Is It Wrong to Read Your Bible Out of Habit? Religion vs. Relationship With God

Julie Holly: Have you ever skipped your Bible reading or meditation session and then spent the rest of the day waiting for something to go wrong? Or maybe you're not sure about God at all, and if you're honest, the reason has more to do with a person than with God.

Julie Holly: Welcome back, or welcome to The Recalibration, where high capacity humans realign who they are so they can move from pressure and performance into peace, presence, and clarity without losing their edge.

Julie Holly: Last week, we talked about religiosity and spirituality as two sides of one coin, and I said faith isn't the doing, and it isn't the feeling. It's trust in a person. Today, I wanna ask a harder question.

Julie Holly: How well do we know the person we're trusting or refusing to trust? Before we go further, I want you to know that this whole conversation is rooted in my faith in Jesus because that's where I anchor my life. But I'm not here to preach.

Julie Holly: I'm exploring right alongside you. And the questions we're asking today, they apply to any belief you hold or were raised with.

Julie Holly: Before we dive in, will you do me a huge favor? Will you please make sure you hit follow or subscribe so you don't miss an episode in the series? It takes less than 10 seconds, and it helps other people find the show too

Julie Holly: Let's dive in. Let me start with a question I hear from people who've been reading their Bible for years. Is it wrong to read my Bible out of habit? No. Habits aren't the problem. The question is what the habit is doing for you. If it's how you stay close to God, that's relationship. If it's how you stay safe from God or prove something to the people around you,

Julie Holly: that's religiosity dressed up as relationship. And if faith isn't really your thing, or church left a mark, maybe your question sounds more like this: why do I feel so resistant to God?" Sometimes it's because of something God did.

Julie Holly: But often, if we're honest, it's because of something a person did or something we heard happen to someone else. The anger may be completely right. The question is whether it's aimed at the right one.

Julie Holly: Two different questions, but underneath I think they're asking the same thing. Do I actually know God or do I just know about God?

Julie Holly: Today we're going to recognize and release a couple of things. The habit that quietly turned into a contract and the picture of God a lot of us picked up secondhand. But please pay attention to how it works because you can use the same first two steps of this pathway on whatever else is going on inside you.

Julie Holly: And I wanna say this up front because I don't want anyone hearing this as an attack on their routine or their other practices. I love practices, the daily office, Sabbath, Lectio a quiet morning with a cup of coffee and an open Bible. Devotions are valuable. Even the word tells us something, doesn't it?

Julie Holly: We're devoted. So the question was never whether to have the practice. The question is what we're devoted to

Julie Holly: Last week I said religiosity sounds like this. If you do the things, read the verse, do the devotional, go to church, check the box, you'll be connected. And doing the practice was never the same as being in the relationship.

Julie Holly: So here's where I wanna take that this week. Think about how many ways there are to know someone firsthand. You can know them through the things you do for them, you can know them through a feeling you get when they're around, and you can know them through what other people say about them.

Julie Holly: With God, those three have names. The first is religiosity. The second, spirituality, the way we talked about it last week, and the third is one we don't talk about much at all, which is hearsay

Julie Holly: You can't really trust someone you know secondhand. And there are a lot of ways to know God secondhand. Some of them look really, really devout let's

Julie Holly: begin with recognition, awareness, because you cannot heal what you cannot see.

Julie Holly: Young me was cute. In fourth grade, I asked my mom to buy me a devotional, and we found one, and every page ended with these questions I could not answer. How does this affect your life? I was a kid. I had no idea how it affected my life.

Julie Holly: But I did it anyway, faithfully, and somewhere in there I built a belief. If I missed my time with God, my day wouldn't be blessed. It would be filled with struggle. So it became a habit. Well, no,

Julie Holly: it became an insurance policy, and when I missed it, I felt like I was failing, like I wasn't showing God that I loved Him, like I was a disappointment. I'd spend the whole day looking over my shoulder, waiting for something to go wrong, like I'd done something wrong and was just waiting to be punished for it.

Julie Holly: That makes me a little sad now, because that's not the heart of God. He isn't lurking in my life like a police officer trying to make his quota of parking tickets. But I used to live like God was a cop with a quota just waiting for me to slip.

Julie Holly: That's not who He is. And I've since learned that rest, even sleeping in and missing my time with God, can be a form of worship. He loves me, and He knows my heart. But that's a conversation for another day. Let me be clear.

Julie Holly: It wasn't always one way, but the heart becomes murky when fear is prevalent. The love was real, and so was the fear, and they were sitting at the same table.

