Everyone is Religious!

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

James 1:27

Everyone on earth is religious! We all “religiously” focus on something. Everyone has a passion for something and we religiously see to it that our passion is satisfied.

When you are religious you have a god. Your god may be pleasure in general or one specific form of pleasure that rules you life to the exclusion of most other things. Your god may be knowledge and education. It is very satisfying to know more than everyone else. Education and knowledge are common gods today. Whatever or whomever, your god will consume your life, thoughts and actions.

When you have a passion everyone around you knows about it because a passion is something that, try as you may you cannot hide.

When I am passionate about Jesus Christ what kinds of things will I do which will let people know about my strong desire for Him? Three things are mentioned in James 1:27. My “religion” will express itself in looking after orphans and widows (those are the helpless in society) and in keeping myself from being polluted by the world.

Many Christians worry about offending the world with their passion for God. They try to “become all things to all men” not in an effort to win others to Christ, but in an effort to save their own reputations. Concern for my own reputation is not a “fruit of the Spirit.”

In my passion for God I must focus on helping the helpless and keeping away from the world and its polluting influence in my life. If I fill my day with those endeavors I will find that God will be smiling when I see His face.

Here is the difficult word for today. Do you have a passion that is greater than your passion for God? If you do, you know what must happen to that passion, don’t you? If you have a love for a woman that is greater than the love that you have for your wife, you know what must happen to that love, don’t you?

Ask God to clearly show you if there is anything in your life that you have enthroned above Him. That is the passion that must go!

“Lord may my love for You grow today and my love for the world and the things of this world decrease. Help me to put to death any passion except my passion for You!”