DISCIPLES/FOLLOWERS TEACH AND PROPHESY
Christians believe that the main reason for practicing religion is to ensure that they will go to heaven to live with God for eternity after they die. For Jews, the reason for practicing religion is obedience to God’s written laws. God, however, has a much different point of view about religion. For God, the reason for the law (i.e. religious laws) is to lead people to faith. That means we must teach/share the words that we hear God say. If we don’t teach others, we are not true disciples.

STUDY TIP: See The Cry of My Heart.

That means that religion is not the end of the story. It is only the beginning. It also means that everyone who aspires to have faith — and they should because without faith it is impossible to please God —  must first go through a period of being religious. We see this principle played out throughout the Bible from Adam, to Abraham, the patriarchs, Jesus and the apostle Paul. They were all religious before they matured to faith. God is not specific about what religion they must practice, he only tells us that we must go through a period of religiosity where we practice religious works that can be seen before we come to faith that cannot be seen.

STUDY TIP: See Religion is not Faith.

At the end of the period of religiosity, after God gives them spiritual eyes to see and ears to hear, and speaks his words/laws into their hearts, people come to see religion for what it really is.

These are startling revelations that generate great humility when we learn that pride inspires all of our religious works and that all of those works are unclean in God’s eyes.

After we come to understand these truths about ourselves and the toxic hold religion has had on us, our first and response — after we repent for practicing the sin of religion — should be to teach others what we have learned about religion and how God called us out of religion to a life of Freedom and new life. This process begins by teaching people how how to listen to God’s spoken voice.

Our attitude should be the same as Jesus regarding opening the blind eyes of those who are still captives so they can be set free from slavery to religion. Our attitude should also be the same as all of the prophets of the Old Testament. In other words, rather than just being content with the belief that we have our own, personal, eternal salvation, we should be discontent and grieved with the knowledge that the world is full of religious people who are still enslaved to religion. We should be eager to teach others the truths about religion and share the good news that religious people can be set free from the sin of religion.

If these are not the motives that direct our lives from that point forward, we are not yet fully free from religion and are not yet conformed to the likeness of Jesus. How do we know this? We know because Jesus was a teacher and he was also a prophet.

STUDY TIP: Learn more about Jesus in Jesus, Messiah and True Prophets.