The Religion I Built Without God

One thing I’ve realized recently is how exhausting it is to try to maintain my own picture of what walking with God is supposed to be. It is exhausting. I expect myself to look a certain way, move a certain way, and feel a certain way, and none of that has anything to do with what God said. It all comes from my own presumptions about faith, which are not aligned with what God intended.

I expected to always feel like talking to people. I expected to always be found doing something. I expected to always have some routine of reading and praying. I expected to always feel like I felt when I first got saved, and when I don’t, I believe something is wrong.

But none of these expectations are based in truth (God’s word). They are based on what I assumed and believed this walk to be. None of them were God’s words. Not once did He tell me anything about “always doing something.” Not once did He say that if I don’t feel peace, then He’s no longer with me, or that my faith has failed. Not once. But my assumptions did. And now I see how much thought, effort, and belief I put into them.

My assumptions about what I think my walk with God is supposed to look like have become a religion of my own. And it is exhausting.

And it’s stealing from me in multiple areas: my peace, my joy, and especially my ability to see myself. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been asking God and seeking who He needs me to be. Even in this question, what did I expect? For Him to tell me every aspect of who I am so I could write it down, make a list, and follow it like a set of rules? Instead, He wants me to become that person through a relationship with Him. Because that’s what He wants: a relationship. And that was always His answer whenever I asked Him, “Just be.” Be in relationship, and watch how you grow.

And honestly, in my mind, I wasn’t “just being.” I was constantly overthinking because I didn’t know everything. Instead of leaning on God and learning to trust Him regardless of how much I understood, I tried to “get it,” to “figure it out,” rather than staying present, living it out, and seeing who I am through my own acts of obedience. Funny enough, I still lived out who God has grown me to be. Time and time again, I would talk with people and end up ministering and sharing my testimony without even thinking about it. I would be a listening ear, and people would give me feedback (unintentionally) about my impact on them, and it has always been positive. Yet I chalked all of this up to, “That’s just who I’ve always been; people always compliment me and say good things, but whatever.” But that’s the point. They say it because they see what is true about me, and I struggle to receive those words because I don’t believe them about myself, due to none other than my own assumptions and thoughts about what I think I’m supposed to look like as God’s child. I am actively keeping myself from seeing who I am in God. My assumptions stand in opposition to what God said about me. And whenever I speak my assumptions over what God said, I am speaking against God’s word about myself. There is evidence in my works of who I am, and I simply don’t believe it. I minimize it and downplay it, all because it doesn’t look like “enough.” It doesn’t look like what I assumed it would… but only to me. Not to God, and not to anyone who has come into contact with me, but only to me.

That is sickening, and it breaks my heart.

That is not the result of a relationship with God. That is the result of my own assumptions becoming a religion to me.

But God wanted a relationship. One where I would learn instead of assume. And that’s what He called me into. So I have to leave my assumptions at the door and walk. And keep on walking without them. Learning how to live, because that’s the only way I can. To learn is to live, and to live means to keep on learning. And you can’t learn assuming you know the answers, whilst KNOWING you don’t.