
Reframing the Relationship
Mark 7: 5 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law said to Jesus, “Why don’t your followers obey the unwritten laws which have been handed down to us? Why do your followers eat their food with hands that are not clean?”6 Jesus answered, “Isaiah was right when he spoke about you hypocrites. He wrote,‘These people show honor to me with words but their hearts are far from me.7 Their worship of me is worthless. The things they teach are nothing but human rules.’ 8 You have stopped following the commands of God, and you follow only human teachings.”
Focus on the
The problem is when we focus on tradition and ritual to define personal holiness, we exclude others who don’t share our traditions. We keep people out by putting up barriers that were to never exists. Your traditions can actually become an obstacle to obedience.
Focus on the
The hands are only an expression of whats in the heart. God has to reframe our heart in order for us to have proper relationship with him because it is evil by nature.
Focus on
John Ortberg puts it this way: “Conforming to boundary markers too often substitutes for authentic transformation. 2 Corinthians 13:5 says, it is a call to “examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.” Test’s come to see to what level you learned and to ensure that you are ready for the next chapter.
Everyone that God has called, have been willing to be changed, and continued to be changed. God is about transformation not about measurements.
Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. — Luke 14:34–35
Jesus isn’t just making a cute little analogy here. He is saying, halfhearted following is useless, that it sickens our souls. When salt is salty, it helps manure become good fertilizer, it helps produce life, it helps things grow, it produces fruit … but uncommitted, unexcited faith is completely useless.
Let’s REFRAME our VIEW of our relationship.