What is Religion vs. Relationship? Biblical Truths to Stand on!

Hey Friend!

As you can see, we are going DEEP today! Holy Spirit convicted me to have this conversation with you about what it means to have a real relationship with Jesus. What is religion vs relationship? Is religion bad? Is it possible to really KNOW God?

I’m going all-in on helping you understand this concept, and better yet, how to LIVE IT OUT.

I will be sharing biblical truths you can stand on as a Kingdom business owner along with excerpts of my own journey. I truly pray this blesses you big. May God speak to you today – in Jesus’ name.

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

(00:00):
Hi friends! Today we are doing a deep dive into a question that I have had on my heart a long time to talk to you about, but again, these hard faith topics sometimes just stumped me, like how do I bring this to you in the best way possible?

(00:15):
So God really led me to some great verses some amazing resources and some awesome revelation about how to talk about what exactly is relationship versus religion. And I’m excited to dig into this with you today. I’m excited to bring you some clarity on this topic and hopefully help you grow closer to God.

(01:32):
So whether you’re new around here, or you’ve been hanging out with me for over three years, I mean, excuse me, three years of podcasting, y’all… like what? It’s so crazy. Whether you’re new or whether you’ve been a Lola for a long time, I want you to know about how we can hang out together at a deeper capacity.

(01:56):
Now I have lots of free stuff. I’ve all the free things, right? I have the Facebook community. I have all of the freebies. I have all the stuff at the website, like whatever you need, that’s free just to get to know me more and to see what I have for you to get started, go there.

(02:11):
But if you’re in a space of, I actually need Stef, I need you to help me implement. I need you to help me get clarity on my thing. I need you to help me build a work from home profitable online business that is God centered from my gifts then I’m your person. And there’s lots of ways that we can do this together.

(02:30):
What I recommend, number one is checking out, Clarify Your Calling, which is my course that helps you get clarity, build the five pillar brand map. The other thing that you can do is hire me for private coaching. I do take a select number of people on as private clients.

(02:46):
I have a few open slots at the moment, and I also wanted to let you know that prices go up for coaching every year on January 1st. So if you’ve had it on your heart to work with me, one-on-one to have me as your personal, faith led business coach, then ‘Hi! Let’s go!’ I’m so here for it. Let’s meet over zoom in our comfies, drink coffee together and power out some business.

(03:11):
If that’s something that you want to check out, you can get our pricing menu by emailing the team support@stefaniegass.com . If you are a Stefanie Gass student, you can grab a 30 minute unstuck session with me as well. You can purchase those through that same email support@stefaniegass.com.

(03:32):
Just let the team know what you guys are looking for. And they will put you on the right path, get you all the information, the pricing, the booking, everything that you need. And one time I got asked Stef, I want to coach with you, but I don’t want you to air my session on your podcast.

(03:47):
And I was like, oh my goodness, you guys do not have to have your coaching episodes live on the show. That’s totally optional and you can opt out of that. So I just want to let you know that if anybody’s scared, like, Ooh girl, do not air my dirty laundry, honey, I got you covered.

(04:05):
And then last but not least, if coaching is not in the budget or you don’t need that in-depth accountability, and my eyes all over your business and really guiding you through and you’re really self-motivated, you can get this done yourself, you just need someone to show you the house. I want you to go to stefaniegass.com/courses.

(04:24):
There’s a three-step process that you’re going to go through. It’s going to take you roughly three to six months to build out my exact business model. Step one is getting clarity. Step two is starting a podcast. That’s how we build an audience. And then step three is scaling your podcast, getting it to rank all of the visibility and monetizing it with a course program or coaching. That’s a three-step business building process that I take all of my students through.

(04:52):
Obviously it’s super, God-centered, nothing that we do over here at Stefanie Gass, the company is without God at the seat of our table, right at the head of our table. As the CEO of our business, God is number one in every single thing that I do. So you will walk away after working with me with a God-centered, faith led online business, where you are using your gifts to glorify the kingdom of God.

