well, I had to stop and think about that. Am I "Religious"?


I looked up Religious in the dictionary just to see how it was worded. It states:
1: relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity

2: of, relating to, or devoted to religious beliefs or observances

3 scrupulously and conscientiously faithful, fervent, zealous



Back in the Bible times, the Religious people were the Pharisees, who sought to test Jesus to try and trick him. They were "above" the other people, they were hypocrites. I also looked up Pharisee in the dictionary and here is what I found:

1. a member of a Jewish sect that flourished during the 1st century b.c. and 1st century a.d. and that differed from the Sadducee's chiefly in its strict observance of religious ceremonies and practices, adherence to oral laws and traditions, and belief in an afterlife and the coming of a Messiah.

2. a sanctimonious, self-righteous, or hypocritical person.



WOW! I DO NOT want to be or mean to come off as self-righteous or hypocritical, and I am sure this person never meant it that way. It just got me to thinking.


What I did learn is that there are people who do not know that I love Jesus. How could that be? It says in the Bible in Luke 9:26 (New Living Translation) 26 If anyone is ashamed of me and my message, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in his glory and in the glory of the Father and the holy angels.


I think this was a lesson for me. Do I need to go out and preach to everyone I meet?? No, I just have to be Jesus to everyone and show it through my actions. I thank God that I had to ponder this because it is so easy to get caught up in how you think you are being so good and not even realize that you could be making an impact on just one life and haven't done it.


Have a good week!!