BUSINESS or PLEASURE?

We’ve probably all seen it untold times in the movies or read it in a book. As someone enters a country a customs official asks them if they are coming into that country for “business or pleasure.”

A phrase that we all easily understand to really mean are you here because you have to be or because you want to be?

What would happen if we placed Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth around you as you entered the building today and you were asked “business or pleasure?”

Christianity was designed for us to experience a wonderful relationship with God that had not been available since the garden where sin entered and corrupted our world. In the New Testament as Christianity is born and begins to flourish, God’s Word never actually gives us a picture of “religion.” In fact, in one of only four times the word “religion” is used in the New Testament, James, the brother of Jesus describes “true religion” as having love and compassion, not a style of worship service (James 1:26).

When the Apostle Paul uses the word religion in Acts 26:5 he does so describing the strictest form of rule keeping that he grew up with as a Pharisee.

Often we can be tricked by Satan into thinking our “rule keeping” or “religion” is what pleases God. Instead, as with the parable Jesus tells that we call the prodigal son, what the Father wants most of all is a relationship with us.

Certainly, that relationship includes things like reverence and obedience, but those are things born out of the humility He exampled by coming to us in human form and dying for us on the cross (Philippians 2:7-8).

That should make us declare boldly that our purpose here today is PLEASURE not business!