(05:18):
And you may be like, oh no, but I have nothing to do with faith. My business will have nothing to do. That’s fine. Just you operating in your giftings, your God led giftings is impacting the kingdom, right? We’re all I’ve said this before, but I want to say it again. We are all pieces of this big puzzle, right? And all of us as kingdom women, we hold a puzzle piece and this puzzle pieces, the giftings that He’s given you, and it’s the purpose on your heart and it’s the purpose on your life.

(05:43):
And if you don’t come to the table with your puzzle piece, we’re missing something, right? We are missing this big, beautiful vision that God has for us as a full-out church of Christ, all of us, women who are working together for his glory. And so we need your puzzle piece at the table and it all begins with figuring out what it is.

(06:04):
Where’s my piece. What does it look like? Am I a corner? Am I a center? Like what colors do I have on here? Like you got to figure out your piece so that you can come be part of the puzzle. So all of that information is that stefaniegass.com and I invite you to come check it out. All right, let’s dig into this crazy topic right now. I mean, come on, Lord. Holy spirit. Can I get an amen about this topic?

(06:28):
Because God’s really put it on me lately with some really specific stuff that he’s prompting me and convicted me to talk about. And I’m like, really? You know, Lord, like, isn’t there a pastor out there that can handle this one? Isn’t there already a blog? And I hear again and again, but daughter, I’m asking you to step up to the mic on this.

(06:52):
So here we go. I’m going to absolutely do my best today to talk to you guys about religion versus relationship. And I want to begin with my own experience with this question mark. I first heard about this concept, Gosh, maybe a couple of years ago, maybe it wasn’t even that long, like maybe a year and a half ago. And I was super turned off by it because I go to a church and I absolutely love my church.

(07:15):
I’m like church is good. Isn’t that what religion is? I’m a Christian. Isn’t that my religion? I was very confused with this whole concept of religion-bad, relationship-good. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know what that meant. And it really, you know, spun me out for a minute because I just felt like it was wrong for people to be saying that religion was bad when I had actually had a really positive experience with the word religion.

(07:49):
Anyway, God kept showing me this concept through people I was working with and my own family members. You know, I haven’t talked to you guys very much about this and I won’t go super deep into it, just out of respect for my siblings and all of that. But you know, my father, he had some religious trauma from his childhood, grew up Catholic and you know, they had strict discipline.

(08:15):
It was extraordinarily rule abiding. The nuns told him, if you ask for something, God will give it to you. Well, you know, my dad being raised in this family of six children and living all together in like two bedroom home with no money, I mean, extraordinarily poor at the time, I just want to sled.

(08:40):
And he prayed and prayed and prayed for this sled and God didn’t give it to him. And he was so confused, right? Well, these people are telling me who God is. And if I abide by all these rules and laws, I will get what I want. There was no explanation of any of the meanings. He was never directed to read the Bible. All he knew was discipline right-wrong and you go to hell, if you don’t abide by these rules.

(09:05):
And so it created this insane, extraordinary level of fear in his life which definitely, he probably wouldn’t tell you that my dad actually passed away this may from cancer. But if you guys have heard some prior episodes, you know, I truly believe in my heart and I was shown that he did come to Jesus. In the last moments my son had had a dream.

(09:27):
He appeared to him in a dream and he spoke to him and he asked him to tell me, Hello, it’s just such a beautiful experience. And maybe one day I’ll share that full experience with you. However, my point here is that I was prompted to talk to my dad about Jesus towards the end of his life. And I, man, y’all talk about like gut wrenching nerves. Like I’m going to vomit right now. Holy spirit, please don’t make me do this.

(09:57):
And I talked to my husband about it and he was like, wow. I mean, yeah, you should make that call. And I’m like, but I thought you were going to say it in half to make the call. You know, like you’re looking for this out of this hard thing that God’s asking you to do. So I made the call and on the phone call, so many things came out about his, like, you know, he was angry. He was angry towards religion.

(10:20):
But what I saw as this woman who has a relationship with God and with Jesus was I saw my dad being angry at humanity. He was angry at people. He was angry at these nuns and these people that had run this church in this school that he was part of in this quote unquote religion. And he was associating that with God, as a person, you know, if God is this church and these people, God is mean, bad, harsh, cruel, you know, unforgiving.

