How often do you question your relationship with God? Maybe you assume you don’t know how to have a relationship with him because you have been comparing what you think you don’t have with what you think you ought to have, and what you think you ought to have is based upon a religious world that tells you what a relationship with God ought to look like. Just remember that the relationship Jesus had with his father while on earth appeared to the religious mind as something other than godly.

But to what shall I compare to this generation? It is like little children sitting in the markets and calling to their playmates, saying, We played the flute to you, and you did not dance! We mourned to you, but you did not wail! For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He has a demon. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man who is a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners. But wisdom was justified by her children. Matthew 11:16-19

It doesn’t make any difference if one observes a strict code or else lives freely, as fleshly religious judgment always finds some way to discount and denounce those who actually come from or speak from God. If you listen to the mind of comparison, no matter how reasonable it sounds, you will always come up short. And this is true whether you plunge headlong into whatever form of wisdom wins you over … or if you merely question it. As long as you live in comparison to another you will discover one failure or shortcoming after another. Forget trying to develop a relationship with Jesus and simply live in the knowledge that you are now related to God through him.

[This Spoonful was adapted from a snippet of a recent Q&A, which you can find here: http://theshovel.net/qa/law/the-curse-of-the-law]