Colossians 1:17
I've come to believe that nothing breaks God's heart and angers Him more than religious Christians. That may sound absurd. Surely prayer, Bible study, and church attendance are very important to Him. Surely chaste, moral, respectful behavior is right up there on His list.
Well, of course. But He doesn't have a list. Jesus Himself is the list.
Prayer, Bible study, church attendance, and holy behavior on their own don’t hold any weight with God. Which is why there’s no point trying to get people to conform to a list of outward expectations. The only thing God is interested in is whether our relationship is right with Him: whether our hearts are broken before Him and we are in a living, growing, deepening relationship with the living Christ. In Kingdom terms, the external display -- when it's real -- is the outflow of a yielded heart and an authentic relationship with Christ. These outward things can’t be separate from our inward relationship with Christ.
Well OK, they can be separate from it: they can be something we put on like jewellery, not necessarily insincerely, but thinking that the things themselves are the relationship: “Going to church is one of my favorite things to do.” “Prayer is my thing.” “I always do X, never do Y.” “I read my Bible every day and never miss a Bible study meeting.”
God’s reply to these things, I think, goes something like this: “But do I know you? Do we cry and laugh together? Are you living on the edge with Me? What have I shown you about Myself that you didn't know last week?” God often says things like that in scripture (and even stronger) when people start flashing around their spiritual credentials.
Certainly, our relationship with Him has to start out like a tiny seed and grow from there. But God will keep challenging us to go in deeper.
God doesn’t judge our religiosity because He’s mean. He judges it to tell us we’re missing out on something amazing, because Christ Himself is God’s recipe for a life that is held together by the deepest, richest, cords of love and inward healing imaginable.