Julie Holly: So I wanna invite you to try something. Finish this sentence for yourself, and be honest. Nobody's listening to you. I read my Bible because... Or I meditate because... Or I go to church because... Whatever your practice is, maybe it's to stay safe. If I skip, my day won't be blessed. Maybe it's to belong.

Julie Holly: It proves to the people around me that I am one of them. I know that one well. I was the youngest of four and the only girl, and for a long time, right living is how I tried to belong Maybe it's to stand, to be the one who's right, the one who knows. You heard about my rigid years last week, so you know I've lived there too.

Julie Holly: Maybe it's to be covered. I've done my part. That's the deal I told you about last week, the one I was so sure God had broken. Or maybe it's simply to be with

Julie Holly: God. Most of us will find more than one. That's okay. That's recognition, not a verdict. Here's a simple way to tell which one is driving. My husband and I have been married for 20 years, and together for nearly 25. And I'd be lying if I said there weren't some seasons where we functioned more like roommates than soulmates. Maybe you've been there when you're in career transitions or you have new babies or you have teenagers, and you just feel like the world is swirling around.

Julie Holly: Well, the Bible uses marriage as an analogy of our relationship with God throughout the Bible, and it does this to point to lots of things, but I can't unsee how it shows us something about drift. The relationships that last the longest are actually more likely to drift because they last.

Julie Holly: Most other relationships span an era or a phase of our lives, and when we drift, we don't question it much. But in a relationship of substance, the drift hides inside the routine. You still get lunch. You still grab a pint and watch the game. Plenty of married couples spend time together and don't know a darn thing about each other's inner world.

Julie Holly: So think about missing a date night. Does it feel like I broke the rule, or does it feel like I miss you? The first one is religiosity. The second one is relationship. This is actually one of the things I listen for in a one-on-one coaching session.

Julie Holly: Not what someone's doing, but what they feel when they don't do it. That tells us almost everything about what's driving it

Julie Holly: And here's a second way to tell. Would you still do it if no one ever knew? Jesus talks about this in Matthew chapter six. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of his day, the experts in the rules, and honestly, the people Jesus was hardest on. And Jesus says, "When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on the street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them.

Julie Holly: I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you Proverbs chapter 4 verse 23 says, "Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life."

Julie Holly: I love how the Message translation phrases it, "Keep vigilant watch over your heart. That's where life starts." So here's the question. When you miss it, do you feel like you broke a rule or do you feel like you missed God? Just

Julie Holly: notice. You don't have to fix it now I wanna talk about something that applies to every single one of us, whatever you believe.

Julie Holly: I don't like it when gossip gets spread about me. I don't like it when people believe things about me based on what other people say. Most people don't. Think about a time that happened to you.

Julie Holly: Someone decided who you were because of a story they heard, and nobody asked you. How did that feel? Most of us hate that, and we do it to God all the time. If you're not faith-forward, can I ask you gently, where did your picture of God come from? Was it something a person did to you?

Julie Holly: Something that happened to someone you love? A friend's friend's friend? There's actually a name for this in psychology. It's called vicarious or observational learning. We literally form fears and beliefs by watching what happens to other people, , even people we've never met.

Julie Holly: And for a lot of us, the picture came from childhood. Sunday school, catechism, youth group. We know the stories. We have the songs to go with them But they stayed a thing we did when we were kids, or a thing we did because our parents made us. If you were hurt by that, you might call it indoctrination, and I wanna honor that word because it names something real.

Julie Holly: But knowing the stories is not the same as knowing God. For a lot of people, their picture of God stopped growing right about the time Sunday school ended

Julie Holly: I had to face this myself.

Julie Holly: The God who would ruin my day for skipping my devotions? That was a rumor too. Where did I get that God? From the sound bites? The lists? The culture around me? Definitely not from Him. There's something precious when I have a cohort of people who share my faith.

Julie Holly: Because we open and close in prayer, and it's so beautiful. And when someone tells me they're spiritual, I honor that. I don't impose my beliefs on them. I say that because I want you to hear what I'm actually saying here. I'm not asking anyone to trust the institution. When I say the church, I don't mean the establishment.

Julie Holly: I mean what Jesus meant, the people who follow in His way because religiosity has done real damage. It put God himself on a cross. The religious leaders of Jesus' day pushed for his death. That's how far behavior without

Julie Holly: relationship can go. and leaders over all the centuries have used their power to abuse people who are just trying to get close to God.