(10:51):
He is unrelenting, like he had all of this vision of who God was because of his experience with a religion. So that was one example. Then I had multiple examples of this come up over the course of, gosh, a year and it’s about a year and a half ago now. Another one was through my spiritual growth mentor telling me about her experience with religion.

(11:14):
And what was interesting for me is that I, we just didn’t go to church. You know, like I was a quote, unquote, whatever we were, I don’t even know, I couldn’t even tell you if we were Catholic or Christian when I was growing up. Cause we didn’t go to church. We didn’t talk about it. My mom prayed with us and we talked about Jesus, but there was no deep like getting rooted in a church or a religion.

(11:34):
So I think I didn’t have this experience that so many people had had. So it started giving me these really deep questions about why are people angry at God? Why have they turned away from him? Why is there this fear around God? And like all of these things that are keeping them from knowing Him the way that I do.

(11:54):
It really just came full circle with this whole concept of religion versus relationship. I saw this meme that I think just totally hit the nail on the head. And it was such a great visual. It says, religion is a guy in church, thinking about fishing, relationship is the guy out fishing thinking about God. I was like, that’s it!

(12:23):
There’s a few other quotes I want to read you. This is from Paul Washer. He says a lot of people think that Christianity is you doing all the righteous things you hate and avoiding all the wicked things you love in order to go to heaven. No, that’s a lost man with religion. A Christian is a person whose heart has been changed. They have new affections.

(12:48):
So it’s this concept of people saying you, I hate doing all these things, these rule-based things that are good versus I want to do all these wicked bad things that feel good, right? This is that’s that this concept of religion. And here’s another one, A. W. Tozer. Most men indeed play at religion as they play at games, religion itself, being of all games, the one most universally played.

(13:23):
So when we really think about this concept, I think it’s this thing that people are taught or told or groomed to believe that there’s good versus bad. And it’s this concept of works based salvation. So when you follow this set of rules, when you follow the 10 commandments, when you follow the law of Moses from the old Testament, you know, good, bad, um, sin, repentance, all of that, you’ll go to heaven.

(13:54):
And so there’s this like belief system and that’s actually in every religion in the world except for Christianity. And I read that I haven’t done like a bunch of research. So, you know, if you guys find that that’s not the truth, please come in and let us know you can email me. But I found through my research online that Christianity is the only religion and it is a religion, so we’re gonna talk about that too, that teaches salvation by faith in Christ alone.

(14:22):
It’s not in the works that you do, which is what religion is, right? It’s in your faith in God, in the love, in your closeness with Him in something that we’re calling today, this relationship with God. And so when we learn that it’s good versus bad and rules in law, it goes against everything that God created us to be.

(14:47):
God didn’t create us to abide by rules and to be able to choose the right rule every single time, because we’re humans, we’re flesh like we’re inherently sinners. So we’re always going to fail and God is not setting us up for failure, right? God is setting us up for transformation, for salvation, for a place in heaven. He is setting us up to be absolutely changed and transformed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

(15:16):
But what does that even mean? When we have this concept of what I do equals where I go, and that is where people get led astray. And I think that we get led astray because the world has its hands on religion, right? The enemy is smart not to give credit where credit is not due, but at the same time, the enemy is smart.

(15:38):
Come on. He is. So we need to acknowledge that for what it is and recognize that if the enemy can play these games through the world and through humans, then he can trick people into believing that God is this God of works based salvation, and we’re always going to fail. And then when you fail at that then you can’t be a good little boy, good little girl.

(16:07):
And then you ask God for the sled and he doesn’t give you the sled or whatever those things are that you were taught, you say, wow, you know, it gets you to question God’s character. And when you’re questioning God’s character, and maybe you come to this belief that God is what these people have shown me about Him, what the world has said that He is, mean, hot or cold, or I can’t go to heaven and I can not be loved because I cannot abide by these rules.

(16:39):
Well, you’re always going to fail when you’re following a rule book that doesn’t have love tied to it. Here’s the big aha moment that I absolutely had when drafting out today’s podcast episode, it’s that God wants a relationship with you. God wants a relationship with me because when we grow in love, when we grow in this friendship with him, this beautiful, tight-knit beautiful intimacy with God, we actually desire to be Christ-like.

