Relationship not Religion

I struggle to understand God's love for me in the depths of my heart.... It is a truth I know in my head but not one that I walk in as fully as I know I could and as I want. What is blocking my heart from knowing this? Is it my inability to let myself go, to fall off the cliff of self dependance and fall into the arms of love... to be surrendered... to let go and be carried by Jesus and only Jesus. I want that so. I want to be free Jesus... set me free.
I need God to reveal his heart of love for me.... Jesus has a heart of flaming love for his children. He loved me soo much that He listened to His father and died a death of great agony and shame so that I could live with Him for eternity. It is a truth I have heard so long... it is like lukewarm water running through my fingers.

I don't know much what it is to live in stark darkness.... to not feel any warmth of love or affection... to have that deep echoing emptiness inside. I was brought up in a christian family... Jesus came into my heart at a young age. I have desired to have a testimony of being saved at an older age out of great sin and suffering, so that the reality of His love for me would be more real and more tangible... but I haven't. But in turn God has given me this life, which I am thankful for...

Mine is a testimony of being born into God's family at a young age. Of being spared the wounds and wounding of living outside of “the camp.” So in turn it is a lifestyle that I am used too... a life that I cannot contrast in my own experiences to one of empty darkness.

But because of my humanity I too experience levels of abandonment, aloneness and darkness. I am still flesh, I still struggle and thirst after a touch of God's unconditional love for me. The reality of knowing God. You see I have been brought up with good morals.... but the face of God for me is layered over with distorting glazes of religiousness and self righteousness.

I do not fully understand my own inability to reach God... I do not understand His love for me and His grace that saves me from myself from a life lived in self righteousness, an actually state of cripplement.

Religion and self rightousness... fill my mind with condemnation... I become my own holy spirit.... I must live up to a code of conduct deemed appropriate by myself and others that have gone before me. It becomes the face of God which I see... a god who I pull away from in fear... and anger.

What is the foundation of this path that I have chosen to walk? I know I could make a good pharisee...I am a perfectionist after all. These weights of religion hold me down... I stare into the face of law.... it cannot be satisified.

I want to fly on the wings of love and gaze into my redeemers face of grace.... that is given to me... this grace is not earned it is a gift.

I need you God to reveal your heart, your redemption... my place in this... my own vast need... of Jesus dying on the cross for me. Part of me wants to fall away... so you can gather me into your arms in pure love without these voices from my past saying “you must be perfect.” I want a relationship with you, not with religion. May I with Paul, be able to count it all as lost to know only you Jesus.