A Relationship With Which god?

What is the most common conversation you might have with a Christian? 

I'd wager that somewhere in a conversation with a Christian, no matter the denomination, a relationship with God will be mentioned. We might even be the ones who bring it up! This is a natural topic of conversation since that is the most important relationship we have, but there is a hidden danger in this discussion. The main danger is the fact that there are usually two different gods being referenced, especially when you get out into mainstream Christianity. What I mean is that many remake God in their own image, essentially making themselves, or the relationship, God 

Philippians 3:18-19 KJV — (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)

Our relationship with God is vital. It is the most important relationship we have here on Earth, but we have to be careful to not turn ourselves into God through thinking we have a relationship with the God of the Bible. In our pride and arrogance, we can set ourselves and our feelings as the determiners of what the relationship is, and even worse, who God is. We confuse the feelings of what we define as a relationship with what is actually the relationship. We try to be the ones who decide what a relationship with God is, and what's more, we try to put a box around God and the way He ought to act in the relationship. We essentially censure God, which makes us god in our own eyes.

I was on Facebook the other day, and Facebook is a prime example of people whose god is themselves. I was scrolling through my feed and I came across a sickening video. Social media in general is full of people who worship and love themselves, and it's sad to see. Empty, vain, and hopeless people who have no greater power in their own life than themselves, and try to get as many other people as possible to worship them too. There are a lot of positives to social media, but it can quickly turn into an altar to yourself if you aren't careful. 

Nothing in this particular video was visually sickening, it was just some people sitting around in a debate circle. For the most part, they even all looked pretty normal as far as normal goes. The sickening part was in what they were saying, rather, in what the woman in the video was saying. I'll include a link to the video at the end of the post so you can watch it for yourself, but I'll just quickly summarize it here. 

The woman starts out by saying she is a gay Christian. Now, some may argue that you can still be gay even if you are a Christian, but that is like saying you can be an adulterous Christian. If you are actively practicing sin, well, then you aren't a Christian. Let's quickly hop over to 1st John to back this up. 

1 John 3:6-9 KJV — Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him. Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

Being a Christian means you are of God, and you cannot be of God if you are practicing sin. If you are practicing homosexuality, you are not a Christian. You cannot be both gay and a Christian. If you overcome homosexuality for the sake of God and repent, you can absolutely be a Christian, but you are no longer gay. Sin is the transgression of the law, and homosexuality is against the law of God. God abhors the sexually deviant, for they are an abomination to the way He designed the world to work, and all who practice acts contrary to His law are an abomination in God's eyes.   

Getting back to the video, this woman starts out with a lie, and she only gets worse from there. She states that she has the Spirit, (she may have a spirit, but as she keeps talking, it will quickly become apparent from whom that spirit originates) meaning the Spirit of God, and she states that at no time does she feel that spirit more than when she is showing affection to another woman that she claims is her wife. Then she goes really off the rails. Her next claim is that there is no scripture that can refute what she just said because this is about her personal relationship with God, and what she FEELS is right. If that makes you cringe, just wait, it gets worse. 

One of the young men sitting there to debate with her speaks and says that well he actually has two scriptures that refute what she just said, and she practically sobs as she says “NO! I just said you can't use scripture because this is my personal relationship with God. This is what I feel!” Naturally, that kinda just stunned the young man, and she continued speaking stating “If the Bible you are using is more important than someone's personal relationship with God you are using the wrong Bible and making it into an idol!!”

By this point in the video, my mouth is just kind of hanging open, but this idea that someone's feelings and personal relationship with God is a higher authority than the Bible is not exactly new to me. It has come up in the past with people thinking that the Bible has been corrupted and the only thing you can rely on for truth is your relationship with God, and what God tells you through His Spirit. Well, this is the end outcome of that theology, if you can even call it that. When you set your feelings above the word of God, you make yourself into God, and your feelings into His word. If the Bible is more important than someone else's feelings, then you are using it correctly, because it is there to teach us! Its purpose is not to make us feel good about ourselves and our sins but to show us where we are wrong and where we need to change. 

As I said earlier, she may very well have a spirit, but because she does not trust the Bible, the spirit she has ended up with is from a source other than God. She has ended up with a demon. Again, how could she possibly know? 

The Bible would have been able to tell her if she had listened to it, but she did not. If she had based her knowledge on the Bible and used it as a filter, she would never have been so deceived. She placed herself and her own feelings above the Bible and even above God, making herself into her own god. She is not alone in this either. Many read the Bible to make themselves feel good, and when they run across a passage that condemns them, they change the passage rather than changing themselves. 

Rather than reading what is there, they do whatever gymnastics they have to do to get around it. Really, they would be far better off just ignoring the Bible and not even bothering with it because they are not actually using it anyway. If the word of God does not contain the truth, then there is no standard to base the truth on, and you will lead yourself astray, or be led astray by false spirits. 

1 John 4:1 NKJV — Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

There will be other spirits seeking to deceive you, and that is why your feelings will always get you into trouble. If you don't measure and test doctrines and ideas against the Bible, you will end up thinking that sin is okay, just as the woman in the video did. If you place your “relationship” with God, meaning whatever you feel, above the word of God, then you are setting yourself up to be deceived. We only know who we have a relationship with because of the Bible. There are many spirits, but only one true God, and we know who He is because of the word He has given us. We can have a real relationship with the One True God, but only if we know the words He has given us and do not make a god out of ourselves and our feelings. 

*If you are here looking for the link to the video I mentioned, you're in the right spot. This is where the video would have been had I been able to find it. Unfortunately, I could not find the video again, so there's nothing to see here. If anyone can find it, feel free to send me the link!