5 Assumptions About God And Why They Are WrongExemplo

Be my friend

Assumption 2: All God wants me to do is go to church

In our home, we have a daily tradition. It’s called dinnertime. We always, to the best of our ability, gather for dinner in the evening. We come together, we sit around the table, and we eat dinner together as a family. It’s a wonderful time to discuss the day, let everyone know about the various things that happened, and keep ourselves connected to each other. This is family time but occasionally we will have someone else join us. Guests are always welcomed around our table. We include the guests, serve them food, ask about their day and do everything we can to make them feel like family.

But they aren’t family. No matter how welcoming we are, they remain a guest. Family is about much more than an occasional meal. It’s an ongoing relationship. Dinner is just a small part of it. In many ways, church is just like dinner. Many of us gather every weekend for an hour. But simply sitting down at the table, filling a seat at church, doesn’t make us family. And God longs for much more than a few guests at his table. He wants you to be a member of the family and have an ongoing relationship with you. As Paul explains in Galatians 3, the invitation from Jesus is not to be a guest at God’s table, but to be a full-fledged member of the family, a child of God—loved, cherished, and celebrated.

Now, think about the family relationship. If your brother travels across the world and you don’t hear from him for a year, is he any less your brother? If you get angry with your parents and storm away from them, have you stopped being their child? Of course not. That family relationship is locked in. No matter what we do, family will never stop being family. This is the relationship God wants with you. We can’t earn our way to being family and we aren’t expected to work out a daily quota of good deeds to keep being family either. Through Christ we simply are adopted.

God wants to share every day with you. He wants to celebrate your happy moments and mourn your sad moments with you. He isn’t expecting a work quota from you. He is only expecting, and looking forward to, you.