I want to expand a little on what I wrote yesterday about Christianity not being a religion.

When we repent of our sins and accept Jesus as our savior and Lord, we enter into a relationship with God.

We don’t believe that we are in a relationship with God we ARE in a relationship with him. That’s an important fact to grasp.

God is the ultimate reality. When we come to know him, we come to know someone who is very, very real.

I do not believe in God - and I think He’s quite comfortable with me saying that.

Why do I not believe in God? Because I KNOW God. It is not belief, it’s knowledge.

I believe that Jesus came to earth and died for my sins. I believe that, through the grace of God, my salvation is secure and that He will keep His promises to me. I believe that God created the universe – and me. I believe it because I know Him and He tells me it’s true.

I do not believe that there is a planet called The Earth, I do not believe that there is a sun or a moon, I do not believe that I exist. I don’t believe in these things because I know that they are true, no belief is needed.

OK so some bored philosophers might argue that everything we see around us might just be our imagination and we don’t know anything, we don’t even know whether we exist but, frankly, they’re just talking nonsense!

I also know that if I ever forget my wedding anniversary my wife will kill me. I have never missed my anniversary so it has never happened but I saw the look in my wife’s eyes when she informed me of the punishment for such a crime and my understanding goes way beyond belief and well into the bounds of knowledge.

Christianity is not a religion because it is not based on belief. We KNOW God. We are His children.

Many people will argue that it is a religion because, even though we KNOW God, we have a system of beliefs about Him and our eternal destiny which are ‘religious’ beliefs.

I contend this though: Most people who read this have a place of work, they are employees. They know their bosses (or at least they know who they are) and they trust, they have faith, that if they follow the rules of their workplace, they will continue to be employed there. Not only that but they also believe their bosses when they say that they will be paid for the work they do.

No-one would call their work a religion and no-one would call their trust and belief in the promises that the company makes to them religious beliefs.

Likewise I don’t believe that trusting God, a real person, to keep His promises is a religious belief.

God is real. His promises are real. His commands are real.

We have faith that if we do what he commands (Repent and be baptized) then He will keep His promise to us.

No religion, just a promise between God and us.

When we become children of God, we become citizens of another Kingdom. That kingdom has rules, but so do all kingdoms. You can’t call the rules of a kingdom ‘religious rules’. They are kingdom rules.

Why do I bother trying to convince you of this?

Because of religious Christians.

We, as Christians, need to break free of religion.

Yes there are rules to follow (although there are nowhere near as many as we pretend) but life has rules, so get over it. Whether you are a Christian or not, you live by a set of rules. Our rules happen to have been created by God but that doesn’t mean we have to become religious and pious and self-righteous over them.

We are a family, a community of people who share the same Father. We have found the ultimate truth, the ultimate reality. We have not found a religion that we have to follow in the hope that maybe things will go OK for us once we die. We are born again. Something very real happened to us when we came to Christ. We are children of the promise and we need to spend our time sharing the good news of who God is with other people rather than locking ourselves up together and creating rules and laws and ceremonies and a whole bunch of religious garbage to fill our time.

Religion is for the lost. We are not lost – and we need to start acting like it!