Servants or Friends

Originally posted at TruthForFree MySpace

by David Yeubanks (07/06/2008)

In so much of organized religion today I hear these pleas by religious teachers (and often other Christians in general) that tell people, "you really need to set aside more time to read your Bible and pray otherwise God isn't really going to be able to move in your life like He desires." Of course they throw in all kinds of other "admonishments" too like, "be sure to attend church regularly, give tithes and offerings, get involved in church programs, counsel regularly with your pastor, etc."

The entire religious approach to so-called "relationship with Christ" is one, primarily, of regiment in order to achieve or manipulate some spiritual result; perhaps to overcome some carnal hang up, or to gain God's approval and grace, or even satisfy what is presumed to be "Christian fellowship". The real motivation really doesn't seem to be out of a genuine hope that you'll gain a closer relationship with Jesus or faith that He is genuinely interested in coming to your aid (though this may appear as such on the surface), but the bottom line motivation (beneath the surface) is largely guilt and the result is shame… Even worse, it distorts genuine faith and elevates a system of selfish pride: "if you're good, pat yourself on the back and smile with pride because you've measured up and now God loves you (in fact, He favors you much more than that shmuck over there that isn't doing as good as you are)", but if you fail, then grieve over the fact that you just didn't work hard enough to make yourself worthy of His love, blessing and provision.

If you get busy and do "this and that", follow this principle, find all the right "keys", and just show God that you "mean business", then maybe God will favor you and do something good in your life. Do any of these mindsets sound familiar to anyone? They do to me! They are threaded through just about every teaching present in organized religion.

Many Christians, for reasons they can't quite put their finger on, find it hard to sit down and read the Bible, or set aside special time to pray… and when they find themselves neglecting these things, they feel guilty about it. They start to believe that their relationship with Christ is predicated upon routine religious observances.

They often make remarks like, "I know I need to read my Bible more and pray more and I just know that this is affecting my relationship with God and spiritual growth. I know that if I just get on the ball with these things, I will really be able to find my calling and know God's will better…" Inside there is often a feeling that God is disappointed with them. Of course the sad thing is that they have already concluded a failure because they haven't measured up to (what they think are) God's expectations. Daddy is unhappy with them and isn't going to reach out to them at all until they start towing the line. That's really what it boils down to. What a miserable place to be and I've been there too many times during my years in church world.

Friends, this is NOT the byproduct of a healthy relationship with Jesus Christ. This is the byproduct of organized religion and the very thing the enemy wants to steal from you; your affectionate, freewill and trusting pursuit of intimate friendship with God. Funny how something that actually appears to be a good thing in one respect can do so much harm. When we turn simple faith working through love into a complex system of religious regiment working through guilt motivation, it destroys hope, steals away joy, dampens faith, produces fear, and distorts our image of God. Through these kinds of mindsets (i.e. the faulty motivations that often drive religious activity) they actual can push us further away from Him instead of accomplishing the goal to get closer… leaving us even more discouraged and disillusioned. Often Christians, when facing disappointment after disappointment like this, resort to even more religion to try and find the right "key" to achieve success in their faltering relationship with God. Some eventually give up altogether, concluding that they can never live up to the requirements God expects in order to be worthy of His acceptance.

The problem is that most Christians who have been stained by religion have learned it all backwards. They think that service will gain them favor, when the truth is that God has already lavished us with favor. What is one of the most popular phrases we hear in church world today? "I just want to serve God!" "You need to serve the Lord with everything in you!" "It's all about serving Jesus!" "I just want to be His servant!" People have become enamored with "serving God". It consumes them. Unfortunately, not usually for the right motive. As Gene Edwards once said, it is as though the subject of their worship is not God Himself but rather the god of serving God. In serving they seek their identity and their acceptance. Their focus is entirely misplaced. Serving God has actually become their idol! What a clever ploy of the enemy to deceive so many people!

