legalism

Are you suffering on the inside?

/ merri ellen g :) / Leave a comment

broken-heart-love-sad

There are 4 traditional approaches to discipleship that actually lead to bondage:

Osmosis: Get people to attend church and serve faithfully.

Academics: Teach information about the faith.

Behaviour: Establish performance expectations for church members.

Church: Train people to invite others, serve, and join a small group. 

These 4 things above may have good elements but without an actual relationship with Jesus, you will soon feel like an imposter or impersonator – you look like Him but you don’t actually know Him. You most likely become stuck in perfectionism, anxiety, legalism and other bondage.

While traditional discipleship tends to focus on the outside, heart-focused discipleship deals with what is going on inside of you!

Following Jesus is about relationship!
It starts with hearing His voice. 🙂 

This is one of my favourite things to do… I love introducing ‘church’ people to Jesus! I coach people who are stuck in legalistic bondage and into truly hearing Jesus and knowing Him.

Happy to help you…

 

(4 elements above adapted from: Marcus Warner)

Pastor, How Do You Define Yourself?

/ merri ellen g :) / Leave a comment

image-asset

Many years ago I connected with Ed Underwood (and I have referenced his resources before on this blog). He recently wrote this post… (which is addressed to pastors but is for ALL OF US in ministry….)

Pastor, the Shocking Contrast Between Legalism and Grace.

We can choose to define ourselves as pastors by what we’re doing or not doing to please or displease legalists.

Or we can choose to focus on our personal resources and giftedness in Christ obtained only by grace.

Carrying around a to-do and a to-not-to-do list that self-proclaimed church hall monitors think you should maintain enough is exhausting.

Still, many of us seem afraid to launch out into what the legalists warn us is the wilderness of grace.

But, if we consult the New Testament we’ll see that there is a shocking contrast between grace and legalism.

Read Ed’s full post here… 🙂