There are some really significant days in the life of a young couple. One is their wedding day, and another is the day they buy their first home together. Both are exciting, fun and full of promise, but the paperwork is dramatically different.
A mortgage is a contract, and like most contracts it defines the minimum requirements. You only have to pay this much and only do these things. They only have to fix these certain things if they break for a set amount of time. A contract has rules—pages and pages of rules. If you don’t agree or abide, you don’t get the house.
But with a marriage certificate there isn’t a thick stack of pages and pages of conditions. There aren’t all these rules. A marriage isn’t starting a contract. You don’t define the minimum requirement. You are starting a relationship, which is all about promising the maximum. Relationships are based on love and trust, more than rules.
God isn’t about a contract, with a stack of rules and regulations that define the minimum standard. He’s about a marriage covenant, a committed, sold-out relationship. God doesn’t want you signing a big stack of papers. What he wants is far bigger and simpler than that. He wants your heart. He is saying yes to you. He wants you to say yes to him.
You’ve probably heard the phrase "Christianity is not about religion, it’s about relationship.” I’ve heard it a lot. I’ve even said it a lot, but time after time I found myself relating to God like we had a contract, rather than a relationship. It was all about what I was doing rather than how we were doing.
Here’s the thing: doing things for God so that you can bargain with God for certain things doesn’t sound like a very healthy relationship. It sounds like religion, and religion in this sense always wears you out. But relationship fills you up. Jesus didn’t die so that you could only perform your religious duties. He died so you can be in a divine romance with a living God. He wants us to know him. He wants to love us and change us. He wants to fill us up with the strength and hope we need to face our challenges.
Religion can’t do that. It’s not about a contract; it’s a loving covenant. You need to trade religion for relationship because we aren’t meant to run on empty; we’re meant to be full of God.
