Sample of Daily Encounter by Dick Innes

“He [Jesus] looked on them in anger because of their hardness of heart” (Mark 3:5).

When Jesus healed the man with the withered hand on the Jewish Sabbath, the religious leaders began to plot how they might kill him.

Jesus was angry with these Pharisees because they loved their man-made rules more than they loved people. They had religion, but they certainly didn’t have Christ–or God!

What is even more absurd is that these same religious leaders who murdered Jesus insisted that he be taken off the cross before sundown (the beginning of their religious sabbath day) on the day they killed him because it wasn’t “lawful” for him to be hanging dead on the cross on their Sabbath. To leave him there would have broken one of their laws and they would have felt ceremoniously unclean!

Imagine that! It was acceptable to kill Jesus but his dead body had to be dealt with legally, that is, according to their rules and regulations! Unbelievable!

As strange as it may seem, religion may send more people to hell than anything else! That is, religion that depends on man-made or self-made rules or on one’s own good works. None of these will ever get anyone to heaven. As the Bible says, “By grace are we saved through faith–and not of ourselves–it is the gift of God. Not of works lest anyone should boast.”1

The fact is that God is not into religion. And he’s not into rules. He’s into relationships. Jesus died so that we could be reconciled and reconnected to God and thereby have a right relationship with him. He also wants to make us whole so we can have right relationships with one another.

The heart of Jesus’ message was, “Do you want to be made whole?” He died, not only to give to us the gift of eternal life, but so we could be made whole, not only spiritually but relationally as well. For only to the degree that we are made whole will our lifestyle, attitudes, actions, behavior, and relationships become wholesome!

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please deliver me from man-made religious rules, and let me trust only in you and your Word, and help me to grow in every area of life so that I will have a wholesome relationship with you and with others. Gratefully in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

1. Ephesians 2:8.

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