Even Jesus did not call His followers to be His servants, so why do Christians teach that "serving God" is the essence of faith? The guise of "service" is the fuel of organized religion, but it is NOT what Jesus desired.

John 15:15 (NIV) – (Jesus said) "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you."

The Lord's desire is NOT for more servants. God desires our friendship. When friendship, genuine friendship, exists – love takes over the action; response is automatic and genuine. God desires intimate relationship with us. He wants to reveal the secrets of His heart to us. Then, and only then, when He speaks His heart, the love we are compelled by motivates us to follow Him. No longer is our motive to try and serve Him to gain His favor or get something from Him at all. Our motive to "do" is wrought naturally because the relationship is already fully and intimately engaged.

Think about this. If a person's passion isn't to know Him and draw close to Him (simply because of the revelation of His love), why would they bother trying to study the Bible or praying more or engaging works of service? You see, so many Christians are motivated by something other than love. They have been taught, inadvertently, that God is like an abusive father who withholds his love unless his child can perform well enough to merit it. They've been taught that they have to "do things" in order to get close to Him. Most anyone who observes such behavior in the natural would express disgust of any father who treated his child in such a cruel and unloving way, yet millions of people across the globe who have been influenced by organized religion have come to believe exactly the same thing about God!

Here's another thought to ponder… How many of you have received those chain letter style e-mails that say things like, "if all of us just pray 1 minute a day, God can do something incredible…"? On first glance, maybe that sounds pretty good… I mean, just imagine if this letter reaches 5,000 people! That's over 83 hours-worth of prayer to God! Impressive right? Wrong! This kind of logic reduces prayer to a magic formula engaged only to manipulate a loveless, sovereignless deity who can or will only move His hand if he gets enough "minutes" in prayer added up. That doesn't sound like anything remotely close to a love relationship with God.

Just imagine if your closest friend started acting like that with you. Say you needed help moving to a new house and called your friend for assistance. What if he responded the way that many Christians think God must think toward us? "I'll help you move if you just call me on the phone for one minute a day. Better yet, get as many people as you can to call me for one minute a day. That way I will feel really special and obviously I'm really special because you are here asking for my help. I'm not going to tell you when I'm gonna help you move or how long you need to keep calling me, but you just have to keep calling me until I feel you've called me enough to earn my friendship and help." I don't suppose you would remain friends with someone like that for too long, or at least you'd probably call him a lot less. Could it be that's why so many Christians have trouble finding time to pray or to read the Bible? They already subconsciously have that understanding of God.

This may bring some of us to a difficult crossroads. Do we comprehend our relationship with Jesus as "servants" of a stubborn God, or truly as "friends"? And if all we know of God is the image of an unloving father who only approves of us based on performance, then is God really our Father or have we been following another father? I hesitate to actually suggest the possibility that many people who have long identified themselves as "Christians" may actually not know who their father is? Jesus put it rather bluntly:

John 8:41-45 (NIV) - You are doing the things your own father does." (but these religiously observant people replied) "We are not illegitimate children," they protested. "The only Father we have is God himself." Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me!

Notice how these people were infuriated by Jesus' implication. They retorted, "The only Father we have is God Himself!" They were soundly convinced that God was their Father. In their minds, they had their religious mud together. They were "official" and how dare this man, Jesus, question who their real father was. But Jesus says, "if God was really your Father, then you would love Me."

I submit to you that there are millions of people who stand under the banner of "being a Christian", claiming their only Father is God, and yet who (unknowingly) attribute the character of the devil to God. In essence they prove, as Jesus said, they are really serving their father the devil (because of the wrong concepts they have bought into concerning who God is and what He's really like)! Their motivation is something other than simple love for Jesus and therefore void of truth. They are deceived souls.

