God Does Not Need Your Religious Activities

Today my pastor delivered a powerful reminder to the congregation by challenging those in attendance on why we perform the “religious activities” that we do. He confronted us with three important questions that I think should be considered on a daily basis:

1. Is your religious activity self-centered or God-centered?
2. Does your religious activity bring you to redemption or to self-gratification?
3. Does your religious activity soften your heart or turn it to stone?

Delivering such a sermon can be controversial because people do not want to be told that the reason they are here at church and carrying out their religious activities is because they are self-centered, but my pastor has conviction for reminding us why we always need to come to repentance and seek God’s forgiveness, not just for when we do bad things, but even when we do things thinking they are for good.

Think about it, the motivation behind all of our interests that we think are “good” is because it makes us feel good doing them. That IS selfish. When you do things for God that do not make you feel good is how you know that you are being God-centered.

I commend my pastor for delivering this message, but more importantly I am humbled by God’s grace to speak through my pastor today and remind me of this. In the past two years my relationship with the Lord has made an about face and I have become involved with many “religious activities” and ministries, this blog being one of them. I know that they are done in selfishness and I struggle sometimes in doing them knowing that I do them because I WANT TO PLEASE GOD. God does not need my efforts. He is totally self-sustaining without me and my efforts.

God uses my self-centered interests to glorify him self in me, to show me who He is. God created me for His own purpose. My actions and my desire to show that to others is for my own purpose because I WANT people to know that it is not they who are great thinkers and benevolent doers. It is He who works in you and through you to reveal and to glorify Him self in you. Our god is a jealous god and if you try to take the spotlight then it is to your own demise.