It’s Not About Religion, It’s About Relationship

“God is not asking us to be perfect. When we lean on Him and we have that relationship with Him, that's what keeps us out of trouble.”

Below is a snippet of a conversation with Dot Byrdic, a 75-year-old woman of God and prayer warrior. Dot shares her journey from growing up with a religious spirit to developing an intimate, personal relationship with the Lord. She also offers words of wisdom on going to battle in your prayer closet and learning to trust God. If you prefer listening, you can listen to the full conversation on Apple, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

What has your faith journey looked like?

So as a child, I always loved God and loved Jesus. I loved Sunday school. I would go to bed and read my Bible at night and I just loved God. And I would have said I was a Christian because I loved Jesus.

But when I was 23, I was going to a Baptist church. My husband went to the Baptist church and so I was going to the Baptist church with him. And in Sunday school one day, the sister of a friend who was in my class was there, she and her husband. And between Sunday school and church, she said, ‘Hey, can my husband and I come out and visit you one night this week?’ So I grew up in a small town. We knew everybody and I knew this girl from school. She was a few years older, but I thought, why does she want to come out and visit with me? But I said, sure, you know, being the Southern lady that I am. So she and her husband came out and they presented the gospel to me.

This was in 1972, heart of the Jesus revolution, you know? So they presented the gospel to me and said, ‘Do you want to accept Jesus as your Savior?’ And I was kind of like, why not? I mean, it was like, yeah, do you want this $100,000 tonight or do just want to take it home with me, you know? So I’m like yes, sure.

And my husband wasn't home when they came, he was still at work and I'd already put the kids to bed. When he came home, they asked him the same thing. They presented the gospel to him again and then asked him and he said no, he did not want to accept Jesus as his savior. Big mistake on his part at that point in time. But anyway, it started a journey for me of learning about God and wanting to please Him, wanting to be good, do what I needed to do.

Then, like four years after this, my husband told me that he, well, he actually left me for another woman, which was probably why he didn't want to accept Jesus that night. Anyway, needless to say, that threw my life into a tailspin. I had two young children that I needed to raise by myself and had to get a job. I wasn't working at that time. And I ultimately moved to Hilton Head…and honestly made some bad decisions, started hanging out with people that did not go to church, did not have the beliefs that I had.

I was dulling my pain is what I was doing. I was going out and having fun and dulling my pain. I'm not a drinker. I've never done drugs. We all find ways to dull our pain. I will say right here and now, Jesus is the only safe way to dull your pain. He's the only crutch that we should have because all the others are going to lead to bad things.

So anyway, I'm going my own way and I joined a volleyball team and was playing volleyball and there was another girl on the team, Wendy. And she and I became friends at volleyball and we started hanging out together. She had a daughter that was about my daughter's age.

One day we were standing in front of her house. I can still remember exactly where we were standing at the time. And I don't remember exactly what the conversation was, but something like, ‘You know, I'm just not happy with my life right now, things just aren't going well.’ And I don't know which one of us said it first, but one of us said, ‘I know what it is, I need to get back in church.’ And neither one of us knew that the other had been in church at one time.

But it was kind of like, at that time, there was a commercial for V8, and they would say, ‘I could have had a V8.’ You know, they drank tomato juice and they'd say, ‘Oh yeah, I could have had a V8.’ So we always call that our V8 moment. And so we joined a church, we found a church together and we started going to Bible studies and really got back into church and the Lord.

And she got married not long after that and moved away and I was still on the island and I met someone again and got married…and he claimed to be a Christian and said all the right things and told me about all these people that he brought to the Lord. And so we got married. In retrospect, I wasn't asking God a whole lot if I should have married him. It just seemed right at the time. And so I married him. And nine years later, he told me he didn't want to live with me anymore.

So I'm like, God, here I am at the same place again, and once was hard enough, but two times was really hard. And so the night that he told me that I went into my bathroom because it was the only place where I could lock the door. I wanted to be by myself and I knelt down beside my toilet. It was a very humble position. And I said, God, I have to know once and for all in my life that no matter what happens to me, you are enough for me, no matter what happens.

And so it started me on a totally different journey with God, and I really dug into God. I mean, I had been a good little Christian girl up to that point, mostly, except for when I veered that time. But, I would say I had a religious spirit. It was more about keeping the letter of the law and going to church on Sunday morning and, you know, don't smoke, don't chew, you don't mess with people who do, basically. So this started me on a totally different journey with God that’s been amazing.

What’s been one of the most important things you’ve learned on your walk with God?

One of the most important things is that, and this is definitely not something that I knew when I was younger, nobody ever told me this when I was younger, even when I accepted Jesus as my savior at 23. Nobody ever said that it's all about the relationship with God, that God wants to have relationship with us. Jesus wants to have relationship with us. Holy Spirit wants to have relationship. It's not just about checking the boxes.

And I was reading my Bible all the time and even before that bathroom moment, when I cried out to God, I mean, I was in Bible studies and I was reading my Bible. But somebody said to me one day, ‘You know, it's about the relationship. It's about having a relationship with God and that's what He wants.’ That was like another V8 moment for me. I was like, yeah, you know, it's not just about praying to God and saying, ‘This is my list for today, I need you to answer these things.’ But it's about listening to Him, walking with Him, just being with Him.

And the relationship is what will keep us out of trouble. You know, I think trying to check the boxes, that performance thing, it gets old, it gets tiring, and you can't be perfect. You cannot be perfect. But God is not asking us to be perfect. When we lean on Him and we have that relationship with Him, that's what keeps us out of trouble.

What’s one of the most important lessons the Lord has taught you over the years?

An important lesson is that when we open the door to sin, and it can be any kind of sin…it can be sins that can be seen, like stealing, murder, whatever, but it also can be sins of our heart, like unforgiveness, rejection, offense, fear, anger. When we open the door to these things, when we don't forgive somebody, you know, the Bible tells us if we don't forgive, God doesn't forgive us. Well, that's pretty serious because I have a lot that I want Him to forgive me for, and so nobody's ever done anything that bad to me. I need forgiveness.

But when we open the door to sin, the enemy gets a foothold. When we stay in these sins, the enemy gets a foothold or a stronghold, it's called in the Bible, and he has a legal right to then harass us with these things. He can harass us in our thoughts, these things can ruin our relationships, they can ruin our relationship with God. It's hard to have a relationship with God, if you're so angry with somebody that you can hardly see then it's hard to have a relationship with God who's the pure perfect One. So it can ruin relationships, can ruin jobs and cause you to lose a job, but it can also affect our health. It can also affect our bodies.

Even the medical community is now saying that 80% of our illnesses are psychosomatic in some way, either through unforgiveness, or some people just believe they're going to be sick and they get sick. They believe, I'm going to get cancer and they get cancer. Unforgiveness can cause things like cancer, heart attack, high blood pressure, autoimmune diseases.

And so what I would want people to know is, no, let go of those things. You know, I've heard it said about unforgiveness, that it's like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. They don't. It's us that will die.

Other wise words worth echoing:

-“It's on us. God is right there and He's ready to have this relationship with us. So it's on us to pursue and get to know Him and His ways and trust Him. Trust Him because His ways are always good. He's never going to fail us.”

-“We have to learn to fight what the enemy says.”

-“He is a good, good Father. And He wants the best for us, even when we don't want the best for us.”

Listen to the full conversation on Apple, Spotify or watch on YouTube.

Thank you for being here,

Katharine

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