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WINNING WITH THE WORD “Winning with the Word” is a weekly blog that will help you to be a winner in life by applying God’s principles for living the abundant life as found in the Bible, God’s manual for life. AN INVITATION TO YOU: To subscribe to this blog, click here.  To subscribe to this podcast, click here. If this blog and podcast have blessed you, please encourage your family and friends to subscribe as well. Thank you! Be sure to check out our Featured Book of the Week at the end of this post. ______________________________________ t  Do you prefer listening instead of reading? Then click below to listen to today’s blog post on podcast. https://media.blubrry.com/winning_with_the_word/content.blubrry.com/winning_with_the_word/WWW_06_07_2021_Are_You_A_Ritual_Robot.mp3 ______________________________________ Hello and Happy Day! This is Dr. MaryAnn Diorio, novelist and life coach, welcoming you to another episode of Winning with the Word. Today is Monday, June 7, 2021, and this is Episode #18 of Series 2021. This episode is titled “Are You a Ritual Robot?" _______________________________ For many years, I belonged to a traditional, mainline church that emphasized ritual over relationship, law over grace, and tradition over the free flow of the Holy Spirit. I was a devoted member of this church and followed all of its tenets to the tee.  Yet, I was dead inside. One Sunday, when I was in my early twenties, I attended the morning service as usual. On this particular day, I was feeling very discouraged about life. Depressed even. I went to church out of habit--and ritual--but when I left the service that Sunday morning, I felt worse than I had felt before I entered the service. Something was not right. As I stood on the front steps of the church, I cried out to God. I said, "God, there has to be something more to You than this. Show me if you are real." After that heartfelt prayer, I went home as usual, wondering whether or not things would ever change. Shortly thereafter, things did, indeed, begin to change. For the first time, a young woman asked me a question that changed my life. The question was, "Have you been born again?" At that time, I had been in my church for 23 years, but I had never once heard the term "born again" preached from the pulpit, nor did I have a clue as to what the term meant. The young woman explained to me that being born again means accepting Jesus Christ as one's Savior and Lord.  I told her that I already believed in Jesus. But she said that believing in Jesus did not mean I was born again, because, as the Bible says in James 2: 19, even demons believe in Jesus! Wow! I had never read that. Of course, I had never read the Bible, either. My denomination taught that only priests were qualified to interpret the Bible and that the laity could not, nor should not read this greatest of all books. The young woman went on to explain that there is a huge difference between giving mental assent to Jesus and receiving Him into one's heart. The head and the heart are not the same. She further explained that tradition was deceptive in that it made one think that one was saved when one was not. Tradition for the sake of tradition was legalism, not life. One could spend his entire life observing church traditions and still go to Hell. So, the reason I felt dead on the inside was that I was dead on the inside. I had not yet been born again. I had not asked Jesus to save me so that He could make me alive spiritually by giving me a new spirit full of His eternal life.  In short, I had become a Ritual Robot. As I began to ponder what the young woman had told me, I asked many questions, both of myself and of others. For example, I asked, "Why did Jesus have to die if my good works could get me to Heaven?" I asked, "How will I know if I have done enough good works to get to Heaven, and when would I know this?" One priest told me that I would not know until after I died....