Theology versus Relationship with God

Hey folks, I'm so glad you're listening to my show today, be sure and share it with someone. Also, be sure and check out the website for the show, icmcollege.org/selftalk. Today I'm getting into something a little bit unusual, how can theology destroy your relationship with God? It actually can. Not that, you know, I'm not opposed to theology but it can become a stumbling block. Be sure and stay tuned and share this with someone. Thank you so much for listening to the show, Self Talk, with me, Dr. Ray Self, and may God richly bless you.

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Okay, welcome to my show, this is Dr. Ray. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for who you are. I thank you, Father, that you've made a way that we can actually know you, talk to you, hear you, have a relationship with you, experience you, feel you, love you. So, Father, thank you for this time together. I pray you'll bless each one who's listening to this show in Jesus’ name, amen. Amen. So today I want to talk about something a little bit unusual: theology versus relationship, and can theology hurt your relationship with God? Now, this sounds interesting, I mean, maybe I sound a little hypocritical. I– I'm blessed to have a doctorate in theology and I do teach theology, enjoy theology, I've trained in the area of theology for…for many years, okay? However, I also know that my God is alive and He's real and He, He's here and He…and I can feel Him and I can hear Him and I can have an intimate relationship with Him and I can experience Him and that's what I think. 

Sadly, many people who want to argue theology so much miss out. You see, what happens is we can become fleshly or pure intellect. Now, I'm not saying we should not be smart, we should not use our brain…It's interesting, uh, Derek Prince, that– the author of about 50 books if you're not familiar with that name– he says, a quote that he says that intellectualism is a sin because it's all coming from the flesh, okay? Now, I'm not saying that we should not again use our intellect but what happens is intellect can be a hindrance. Consider the scripture here. Now we know that the Apostle Paul was a great learned and intelligent man, okay? This very intelligent man who ends up writing two thirds of the New Covenant, the New Testament that we have today, he made this statement in First Corinthians chapter two, verse two, he said, “For I'm determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified; and I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling.” Here's this brilliant theologian saying this, verse 4, 1 Corinthians chapter 2, “My message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so your faith will not rest on the wisdom of man but on the power of God.” So he's a great theologian. I mean, he, he, he wrote theology and instructions to the church which we still teach and, and, and talk about today. 

But what I see going on um, in the world today and through social media. Now, you know, social media has just exploded. There are so many millions of people on social media and in the group and in all these millions of people there are also Christian teachers and pastors and just lay people who just want to share a message from God, but what I'm also seeing is a lot of people who want to argue theology. Um, there, there's videos, you can see them on TikTok, Facebook, um, YouTube, um, you know, wherever, wherever you want, wherever you want to watch it. Um, I– I've seen videos arguing um, the point of salvation: can you lose your salvation, yes or no? I've just watched multiple videos on tithing, uh, is it biblical, is it scriptural, um, and some are arguing that it is not scriptural, it’s not part of the New Covenant, some are arguing that it is part of the New Covenant, okay? Um, women in church: can they, can they be preachers or pastors, you know, the videos about that? Um, videos about the tribulation, pre-trib, post-trib, mid-trib, um, and, and people arguing about the tribulation. And then a big one, uh, there's been a series of people uh, using the Bible to try to, to criticize the church, the way the church has evolved, the, the method, the building, the, the, the, the structure of the church, the, the way we hold service, and making an argument against that. Then of course you have the Calvinists are arguing uh, for predestination, the sovereignty of God, you have um, the Baptists arguing you know, salvation by grace and grace alone which I think is a very good, good argument. Uh, the, the Pentecostals arguing the baptism of the Holy Spirit, uh, speaking in tongues. Then you have the Baptists arguing against the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues and making some very, I mean, convincing arguments. 

