"When the Time Had Fully Come" - Greg Albrecht

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.
    What I am saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. He is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But When the Time Had Fully Come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.—Galatians 3:26-4:7

Think back to the times of your youth, perhaps to a time when your mother and father promised to take you to the park, or on a picnic or to the circus. You couldn't wait for that time to come, could you? That's the way we were when we were kids—we drove our parents batty by continuously asking them, "Is it time yet, is it time yet?"

Then, when we were in grade school and high school, we asked a similar question every year, as the end of the school year approached. "Is school just about over? Is it time for summer vacation yet?" 

Most of the time, when we were young, we were waiting for time to pass so that something else could happen. Have you ever asked a three or four-year-old their age? Be prepared for the most exacting math they are capable of. 

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The Ministry of Death OR the Ministry of Life - Greg Albrecht

He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? —2 Cor. 3:6-8 

He looked at me and said, “It happened while I was in church. It was the end of the service, everyone was standing, and so was I. I was doing the same religious thing that everybody else was doing, the same religious thing I had done for over 25 years. My family was there. My mother was there. It was the same place we always went. We did the things they told us we should. The sermons usually either scolded us or berated us.

“That week the sermon had been another ‘you’re not good enough’ sermon. After the sermon, during the final prayer, the thought hit me, ‘You know. This is ludicrous. I am never going to be good enough. I’ve been trying to do all this stuff for 25 years. I have been trying to get better. I’ve been trying to do more and more and more, but something is just not working.’

“I realized that I had sat there in church hundreds of times, filled with guilt and shame as a result of the sermon, and every time I resolved that I would do better. Each time I determined to do a bunch of stuff that I really believed would make God happier. For all those years I really thought I could influence how God thought about me. All those years I thought it was all about me and what I did or did not do.

“But that day in church it suddenly hit me. Based on an honest evaluation of my progress in twenty-five years, I hadn’t changed that much. Twenty-five years of beating my head against a wall. Twenty-five years in the same church, several different pastors, but it had been the same old beat-’em up message. Twenty-five years of the same old spiritual muggings. Twenty-five years of the same old ‘you’ve got to do more’ diatribes.

“So I was standing there and I realized this was all an illusion. We were praying, and my eyes should have been closed, but I just had to look around the church. People seemed comfortable, they seemed secure and so self-assured. But it seemed to me like we were all standing there like so many little religious clones, something like the Stepford Wives. I wanted to start screaming. I wanted to say ‘Don’t you see!? This is nothing but dead religion. This is dead religion— dead, I’m tellingyou—it’s dead. God is not here. I don’t think he ever was.’”

I had to think about this conversation as I was studying 2 Corinthians. It talks about a new covenant—a new relationship—a new way of relating to God. The Apostle Paul claims that the old covenant, the former way of relating to God, brings death, whereas the new covenant brings life. The man who was describing his 25 years in religion suddenly woke up while he was in the very heart of the control

center of religion. There he was, in formal, structured services, a time when he was told when to sit down, stand up, kneel and how many religious hoops he needed to jump through.

And it was there, during a time when he was enduring his weekly browbeating that he realized it was all a sham. What he was experiencing was nothing but dead religion.