Julie Holly: From spiritual abuse, which researcher Dr. Lisa Oakley describes as a form of emotional and psychological abuse characterized by a systematic pattern of coercive and controlling behavior in a religious context, to sexual abuse and everything in between.

Julie Holly: We're going to go deeper into that in episode five, and I wanna do it with a lot of care. But for today, just this: have you met God? Or have you heard about God? Because those aren't the same thing.

Julie Holly: And honestly, that question is for people like me who follow and love God as much as it is for anyone After recognition, we transition to release

Julie Holly: Release what you've been carrying longer than necessary can be set down With honor, not shame. Letting go of a role is not abandonment, it's alignment

Julie Holly: If you're faith forward, what you might get to set down today isn't the practice, it's the contract. the if I skip, my day is cursed. You can keep the reading and let go of the fear underneath it.

Julie Holly: Habits are helpful, and we just wanna be mindful of when they cross the line and become performance. So the question I'd ask you to carry this week is this one: Is my heart tender and receptive or fearful and protective? If you're not faith forward, what you might get to set down is a secondhand verdict, not your discernment. Your anger may be completely right and aimed at real harm. The only question is whether the person who did it and God are the same.

Julie Holly: If someone blamed me for what my adult child chose to do, I'd be frustrated. Most of us would. And I wanna be honest about something. Why did God allow it is a real question. it's a different question, and I'm not going to pretend to answer it in one episode. Today, I'm only asking whether your verdict about God was formed firsthand. I'm not asking you to do anything I haven't done. Last week, I told you I blamed God for what a man did. I did this too. Release doesn't mean pretending it didn't happen.

Julie Holly: Discernment is letting what you learned stay wise without letting it stay in charge. It doesn't mean a magic wand has been waved and everything is just as it should be Here's what it looked like for me.

Julie Holly: During my abusive marriage, I stopped going to church for about a year and a half. It was the same stretch of time my ex-husband kept me from my family. And when I finally walked back through those doors, I was a destroyed young woman in sweats and slippers. What a look. And I didn't care what anyone thought.

Julie Holly: I needed God, and I could feel His presence while we sang, tears streaming down my face. I didn't feel alone. I was safe. I was forgiven. I was free. Same building, same songs I'd sung my whole life, but I wasn't there to prove anything anymore. I was just there to be with God. And I'm still releasing things.

Julie Holly: Last week, I told you about catching myself raising what I call religious robots. In the early years of raising my kids, I prayed they'd have their own faith experience. And then I boxed it in with what I believed that experience should look like. I was so afraid they wouldn't love God.

Julie Holly: And the shift for me has been trusting that they'll have their own faith journey, that it's theirs. Knowing all the while that God loves them more than I can fathom. Trusting God with my kids took more faith than almost anything I've done, and it's the one thing I could never force.

Julie Holly: And honestly, it's the same thing I've had to learn as a coach. I don't get to play God in anyone's life. I just get to love them and do what I was created to do, support high-capacity humans in their recalibration So what's next? Clarity returns, not as something new, but as a recognition of what was always true.

Julie Holly: That's reclamation, and that's where we're headed next week. We're going to talk about what comes back when the contract and the rumor are set down. Because what comes back isn't new, it's what was always true. So here's what I want to leave you with today. Faith is trust in a person, and you can't really trust someone you only know secondhand, not through a habit, not through a feeling, and not through what someone else told you.

Julie Holly: So this week, just ask yourself, "Is what I believe about God something I've experienced or something I've heard?"

Julie Holly: If you wanna keep processing this series alongside other people, the Recalibration Collective is our ongoing home. I hold two live trainings each month. One's directed at recalibrating relationships, and the other

Julie Holly: career and calling, we also have a book club, and I love showing up in there all the time.

Julie Holly: In fact, I've been having a lot of fun adding content into this group, that isn't what I put on social platforms. and it's funny because nobody's in there yet, and that's okay. I'm showing up because I know this is an important space, and I'm okay preparing it and welcoming you in when the time is right.

Julie Holly: If you join before November 1st, the founding rate is yours for life. You'll also receive two private one-on-one sessions with me. I also have other opportunities opening up because it is that beautiful time of year. So click the link in the show notes and it will pull up all the current opportunities for us to work together

Julie Holly: If you're unsure of what's best for you, that's exactly what the insight and alignment call is for. It's a free conversation, And we'll figure out together what fits Remember, this is a daily journey and you're exactly where you need to be today