(17:17):
We actually desire to abide and obey out of love and gratitude to Him. It’s this absolute transformation in the way that we live out our life. And here’s where it gets so interesting for me. I want you to think of it like a marriage. You get married and your husband hands you a rule book. And he’s like, here’s your rules. You’re a wife. You are meant serve me and cook for me and clean for me and do these things for me.

(17:50):
And you’re going to follow this rule book, and you’re going to go to this rule book every single day. You’re going to check the boxes. Because you follow the rule book, I will love you and we will have a good marriage. So you follow the rule book and you have these obligations and these duties.If you don’t do the duties, your marriage is going to crumble and your husband’s going to hate you.

(18:08):
There’s so much pressure on your shoulders and you feel so restrained and constrained in your marriage. Because of that, you resent him. Then this resentment turns into hate and there’s a snowball effect, this rolling and rolling and rolling of problems all coming from trying to tell this wife what she has to do versus you get married, you have this husband and he just looks at you and loves you so much.

(18:39):
He encourages you. He mentors you, he challenges you when maybe you fallen off of a path of this godly wife. And maybe he says some things to remind you, but he does it in love. He sees you. He encourages you. He counsels with you. He holds your hand. He prays with you. He feels emotions with you.

(19:03):
He lifts you up when you’re down. He walks alongside you and you feel so seen and you feel so encouraged and your heart is full every day. And you you’re just uplifted. You’re full of joy and gratitude for this spouse that you have. And you simply decide, because you’re so grateful for this man and this marriage, you want to make him as happy as he makes you.

(19:32):
So you choose to be this servant wife, right? You choose to be a selfless wife and to however, you can bring him joy and maybe that’s quality time, or maybe that is keeping a home. And maybe that is cooking for him, but you want to do it because that love is reciprocated. It’s this circular love. It’s this unconditional love that you’re just round and round.

(19:58):
You’re giving and you’re receiving, and you’re so happy. You’re both happy. And you’re yoked together. Does that make sense? That visual of this husband and wife is how I see this religion versus relationship concept and the beautiful thing that I think so many people do not know, or maybe haven’t really dug into is this truth that you can know God, at that level, you can have a personal friendship relationship intimacy with Jesus on a daily basis where you are actually knowing him at this deep personal level.

(20:43):
Deuteronomy 4:29 But if from there you seek the Lord, your God, you will find Him. If you seek Him with all your heart and all your soul. James 4:8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

(21:11):
Isaiah 65:24, Before they call, I will answer while they are yet speaking, I will hear. Jeremiah 31:3 The Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, I continue my faithfulness to you. Jeremiah 33:3 Call to me and I will answer you. I will tell you great and hidden things that you do not know. First Corinthians 10:31 Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it for the glory of God.

(21:47):
First Timothy 2:1 First of all, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and Thanksgivings be made for all people. Colossians 3:1, last one. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Guys, scripture tells us, scripture promises us a relationship, a closeness, a love, a relationship with Him.

(22:18):
And the most beautiful thing is I’ve lived this out myself. So if I was to give you an example of all of this, there was a day in time, gosh, I kind of remember the day, but I still think it was an evolution even after this point, you know, probably four years ago when I decided to be done with the old me and I decided to be done fighting between flesh and spirit and going back and forth between sin and relationship and bouncing back and forth because I was afraid of giving up the world’s way.

(22:57):
And I was afraid of giving things up. I felt like I had to cling to those pieces of who I used to be. I decided to shed the worldly version of Stefanie and I was done with it. I was just done and I fully surrendered this earthly way of thinking this good versus bad, this works based concept, this work-based salvation. And I decided that I’m fully surrendered.

(23:29):
Lord make me new, make me Christ like holy spirit, take the wheel, like my heart is yours, my sight is yours, my mind is yours, my relationships are yours, my motherhood is yours, my marriage is yours, my business is yours. I’m done. I just want to follow you. I want to be yoked with you, Christ, every choice, every breath, every word, every single piece of who I am, needs to be through you.

