Religion is man’s attempt to earn God’s favor. But that’s absurd, because it’s just not possible. It doesn’t matter what you do — going to church 365 days a year, reading your Bible every day, or even praying every day won’t put you at the front of the line. They’re all good things, but they won’t change your heart. Only God can save you, and He is checking your heart. Be encouraged to check yours, too, as you stop being religious and receive God’s gift of eternal life.
Host Barry Meguiar is a car guy and businessman who hosted the popular TV show, Car Crazy, on Discovery Networks for 18 years. He loves cars, but he loves Jesus even more! Learn more about Barry at IgniteAmerica.com.
Get your copy of Barry’s book Ignite Your Life: Defeat Fear with Effortless Faith at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and other online booksellers.
Learn more about:
- Why our works won’t get God to love us
- What evangelicals believe about being a good person
- How “car guys” often exhibit Scripture
- Why it’s easier to reach a scoundrel than a good person
- The powerful truth in 1 Samuel 16:7
Check out Why Share? on IgniteAmerica.com to learn why it is important for every believer to share their faith. Then visit First Steps which provides practical ways to get started in your faith-sharing journey. Sign up to receive emails that will bring you solid faith-sharing tips and powerful inspiration.
Welcome back to Ignite. Do you know that God hates religion? I'm serious, I'm serious though. God hates religion. I have no no compunction, I have no hesitation to tell you that God hates religion.
Religion, if you think about it is man's attempt to earn God's favor, His love. And that's absurd. We can't earn His love. There's nothing we can do. You know, the Scriptures tell us very clearly all have sinned, and fallen short. There's none righteous, not one. And the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God He gives it to us we can earn it's the gift of God is eternal life. It's amazing how this creeps into our lives even as Christians to the larger scene, you have people who they call them what crispers or whatever. They go to, they go to church on Christmas and Easter to be religious, right? You can do all kinds of things to to earn God's favor thinking that he's gonna really like it because I doing all these kinds of things. But it doesn't, it just doesn't work that way. He doesn't say go ye to the world and be a good person does He? No.
Do you know that most evangelicals today believe being a good person is being being a faith sharer that's how, it's how you share your faith. By being a good person. But being a good person, doesn't get you or anybody else into heaven. It just doesn't. I often talk to car guy groups I say you know, Car Guys, it's gals too okay, if you love a car if you're a gal, you love a car, your car guy. So I mean it all inclusively. And I often say to car guys, if you could earn your way to heaven, you'd be at the front of the line. No question. The people Google car guys and there's 30 million of us in the United States, it's like the most incredible group of people I know. Talking about overachieving and giving and loving and caring and going the extra mile. All the things they exhibit as car guys without even knowing it exhibit scripture. But doing all that doesn't get them one step closer to Heaven. They think it does but it does not.
I often say it's easier to reach a scoundrel than a good person. Because a scoundrel knows they're lost, a person doing good things thinks I've earned my way to heaven. There's a lot of public figures even that are doing great things. And they think because those good things, they've done things in legislation for the church or whatever, that they're Christian, they're not. They get some brownie points, I guess. But that has nothing to do with their own salvation. You know, going, going to church, whether you go to church, on Christmas or Easter, or you if you go to church 365 times a year. If you could read scriptures every day, piously reading scriptures every day, you can pray every day. And it doesn't matter what you do. All of that is being religious, it was not changing your heart. God knows your heart. Did you hear me? God, God knows your heart, nothing about being religious. It doesn't matter what suits you. I don't care what you do. There's so many people that do things, and they're applauded. I look at the church and organizations and ministries and how they, they applaud their major givers and, and saying all these platitudes and doing videos on them and taking them on trips. There's all kinds of things going on, none of which has anything to do with salvation. They may, and we should be doing that we should be giving generous and I'm not taking away from that. But it also tells you there's a lot of folks doing a lot of highly visible things being greatly honored. And they're doing it for self reward. And we would deserve it. You could picture that pretty quickly.
There's a powerful Scripture in First Samuel 16:7. It says The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. Wow. There's a powerful message folks, I hope you grab on to it every day. Every day you need to check your heart. Because that's what's God doing. That's exactly what God is doing. See you next time.