Now, for the record, I do not believe Jesus said these things merely for the purpose of offending those who heard Him – though, there is no doubt, it absolutely did offend them. In fact, their angry retort was that He was demon possessed for claiming such about them and they picked up stones to kill Him. I don't suppose my suggesting that a lot of so-called Christians may actually be serving their father the devil will come across as any less offensive, yet I do not offer that observation for the sake of causing an offense. Jesus was NOT trying to offend people, but He wanted their blind eyes to open so that He could embrace them (thus the reason He spoke so bluntly with them here); So that they could receive the free gift of God's unmerited favor on them. The days of organized religion and Temple worship was over. God had left the building! Jesus declared:

Matthew 23:37-38 (NLT) - "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God's messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn't let Me. And now look, your house is left to you, empty and desolate.

Striking words! "Your house (meaning the official place of worship; the chief ornament of their religion) is left to you empty and desolate!" Strange thing is that they still attended this place and they still performed all the religious activities there and believed they were following God, yet Jesus Himself said – "IT'S EMPTY AND DESOLATE!"

Jesus followed this remark with one more phrase. He said (Matthew 23:39 – NLT), "For I tell you this, you will never see me again until you say, 'Bless the one who comes in the name of the Lord!'" In other words, until you accept Christ as the only Head of His body! Until you stop with all this other religious nonsense and focus your attention on the one who loves you so completely… Until you believe FULLY His Gospel – you can forget about experiencing the fullness of His life. You will be left to your empty and desolate houses of worship, you're your dead religion, your arrogant leadership structures, your false concepts of fellowship, and you will be subject to your subservience of a different father; one who is NOT the same as your true Father in Heaven who loves you and calls you to COME OUT! (Revelation 18:4)

My prayer is that those who may have learned this false image of God and read these words, will not be offended, but will have their heart opened to truth at this moment and realize that God's love surpasses anything we could even attempt to do to try and earn it. His love, grace, and truth is given freely just because we're His precious children. So every kind of "work" we might ever engage from this moment on, should be actuated because we have a strong sense of His incredible love toward us. That love is to be our only motivation.

Think back for a moment to our hypothetical story of the friend you call to help you move. Doesn't a true friend respond almost immediately out of genuine regard for you? He doesn't first give you a regiment to measure up to and then maybe he'll think about it. He helps you because he loves you and wants to do it freely. That is how we should relate to our Father in Heaven for, even more than a natural friend, God waits eagerly to hear from us. In the same regard, when love rules our hearts, He need only ask us as His friends and we will be eager to respond as well because we genuinely love Him and our response will not be a burden or an annoyance and we will not quickly worry about what's in it for us. This kind of thinking runs entirely contrary to the "ME" gospel preached in most of today's so-called churches. So many people are enamored with religion, but not with true love for Jesus.

Sadly, some will not come to understand this truth and they will continue in their religious stupor. They will continue to believe that relationship with God is tied up in a system of merit and they will not repent of this deception. In turn, they will also impose that merit system on virtually everyone they come in contact with in one way or another. Sadly, their actions illustrate their arrogance in thinking they are godly but demonstrate that they do not know Him and that His love does not abide in them. They are, in all truth, rejecting the full Gospel of Jesus by thinking their hybrid version is better. But there is no hybrid gospel! That is a lie!

Galatians 1:6-9 (NIV) - I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel--which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!

When Christians feel they are not close to God and so employ all manner of works to try and rekindle the fire, they are already showing that they do not know Him and that they have believed the lies of those who are preaching a different gospel… and this is a hard thing to really come to grips with (yet God's own revelation of who He is can break this stronghold mindset in a second).

Many Christians have spent their lives in church, only to realize one day that they still don't know Him. Many have spent their lives "doing stuff" to try and please Him or stir up some kind of emotion that makes them feel close to Him. Admitting their deadness, they hold "revivals" to try and jump start their faith. But as long as they continue along this mindset that rejects the Gospel (yes, that is really what is going on), they will never experience real relationship with Him. They will only live out their days continually trying to measure up and do enough things to deceive themselves into believing they are righteous and that they are worthy of entrance into His heaven. They will fill their existence with "religious activity" to pacify their deep spiritual longing for authentic relationship. They will seek His favor through works and try to invoke His blessings and power through rituals, formulas and performance. In truth, this is little more than witchcraft! How sad.

