It's not a religion, but it's not a relationship either.

I got it wrong.

For years I’ve grown up under the cry, “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship”. Countless Sunday school teachers and small group leaders tried to instill in me that God isn’t interested in me following the rules of God for the sake of following rules. Fervently they tried to free me from the mindset that God isn’t a cruel taskmaster, ready to strike whosoever will disobey His holy words. Instead, God wants me to follow Him out of love and devotion to Him. Not because I have to, but because I want to. This is the message that I heard and that I’ve tried so hard to live by.

But something’s not quite right. Something’s missing in that equation.

This creed, this mentality is based on the assumption that I actually want to obey God. I should be so in love, so enamored with God that when I am confronted with a decision that requires me to choose between my flesh and what the Spirit would have me do, I unhesitatingly deny myself and pick the God-pleasing option, whatever that may be. And when I have made this decision, I need not worry about being disappointed, because Jesus will meet my every need, providing comfort and validation. This is what the ideal Christian relationship with God should look like. There’s a problem though. As of late, this is anything but how I feel.

I’ll be honest, I have hit a point where I feel like I couldn’t care less about faith, church, God, Jesus, all that stuff that I was taught not to live without. If I had to describe my faith (which honestly, is all it is right now) in one word at this moment in time, it’s apathetic. There have been several days, weeks actually, where I could say with complete honesty that I don’t care about the whole God thing anymore. It’s a new experience for me; I grew up in church, practically. And I can even point to a time in my life where I did feel like a relationship with God as described above was how you define the Christian lifestyle. But lately it’s been an honest struggle to even care.

Thankfully for my sake, God is still faithful, even as mine hangs by a thread. Slowly and surely, He’s bringing me back to Him. My story is not a dramatic one of a life of addiction and open sin, but one of a quiet, hypocritical, sinister rebellion. While others sin openly, I sin behind closed doors and run far away from His grace through the maze of guilt, anger, and bitterness in my own mind. After revelation and soul-searching, pride was revealed to be my kryptonite, what brings me down most effectively. I don’t even notice it. I’m naturally independent, but it’s easy to take it too far. It has taken time and the consistency of the Spirit to reveal what I really knew all along was dragging me down. And it is for this very reason that the relationship mentality of the Christian lifestyle doesn’t work for me.

For the relationship to work, I actually have to want to be close to God. In this season, I’d rather be as far away from Him as possible. So I’m wrong for not being close to Him, and not even wanting to try. Without even trying, I have broken this unspoken rule and have lost that connection.

But that simply is not the case, and I’d argue that isn’t even biblical. I’d missed, or forgotten, something huge that without it, the relationship itself is impossible, almost heretical. I’d forgotten the covenant.

For some reason, we don’t mention covenant near as often as we do relationship. Perhaps it’s because covenant sounds so restricting, and we’re trying to get away from restriction, ultimately from legalism. You can’t escape covenant in the Bible. As a matter of fact, covenant is the very thing that makes relationship possible. The original reason we could not enjoy fellowship with God was because He is holy and we are sinful. It was only through Christ’s death and resurrection was the ability for fellowship to be restored, and it was sealed by God through covenant.

This covenant is what keeps my stubborn, independent self from escaping. The minute I put my faith in Christ, I was paid for and sealed. The covenant went into effect and applied to me. He put His laws into my mind and wrote them on my heart. He is my God, and I belong to Him. In this light, relationship takes on a whole new meaning. I don’t even know if it’s the right word. Instead of me doing the right thing because I love Him and want to make Him happy, I do it because I am not my own. I am free from being obligated to feel affection towards Him, because it doesn’t matter if I do or not—the covenant still exists. I am bound to Him, and He to me.

Knowing, accepting, and believing this has been more of a comfort to me than the relationship mentality ever has been. I was honest with God and told Him I don’t care anymore. He hasn’t said anything back, but seems to have jumped straight to working on me, ironing out the kinks, revealing my weaknesses and shortcomings, and breaking me down and rebuilding me. I’m still confused as to what I feel towards Him, frankly. Every day is an exercise in pure faith; no emotion, no warm feelings of love or affection. I feel like the effort is totally and completely on me right now. But I’m OK with that at the moment. And ironically enough, I feel the safest and most secure in this covenant of ours than I ever have before.