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A Modern Form of Legalism

If someone has been praying for something for extended periods of time with no positive answer.

It is a form of condemnation to tell them they don’t have enough faith or that they haven’t prayed hard enough or they haven’t prayed in the right way yet. It’s basically saying “God is NOT in charge of this situation, YOU ARE, you or your faith or your prayers, or maybe your attitude is not enough, so your suffering is your fault.” That way of thinking itself is as bad as the attitude of the faithlessness.

This way of thinking is a fruit of legalism, a cruel and condemning legalism. It accuses people who struggle financially emotionally or physically of faithlessness.

Jesus on the other hand exposes real faithlessness not our bad circumstances as proof of faithlessness. Many times he commended the faith of people who were experiencing terrible situations of their great faith.

It is undeniable that sometimes God responds to our faith by saying “no, I want you to endure this”, and sometimes God says “not now, wait for me”.

When he does say this, bible verses taken out of context don’t override him. We can’t control him with bible logic. And that is not him letting us down. It is us not getting what we want.

Jesus even prayed to escape the cross, the Fathers reply…”I want you to endure this”. Jesus then responded “not my will your will be done.”

Job prayed for relief and to understand why he was suffering …result , “not yet, endure it for a while”. All the apostles were persecuted and most were murdered as well as countless Christians through the centuries. Did they not pray hard enough? or in the right way?, was their faith poor?

When every human dies of old age and God doesn’t answer their prayers to avoid death, is it their fault? Are they not in faith? Are they not praying properly?

To believe this way is to ignore a good portion of the New Testament and most of life’s circumstances and situations.

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Gospel Deficiency

Whenever something is off, or it produces bad fruit, be it chronic illness in our bodies or mind. Or the results in gardening or farming it is necessary to look for the root cause if we really want to resolve it.

Mineral Deficiencies

In gardening often the root cause in bad fruit is at a deeper more fundamental level. Often it is a mineral deficiency in something critical for life function.

An example in human health, chronic headaches are not solved with aspirin, that is just an expensive masking of a symptom. Headaches can result from high blood pressure which may result from a number of things such as low blood sodium. Anxiety can be the bad fruit of a magnesium deficiency.

Warning Signals

Symptoms are warning signals of a fundamental problem or deficiency. Poor soil results in unhealthy plants which results in no or lousy fruit.

Applied to Christianity

Also, the root cause in church fruit problems, ALL OF THEM is the gospel preached and accepted by its members. Shallowness, over-emphasis on certain doctrines. Self-centeredness, coldness to certain people types, is a sign of a deeper problem.

Either false gospel (like toxins) or incomplete (like deficiencies) gospels being preached and accepted. Or sometimes it is even a complete abandonment of the original gospel (see what happened in the book of Galatians).

The foundation for the life of all Christianity is the gospel of the kingdom preached by John the Baptist and then Jesus and then his disciples. And I’m afraid to say it’s almost unheard of in modern Christianity.

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The Fruit of Your Gospel

Teachings and sermons about producing Christian fruit have been overdone and even used for abuse. As I here write about fruit I’m not describing any particular group or behavior.

This post is about the preaching of different gospels. Gospels produce converts and ultimately churches. I’ve observed different gospels producing different types of converts and churches and ministries. The gospel of the kingdom of Jesus Christ also produces a fruit that God describes as good and which Jesus gave us a standard to measure against.

The gospel of the kingdom does not produce churches where evangelistic sermons by one or two are the only and supreme focus for every meeting. And where everyone else are expected to sit and observe for a lifetime.

Where meetings are filled with believers who barely know one another… if at all, and stare at the back of one another’s head.

It does not see lifetime friends disappear, cut off fellowship, for petty reasons, without so much as a goodbye. Like church is some sort of impersonal business relationship

It does not produce sermon series…. endless ….sermon…. series.

It produces family, it produces face to face sharing of Jesus Christ back and forth shared life in even the shyest and poorest of people. People without skill and without ambition for other things.

It produces a people completely outside a satan controlled world. Who challenge the world together and with effective force, who together get into trouble with that world. It does not produce a people who fit right into it and who ignore reality.

It produces a people united by only the person of Jesus himself and that is all they need, not money. They do not have a common adoration for a certain pastor or priest or line of theology

The gospel of the kingdom, after a time of discipleship, produces bodies of believers obsessed with Jesus Christ who understand their together-calling. Who all speak and share equally, extrovert and introvert, who share their material wealth one with another. It produces love, deep genuine Jesus love,

It grows organically without strategy and without marketing, people just are drawn, sometimes a few people other times MANY people, it’s money flows to one another to produce equality with all, it’s members are led by the spirit and are not ashamed to speak and so sermons often are not necessary at all. It is not controllable or visible to human governments. It actually gets attacked by governments.

The fruit of the gospel of the kingdom looks like a gorgeous counterpart to Jesus Christ in the earth.

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