How frightful that so many well-intentioned people (and I am talking about religious people - you know - the good folks who even attend church, give their money, and pray every day) may not come to know Him and will not enter His rest. They must understand the work of Christ on that cross. They must believe it! They must accept the full Gospel of Jesus Christ. We love Him why? Because He first loved us! Everything about our walk with Him is centered on this one thing; LOVE! That is the truth! That is the "truth for free." Ironically, that truth really isn't free; it came at a great price - one that religious acts cannot pay for, but one that HE ALREADY DID PAY FOR WITH HIS LIFE! And we also have a cost to count, for we are not at liberty to hold fast to our religion – trying to mix it with His Gospel – because it does not mix with it at all! The cost is: you must leave it all behind! You cannot take your faulty perception of Him with you. If you want to know Him intimately, you don't get to be His servant… You must see yourself the way He invites you; AS HIS FRIEND – even as His dear child! Until you understand what it means to be His friend, there will be no way you can purely serve Him anyway and service will never guarantee you any place in His kingdom anyway. You have to have a genuine relationship with Him.

Matthew 7:21-22 (NLT) - "Not everyone who keeps saying to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will get into the kingdom of heaven, but only the person who keeps doing the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, we prophesied in your name, drove out demons in your name, and performed many miracles in your name, didn't we?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Get away from me, you evildoers!'"

Remember the story Jesus told of the prodigal son? Remember what the prodigal said when he knew he had not used his inheritance wisely and had become estranged from his father? What was the first thought that entered his mind?

Luke 15:18-19 (NIV) – "I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.'"

There it is again; the servant mindset: "I've screwed up, I'm not close to dad, I've not accomplished all that I should have… I just wanna serve my dad, cause I'm really not worthy to be treated as his son. At least if I serve him, I'll be counted worthy enough to have my needs met." But did the father accept this arrangement? No! He ran to him and hugged him and put the best clothes on him, gave him the family signet ring, and had a feast! They partied hardy!

Yes, the son still had some incorrect concepts about relationship with his father at the beginning, but the important thing is that (the Scripture says) "he came to his senses" (Luke 15:17) and returned to His father. He didn't know how things were going to go down at that point, but he had sense enough to know that he needed to return to his father. I am happy (in looking at the father's action toward his son) there is some hope here, that even those who deeply and sincerely want to be close to the Father and maybe start off with a faulty mindset of trying to approach Him as a servant, can experience - in full revelation - the love of the Father who sees beyond this ignorance and extravagantly lavishes His love upon them so there is no possible way they can miss the full intent of His heart. Indeed it is His goodness that leads us to repentance! In fact, I think that's pretty much what God did with me. I loved the Lord even though I was stuck in the rut of religion trying to follow their rules and measure up under false conditions of relationship. It was around 1995 that God really started to shake me from those old ways of thinking. I began to experience His love and my taste for religion began to wear itself out. It would be another 6 years after that though before I finally understood what God was trying to show me. So, yes, I do believe there is much grace and God sees what is deeply hidden in our hearts and I do believe He knows how to do whatever He needs to do to reach us. I love the image of a Father who runs to us and bear hugs us and accepts us as though we did nothing wrong. Who can resist that kind of love and why would they try? Religion is so evil because it robs us from this revelation of who are Father in Heaven really is and how greatly He loves us.

When we become passionately engaged in the pursuit of Him (because He Himself has set our hearts on fire), all of these other things (i.e. the desire to obey His voice, read His words, or spend time in communication with Him) will flow out of our SINCERE love for Him - BUT, and please hear me, these "things" (like prayer, studying the Bible, listening to teaching, etc.) - in and of themselves - hold no power to draw you close to Him!

