"When Your lover is a liar"

by Amber Rogers

It makes people uncomfortable when they are continuously being ushered out of tradition and into truth and knowledge. The flesh wants comfort and the comfort it seeks is to be able to fall back luxuriously into the familiar arms of tradition. Tradition is like a bad lover. He lied to you, deceived you and left you desolate. Your more enlightened friends begged you to leave him. They spoke to your heart regarding your worth and they tried their best to set you up with a better man called "Truth." Tradition also gives you a false sense of being. It rocks you to sleep at night, allowing you to feel safe and secure, and it admonishes you to relax and let him do all the heavy lifting. When you find yourself scripturally out of balance, he whispers "sweet nothings" into your ear, and tells you that you are okay. You then submit yourself to a life of lukewarmness and spiritual apathy and affirm this position with the mantra that "it's always been this way; my mother, father, etc. have always believed X, Y, and Z"...and you wash, rinse, and repeat this cycle of conformity. However, "to whom much is given much is required"... and you are not off the hook because scripture admonishes us to "study to show thyself approved.."(2 Tim 2:15). What the scriptures do not tell us is to: "study your-father's-religious-traditions-and-be-ready-to-back-them-up-by-bending-scripture-to-tradition." When we continue to build upon a foundation that is riddled with cracks it only makes for an unstable building and a life of spiritual recidivism.

We serve a great big God and He is not affected by time, space or matter; his word cannot be confined or affected by the restraints of man's traditions because He exists outside of them. Until we free our minds and become more God-like in stepping outside of this matter we will forever be slaves. When we are bound by the traditions of our churches and find that their dictations are contrary to the word of God, then we are in trouble. When we follow leadership blindly into areas of heresy, and apostasy we will have to give an account. Our spiritual independence and growth lies within the truth and freedom of His Word, and not by the binding monotony of the chains of tradition.

It is time for all believers to reassess these love affairs, count up their costs, and begin to rightly divide the word of truth. Pray to the Father for guidance and leave your traditions at the front door! You know that you need to be in an environment of truth, but you have settled for comfort. You know that God is calling you up a little higher- but you won't move. Your lover has deceived you. He is a liar and a cheat. His familiarity and the comfort of his traditional arms will forever be your Albatross.

"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." Colossians 2:8