So what I'm trying to get you to understand is that there's just a lot of arguments, a lot of arguments about theology in– all over, all over social media. I mean, if you're flipping through social media, you're going to see somebody like uh, John MacArthur. He's, he's constantly uh, you know, arguing theology. Matter of fact, John MacArthur of course criticizes anything that's of the Holy Spirit, that's a whole ‘nother story. There's a guy named MacMillan or McMillan who uh, is really arguing a lot against the structure of the church and uh, Church traditions and there's um…oh, all kinds of people that are um– and some of them– I, I won't name them all, but some of them are just uh, some making some very interesting theological arguments. Uh, arguing against traditional teaching, arguing against um, uh, interpretation of scripture, uh, arguing against. Again, the, the church arguing against um, the way we're saved, you know, are we actually saved when we come down to the altar? Oh, I saw an argument just recently - an argument about alter calls. The alter call, you know, having an altar call is unscriptural, okay? The Sabbath day, arguments about the Sabbath day. Does it exist? Does it not exist? Um, and then, of course, there's the arguments against denom– the arguments against Catholicism, the arguments against the Mormons, and there, there are some good arguments there, but the point is it's all an argument and it's all flesh. And there's people, there are leaders that spend their life debating and arguing a tho– theology and they, they'll call it apologetics. Well, what I’m observing is - and I don't think we should be dumb about the Bible, I think we need to know the Bible, the word of God. But the whole purpose of theology which means study of God, the purpose of theology is so we can have a better relationship with Him. And I've been around these guys who love to argue theology, and…guys, I've been around a long time. I've been a Christian for a long time and there's one thing that I see universally and it's a very sad thing that some of these, quote, theologians who want to argue theology argue, you know, whatever theological viewpoint they have, is there is a deadness about it. There, there's no life about it. It, it's dead. I mean, you don't feel anything except deadness about it.

So, consider…consider these uh, scriptures. Consider these scriptures. Um, you– when Paul said, “My message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom,” right? Well, “...but in a demonstration of Spirit and power.” So what I see with these guys and ladies who want to argue theology, is there's no demonstration of the Holy Spirit, no demonstration of the power of God, amen. And Paul said, I don't want your faith– in verses, 2 Corinthians 2:5, “so that your faith will not rest on the wisdom of man but on the power of God.” So Paul didn't want us– our relationship, our faith - of course, we're justified, everything comes by faith - to be about wisdom of man but by the Spirit of God by the power of God. Then he went on to explain in Romans 8:5, “Those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh,” Now, the flesh…when the Bible talks about flesh, it's talking about our natural thinking, okay? Our natural minds. And what happens is the– these very intelligent guys and ladies, they have their mind, their intellect is arguing points. They're debating, okay? They're making systematic debates to justify their belief or the point they're trying to say, but it is according to the flesh. “...but those…” the Bible says in Romans 8:5, the second part of that scripture says “...those who are according to the Spirit set their mind on the things of the Spirit. The mind set on the flesh is death,” this is Romans 8:6, “...the mind set on the flesh is death,” So “...the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.” 

And this is what I'm seeing all over the internet, all over social media…this arguing. Arguing theology is dead, it is deader than a doornail. There's no Spirit– Holy Spirit in it. There's no life and peace and so what happens is I think, what the most important thing, what God gave us theology for, was just for us to understand things about Him so the end would be that we will have an intimate relationship with Him, that we will experience Him, know Him, hear Him, feel Him, okay? Be– we have a spirit in us. Experience God. I mean, I used to tell my students these things. I used to make this statement quite often, I said, um, “So you're studying the word of God…” and, and now we see people arguing the word of God, arguing theology, “...but have you met the author?” And so the author of the Word of God that people want to argue about, okay, wants to have a relationship with us. This is, this is…the Bible is about God, but it's not knowing God. Knowing God is even bigger than the Bible. The Bible teaches me all about God and I need to learn things about God and the Bible is God's instructions to me, but the Man giving us these instructions is alive, He is here, He wants to have a relationship with me. You know, when you have a relationship, that's someone that talks to you, you talk to them, you experience them, you, you, they're, they're your friend. Jesus called us His friends and this part of God is missing through these theologians who want to argue and debate theology. I don't– and I don't mean make this a universal statement, but I don't sense the relationship with God. In other words, theology and arguing theology, debating theology, thinking theology can actually become a hindrance to your relationship with God which sounds kind of sad but most theologians, they're, they're stating their beliefs their argumented– their points of argument, their points of contention, uh, their rules, their uh, their guidelines in teaching us these things or how we're to, how we're to be, what we're to think, what we're to believe. 