I hope it's clear that I am not speaking at all against prayer or reading the Bible. I am simply emphasizing focus on the one thing that is essential and that all else is worthless without. I'm talking about the grievous thing people do when they turn intimate aspects of relationship with Jesus into dead, religious rituals. There is no ritual you can ever perform that will make you love Him more or make Him favor you more. You must understand that the reason any of us even have a relationship with our Father in Heaven is because HE ALREADY FAVORED US!!!! He loved us before we were even born. He knew every sin we would commit and every time we would stumble and fail Him (and He watched us commit every single act) and yet He still said, "I love them, I desire them to be close with Me and I will even give my life, forgiving all of their sins, for this to happen... Nothing they will ever be able to do will compensate for this love I will lavish upon them because I choose to. I will receive them to myself, wipe away all their shame and fear, and everything I have will be theirs because I will it to be so and all they need to do is receive these gifts from their Father who loves them!"

This is God's heart toward us! Love so great that we should never think we can do one thing to earn it or pay it back. Yes, this is a humbling thing to face if we face it honestly! THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO! NOTHING!

Ephesians 2:8-9 (NKJV) - For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Romans 5:8 (NKJV) - But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Our performance is not going to impress Him. He already determined, before we were even born, that He approved of us and loved us and would give His own life to save us!!! These are not attributes of a god who will only share himself in relationship with people as long as they do good deeds or say the right words - yet this is the god that most Christians have been raised to worship.

Let us never be as those, whom by their example, are proving to make themselves slaves of their father the devil! The nature of the devil is as one who desires to have slaves worshiping him. This is not the character of God our Father. God makes us His intimate friends (John 15:15) – even regarding us as His dear children; sons and daughters of the King (Romans 9:26; 2 Corinthians 6:18; Galatians 3:26; 4:5-7; Ephesians 1:4-11; etc.) whom He even shares His glory with! (Romans 9:23; Colossians 1:26-27; 3:4; 2 Thessalonians 2:14; 1 Peter 5:4; etc.)

These are but a few of the many reasons why I personally believe that the modern church system is such a farce! How can I dare say such a thing? Isn't it obvious by now? Jesus had the same problem with the religious people of His day. They thought they were righteous because they "followed the rules" and had all the right-sounding words. They performed their religious expectations, they visited the Temple (their officially designated "house of worship"), they offered up sacrifices to God, they even sought to proselytize others and "evangelize" them into their faith!!! But Jesus looks straight in their faces and boldly says, "you manifest actions that prove who your father really is and by recruiting others to join your ranks, you only make them twice as much a son of hell as you yourselves have become!" (Matthew 23:15)

The Law was never intended to make men righteous; it was intended to show their need for Christ and how greatly God loves them. The religious leaders of Jesus' day (just as many religious leaders today do as well) took things even beyond the Law by adding their own laws and traditions to God's.

Mark 7:6-9 (NIV) - He replied, "Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: "'These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.' You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men." And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!

They became experts in religion, boasting at every turn how rightly they followed God, but they miserably failed in the essentials of faith – the things God is most concerned with.

Matthew 5:20 (ISV) – (Jesus said to His disciples) "For I tell you, unless your righteousness greatly exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven!"

