How do you communicate with God?
I understand that I just asked a big question, and one that will certainly not be answered in this short article or on this forum. But it is a question that I think is worth discussing, and highly relevant to our discussions here lately about community. I’ve started to realize something rather amazing. The way I communicate with God has a lot to do with the way I communicate with other people. And thus my communicating with God affects my role in the communities I am participating in. I don’t have any great theological truth to dictate to you today. Nor do I have any grand answers to what some might rightly call an unanswerable question. I do however want to present a framework for a dicussion about a topic I feel is a relevant and highly exciting part of my journey recently. In Christian terms, the primary word for communicating with God is of course prayer.
Legalism
This is NOT written about UBF. This is from Tough Topics by Sam Storms on legalism, which is related to my previous post: Galatians Set Me Free From Legalism.
You didn’t do what I want! “Legalism is the tendency to regard as divine law things that God has neither required nor forbidden in Scripture, and the corresponding inclination to look with suspicion on others for their failure or refusal to conform.”
Become my slave. “There are professing Christians, who are determined to bring you under their religious thumb. They are bent on making you a slave of their conscience. They have built a tidy religious box…and they strive to stuff you inside and make you conform to its dimensions. They are legalists, and their tools are guilt, fear, intimidation, and self-righteousness. They proclaim God’s unconditional love for you, but insist on certain conditions before including you among the accepted, approved elite of God’s favored few.” Continue reading →
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