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.

The Law of Spirit of Life

I’ve said myself and heard it said many times if you “know better, then do better” basically “respond to what is right.” It’s frustrating to try to get people to respond to truth or to reality through persuasion only.

But responding takes an inner miracle within us. We can do our best by our own strength but that is extremely limited. That falls far short in even the strongest and most gifted of people. People love darkness over light.

The ability to respond to Jesus and to truth requires an inner miracle.

Many “woke” Christians are just legalists laying down new law after new law. They live by and thrive by guilt.

But, most of the “I’m free in Christ” Christians are confused libertines putting people in more bondage than the legalists are.

There is a balance, a law of the spirit of life that helps us to be free TO LIVE FOR Christ. We become able to shun the license to sin but do not reject our brethren for missing the mark (or missing our marks).

The law of the spirit of life is true grace, not pretend grace.

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