(23:59):
And when I decided that and I made that declaration and I gave my heart and full surrender my life, not just my heart, but my actual life in full surrender to Christ. And I said, take it, you know, like I just want to abide in you and love and gratitude every single day. I’m walking away from this sinful life. I changed.

(24:26):
I didn’t want to sin any more. And I’m sure I still do. We all do. We all make mistakes, but it’s so much less. And it’s because I don’t want to. I have no desire in my heart to do the things I used to do. I’m not coveting idols, God. And as soon as I do something like that, God will bring it to my heart and out of love, kindly remind me and redirect me. You know, discipline is good.

(24:55):
Discipline is so great. One of my favorite verses Hebrews 12:11 All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful yet to those who have been trained by it afterwards, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Like I love discipline. I’m like, Lord, you know, redirect me.

(25:15):
And it’s interesting because just like in that marriage example, I feel it’s out of love. I know that God is just kindly softly saying daughter, eyes on me, right? Daughter, eyes on heaven. Daughter, eyes on using your gifts for my glory. Daughter, I’m here with you, I’m going to need you to trust me. And it’s so beautifully done.

(25:34):
And I don’t feel condemned. I don’t feel belittled. I don’t feel judged in any way. I’m like, oh, thanks, Aba. Thank you so much for putting me on the right path again. I’m so grateful for you. And there I go. I’m not sitting in this like dark, like self hatred for making a mistake. It’s like, Hey, we all mess up. That’s the way that it should be.

(25:59):
Now, I shouldn’t be saying I get to mess up and I get to sin because I have a relationship with Christ because that would just be us trying to be being hypocritical, right? Like using our relationship as a camouflage for staying in the world. That’s not what this is about. This is about a true, absolute, raw, authentic, you have no secrets kind of deep.

(26:25):
The love that we dream of, you know, as teenagers, we’re like, I’m going to have her in love like that, you know, like a relationship. We’re going to tell each other everything, it’s going to be so special. We’re going to laugh. Like all of those little dreams that you had about this spouse, when a teenager, that’s the relationship with Christ.

(26:46):
That’s what that is. And because it’s like that, because you’re so open, there’s no secrets. He is just with you just holding your hand through life. And when I started to realize that my heart just changed, like every single thing, every choice that I made, went through a God filter first.

(27:06):
And it wasn’t, I have to, it wasn’t like I have to put this through a God filter or I’m in trouble or I’ve been a bad girl. No, it was like, Hey Lord, what do you think about this? Hey, God, I don’t know if this is right for me, can you convict my heart? If I need to make a change here, Lord, is there anything that I’m coveting? Lord, can you soften my heart? You know, I’m having some issues with whatever judgment or comparison or gossip or anything that you’re dealing with.

(27:34):
I mean, down to the minute detail, guys, I’ll pray to the Lord. I’m like, Lord, I am struggling with not treating my body like a temple. Can you just convict me again? Can you just pour into me again? It’s that intimate? It’s like, He’s sitting with you every second of every minute of every hour, of every day, of every week, of every month, of every year, forever for the rest of your life, for all of eternity.

(28:00):
What an incredible gift, what an absolute miracle that we get to have this type of relationship with Him. And we get to remove this rule-based thinking and just be free, absolute freedom. This freedom, it’s a choice. This freedom is a gift.

(28:27):
And all we have to do is say yes to it. All we have to do is walk away from things that the world taught us about who God is and ask him to show us the truth about who he is and to ask him, is there truly father over relationship that I can have with you?

(28:47):
Are these things that Stefanie is saying real for me? If it is Lord, I invite you, come on with it, I want to be besties with you. I want you to want me. I want to want to not sin. I want to want to do good. I want to want to be Christ. I want to want to love my husband with this unbelievable level of patience and kindness and love and fruit of the spirit.

(29:15):
I want to embody that as a mom, I want all of those things and it comes through this relationship with you through Holy Spirit, guiding me, walking me, leading me, Father. I want that. Help me to have that invite you Lord, to come in. So I hope that this episode bless you. I’m going to invite you right now to pray with me.

