Relaxed Christianity > Episode Three > Here’s a symbolic metaphoric little story to further explain what I mean by Relaxed Christianity. We have two people. One person decided to live in a house that was really just a shack surrounded by trees. The other person built an underground house with very solid walls and foundation. In other words, the one dwelling is a house of cards, toothpicks ready to fall. The other is a supernatural FORTRESS. Now we add to the story a storm. And let this storm be symbolized by a great tornado! The tornado is going to hit both properties. Let’s say these two people even live right next door to each other. Now… do I really need to ask the obvious question?

Who is going to be able to RELAX as the storm comes through? Who is going to be stressed, in fear, and in great danger? The fortress person went to bed as normal and got a good night’s sleep, knowing he had nothing to fear.

Adding to this story, the shack person likes to drink. His answer to all this stress is drink more. So, oddly enough, the shack person found a way to relax while even in great danger. He got hammered drunk.

His neighbor found him the next day, his shack crushed under trees, and he was hanging in a tree that was somehow still standing! He was also naked and skinned alive by the tornado. They do that. Amazingly, the man was still alive and spent the next few months in great pain and racking up a huge hospital bill while he recovered, but he will never be the same. And we can ask the question, did he learn anything?

Relaxed Christianity is the result of living by supernatural “habits” that our Lord teaches us in His Word. Our habits become our habitat! Unless the Lord builds the house, the laborers labor in vain. (This cannot be emphasized enough.)

Matthew 7: 24-27 Message Bible > Jesus said: “These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit — but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock.”

“But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.”

Psalms 91 says > “Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your habitation (or dwelling place)… no evil shall befall you… (and etc.)

Our habits become our habitat. I can’t say that enough. Our habits, (whether good habits or bad), become what we dwell in! Live in! And die in! Here’s a true and common sense story I personally lived. I became a truck driver. Eighteen-wheelers. I went through Driving School. One thing I learned was, if I worked hard to build the RIGHT habits from the beginning, then once those HABITS were set, I could RELAX! It was like putting my driving on autopilot. It became my habit to constantly check my side mirrors. Look down the road. Check blind spots before changing lanes. Do a safety check of the vehicle before heading down the road. Etc,etc,etc. It became habit! It became my life. I dwelt in that, and praise the Lord, He blessed me with no incidences and I was awarded for many miles of safe driving.

This is not rocket science. All life works this way. God tells us there is just one thing actually important. YOUR ETERNAL SOUL! Our relationship to Him. If we choose to ignore this storm called mortality that no one escapes, not only does it affect us after we die, but there are a multitude of things it affects even before we die, such as “the principal of reaping what we sow”. This is a spiritual principal we can build upon, or have it fall on us and crush our house!

Our habits are the seeds we sow and they grow into our daily life, the house we live in. If we live in opposition to the wisdom the Creator built into His creation, then what can we expect? Life will be stressed, empty, fearful, headed in the wrong direction, and then we die. Upon dying we explain to the Creator why we lived our life in opposition to what He created us for. In other words, why I did not want to be the sailboat He created me to be, but lived as a motorboat revving my man-made motor and trying to force my own desires all the time.

If we let the Lord build our house, He builds us a supernatural house. We can’t do that. But in a way, WE CAN! Not directly, but indirectly. By learning His ways and allowing God to build us a fortress that will NEVER fall. We have spoken of the Relaxed Christian being a Psalms 23 Christian. That chapter ends with the words: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

So… consider the power of the scriptural chapters we are using. Psalms 91! Psalms 23! Psalms 127! And words from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount out of Matthew chapter seven! How much more powerful can it get? We are talking the Breakfast of Champions! And speaking of breakfast…one powerful supernatural principal of God’s word that He designed into our creation is “First Fruits”! I know it may seem hard to give God first place each day, but once that habit becomes our habitat, we can relax the whole rest of day. Relaxed Christianity.

My plan is to detail some of these “Habits of our House” in next episode. These are very strong beams made of cedar wood, creating a spiritual fortress not seen by our eyes, but very much seen by the unseen world. Understand? Believe it! The training of our brain, the renewing of our mind, is the pathway to this powerful life God speaks of.

To be continued.