The word "righteousness" in the previous passage speaks primarily of equity of character and acts demonstrating true godliness, which are engaged by those who genuinely love Him. He was not telling the disciples they needed to get better at religion. So, what was the "righteousness" of the Pharisees you ask? It was the legalistic observance of ritual, ordinance, laws, and regulations. They fasted often, prayed much, observed Sabbaths, religious feasts, holy days, and tithed with meticulous observance of detail. They sat at the best seats in the meeting places and at the head of the table for meals. They loved people to call them Rabbi, which means "my honored teacher" (it was basically the equivalent to the esteemed titles and designations that are given to religious leaders today; Doctor, Reverend, Pastor, Bishop, etc.). Yet Jesus – completely unimpressed by their boasting in all these things – said they neglected more important matters (Matthew 23:23); justice, mercy and faith! The righteousness that Jesus required in His kingdom was sincere love, pure hearts, honesty, temperance, the fear of God, and the love of one another. These things are pure, eternal, reaching the motives, and make the life genuinely holy (i.e. purified from evil dispositions) – and all of these things could only be fully realized by recognizing HIM as the fulfillment of all prophecy and the Law. That is why Jesus said, unless your righteousness exceeds theirs, you cannot enter My kingdom.

Really think about what Jesus was saying to these people who spent their lives "serving God" yet whom He regarded as being servants of their father, the devil. Isn't this the same basic lie of modern churchianity; that the reason we are here is simply to serve our Master? This mindset has reduced God to the level of a slave driver... and really, no better than the devil himself! When Christians come to think our faith in God is about earning His favor and working for Him to get His blessing, provision and approval, they are in deception and they are not serving the one they presume demands such obedience for God's way is wholly different!

Yes, I believe there is a right application connected to the action of serving God, but it is – more importantly – a matter of perspective; If that service does not flow WHOLLY from love then it is fruitless and void of any value! We must approach our understanding of Him from the perspective that He ALREADY favors us! He ALREADY loves us! He ALREADY has forgiven us! He ALREADY has made provision to bless us, protect us, and provide for us. If our response to Him is not solely and purely because we genuinely love Him and that love has so swelled our heart that we cannot help but be motivated to express that in some fashion - then all we are doing is practicing religion and following the attributes of those who worship their father the Devil!

As I was driving by a church on my way to work today, I read their reader board, which said, "the most valuable gift God has given us is eternal life," and I thought, what a crock of bull! The most valuable gift God has given us is to bring us out of darkness into His light and to reveal to us His amazing love and the privilege to know Him and walk in close relationship with Him. It makes me think of that old song that Andre Crouch used to sing (It's Been Worth Just Having The Lord In My Life):

You may ask me why I serve the Lord,

is it just for heaven's gain,

or to walk the mighty streets of gold,

and to hear the angels sing?

Is it just to drink from the fountain,

that never will run dry,

or just to live forever and ever,

in that sweet old by and by.

But if heaven never were promised to me,

even God's promise to live eternally.

It's been worth just having the Lord in my life,

living in a world of darkness,

He brought me the light.

If there were never any streets of gold,

even a land where we'd never grow old,

it's been worth just having the Lord in my life.

Living in a world of darkness,

He brought me the light.

Living in a world of darkness,

He brought me the light.

I firmly believe the most important truth we can ever grasp is the revelation of God's amazing love. When the entire religious world around us is totally preoccupied with performance-based religion and serving a god they seem to believe is never fully pleased with them unless follow mountains of rules correctly, manipulate him just right or catch him on a good day, we can know the joy of walking with our Father in Heaven who loves us entirely and accepts us completely. Let us therefore concentrate on the motives within our own heart, instead of worrying about controlling each other or trying to fit into some kind of regulation. To those that know Him and have believed His Gospel, His Spirit lives within them. His presence abides to shed His light and love in radiant display in our hearts, as well as to faithfully convict us of truth, of sin, and of righteousness. It is through genuine, love-inspired relationship with Jesus that we gain the strength by His grace to overcome sin and live freely! All of us have vices, but religion only suppresses those vices. It never deals with the motives that cause them to manifest. Therefore the answer to overcoming our hang-ups is NOT more religion. It is rather to allow a deeper revelation of Christ's amazing love to penetrate our hearts and revel in the joy of knowing He genuinely accepts us. Are you the friend of God? That is His desire toward us; No longer servants but dear friends. This is the truth! This truth sets us FREE!