(29:37):
And if you feel led, you can close your eyes and you can just believe by faith, this prayer, you can write it down and say it yourself. Or maybe you just want to observe, today. You just want to listen and stew over this and think about these things. And that’s great too.

(29:56):
Let me say this and then we’ll pray. There’s no right or wrong way for you to have a personal relationship with Jesus. Your relationship is going to look totally different than mine. Mine is pretty out there. You know, like I’m the chicken church. I got my arms raise. I’m like, Ooh, Holy Spirit, I’m crying, like I’m pretty out there. I’ll talk about Jesus to people.

(30:20):
And you know, I was having this conversation with my mom and my stepdad and he was talking about how his faith is intimate. It’s this quiet, beautiful, sacred, intimate relationship. And he loves it. And my mom and hers is different than mine. I want you to know that there’s no right or wrong way. It’s 100% yours.

(30:42):
And that’s what makes it so beautiful is the uniqueness, the way that God created you to be in worship and relationship and to be truly loved by him is just absolutely yours. No one has to know about it if you don’t want them to. Nobody has to be part of it. And it doesn’t have to look like anything you’ve ever seen before. That is the beauty of this whole experience. So permission.

(31:12):
Let’s pray! Lord together, I’m standing in agreement with my sisters today. I’m standing in agreement, Father, that we can choose to have this incredible relationship with you, that in scripture, you promise us, Father, this extraordinary, Holy Spirit, God led intimacy with you. And we are asking you for that, Lord.

(31:35):
We are asking you in full surrender to come in and be partnered with us, to take our hand, God, and walk us through our day to help us make our choices, Father, to help us embody fruit of the spirit, to absolutely challenge us when necessary, to set us on our healing paths, to guide us, to godly mentors.

(32:01):
And most of all, Lord, to experience this unconditional, transformational love that only you can give us. We’re asking you, Father, right here, now to replace anything that we are coveting, anything that we’re searching and seeking for love, recognition and value that it would be smashed and cast away and replaced with you. The only true love that we need. Lord, I ask you to just remove old thinking.

(32:34):
I want you, Father, wash away old thinking with the blood of Christ, today. Just replace in our minds and hearts a realization that things we’ve learned of the world are things that we’ve learned that were a deception, Lord, those are no longer thoughts. Those are no longer seeds in our heart, Father.

(32:53):
We ask you to cleanse us of those beliefs here and now and replace it with your truth. The only truth, the truth that Jesus Christ died for our sins, for a relationship with us. And he spoke the words ‘It is finished’ as an invitation for us to have a personal relationship with you through Holy Spirit.

(33:16):
We accept that Lord. We’re in agreement with that. We thank you. We’re so grateful. We’re in gratitude to you every minute, every day. Lord, just let that gratitude wash over us right now. And we’re so thankful. We welcome our relationship with the Lord, a deep intimate relationship with you. Change us. Challenge us, transform us in your mighty name. Amen. She said, amen.

(33:47):
I hope that this episode blessed you. I hope that this, I did some justice to this topic. Lord, I’m like, Holy Spirit be with me on this one cause we go in here. Guys, I would love to hear from you, you know, do these episodes help you? What do you want to hear from me? What can I speak about for you? What topics are you stuck on?

(34:07):
Whether it be in your faith as a Christian entrepreneur, whether it be in your business, I want to serve you. My entire purpose of this entire show is to help you get clarity on what God has created you for so that you can create impact for the kingdom of God and through that actually operate as a business so that you can do your purpose work.

(34:31):
I’m so here for this, you are called to be a kingdom entrepreneur, it’s on your heart or you wouldn’t be listening to me. You’re called to do it God’s way, not the world’s way or you wouldn’t be listening to me. And I know that there’s some way that I can help you.

(34:46):
And whether it’s popping a question into the Ask Stef button on the homepage of my website, whether it is putting a question in our free Facebook community, whether it’s working with me, whether it’s asking me for a prayer request, I’m here for you. I’m called to be here for you. That’s my entire job. So come on over to our group and let me know what other topics you guys want to hear. I would love to hear from you. It brings me so much joy. God bless you, sister, and I’ll see you back here really soon. Bye.