But in the middle of all that, where's God? What about our relationship with Him? What about experiencing Him? What about having His power in our life? What about seeing God move and, and, and do the miraculous and uh, cast out demons and heal the sick, raise the dead, all that kind of stuff? Remember, Paul said, “My message and my preaching were not with words of wisdom…” Now this, now Paul was a great, great theologian, a great teacher, we're still learning what he taught us, but he said his message was demonstrating the Spirit and power. And so what I would love to see from my dear brothers and sisters who want to argue theology, I would like to see the Holy Spirit and the power of God working through them. It might be a little bit easier to take their argument if I could see and, and understand and believe that they have this intimate relationship with God and they're moving in the Spirit and in power. Remember, Jesus even said um…remember John's disciples came up to Jesus and uh, John was in prison questioning Jesus - which was interesting - and Jesus said, “if you don't believe the words I say, believe the works that I do,” and so Jesus was constantly demonstr– yeah, He taught us a lot that we were to learn, but everything He taught, He demonstrated. 

And so, God wants– is alive. He's not a person we study like studying George Washington or, or Abraham Lincoln– Lincoln, or studying, you know, history or economics. God is so much more than a study, He's more than theology, He's a person who is alive. Abraham Lincoln is dead, okay? George Washington is dead. Good to study them, we learn a lot from those guys, amen. But– and sometimes we, we teach Jesus like He's dead. He's not dead, He's alive…He's alive, and He's here…and the whole purpose of the Bible is that– to help us understand that God, who so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life, that through Jesus we can come to the throne of grace through the sacrifice and death, burial and resurrection of Jesus we have an ability to have a relationship with God. But this relationship with God has to be more than just understanding the ability, understanding what the word says, we have to do it and get into that relationship with God, talk to God, listen to God, obey God, experience God, and move in His power. That's greater than theology. Theology should just be a, a beginning, starting point. But what happens is I think with so many people that are arguing theology today, it's the beginning and the end for them. It's all theology, there's no love, there's no relationship, there's no anointing, there's no demonstration of the Spirit and of power. There's nothing there but intellect and it's flesh and it's dead, it's dead. There's no Holy Spirit in it. 

I know it sounds kind of tough, this sounds kind of tough. And I'm not saying that we should be stupid and not know what we believe, that's good. But remember that that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is your relationship with God is spending time with Him, talking to God, experiencing God, obeying Him, letting Him fill you with His presence, give you His joy, His life, His abundant life, being immersed in His love, the love of the Father, the affirmations of the Father, experiencing God, not just having an intellectual relationship because you know all about Him but you don't know Him. And maybe that's the way I should end this. Theology helps you know about Him but theology won't let you know Him. You have to make a choice to know Him. Any time you want a relationship with somebody, you reach out to them, right? You make a call. And I want to encourage you right now, make the call. “God, forgive me. I've done nothing but be an intellectual arguer about you. I've debated you, I've– that's all I've done.” And if that's you, just say, “Lord, forgive me. I want to experience you. I come to you now, as your son, as the one you did redeem and justify. I want to have that intimate relationship with you, I want to talk to you, I want, I want you to hear me, I want to hear you, I want to know that you're with me. I love you, God, I praise you, God. You are alive, Father, you are alive, Father. Lord, it's not enough to talk about you. We need to talk to you to you and hear you. Thank you, Father. In Jesus’ name.” 

So, folks, hear me. This is kind of a tough show. And again, I'm not saying theology is wrong, but if theology is all you do, it's become a hindrance because you have no relationship with God. You've stopped. All you're doing is arguing and knowing all about Him, learning everything He said in His word, learning everything He wrote. But knowing the Word, understanding the Word, arguing the Word under– the meaning of the Word, but not having a relationship with the Author, the Creator, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords who was and is and is to come. He wants a relationship with us far greater than theology. Nothing wrong with theology, but if that's all you got, you don't have much, my friend. Have a relationship with our Savior, that's the bottom line. I appreciate you listening to my show. God bless you.

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Hey, thanks again for listening to my show, I appreciate you. I hope this wasn't too…too tough on you today. You know, um, I love to study the Word of God, I'm a teacher of the Word of God, but I know the most important thing is our relationship, our intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father and that relationship was given to us by the incredible love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, amen. He is the only way to God. So I'm not saying you should not know what you believe and be able to defend what you believe, but remember what Paul said. He made several, several statements that I think are critical for us, you know, to, to understand. Um…very, very, very important for us to get, and I'm pulling them up right now. “We receive not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God so we may know the things freely given to us by God.” Second– First Corinthians 2:14, “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned.” Paul wants us– what he's writing for us is that we have the Spirit of God which puts us in touch with God. A natural man is not in touch with God and if all you have is theology, you're a natural man and you're not in touch with God, amen, amen and God bless you.

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