How to Breakthrough Confusion Coming out of Religious Legalism

in this video i want to give you some tips on how to break through the confusion and the inner torment that can come about through being brought up or raised in or being in a culture of religious legalism and you recognize that you kind of have that inner pharisee that's barking in your ear a lot and you're struggling to walk free and in my work i help a lot of people that have been they recognize they've been in legalistic cultures or condemnation very harsh upbringing and how they relate to god or maybe even cult atmospheres or spiritually abusive atmospheres or toxic faith and so they're wanting to heal and they're wanting to move forward and experience the freedom in christ that's available but what they've been raised in they recognize isn't producing freedom it's producing more bondage and more of a yoke of burden on their life so these are just some simple things i would encourage and and what you're really going to need to give room for is you need to give room for a journey and a process you're going to have to give yourself permission that number one i'm on a journey now of learning and i actually could have wrote their relearning and i want to use two words here learning and experiencing so this isn't just i want to get some stuff in my head this is something i need to experience so what does that mean it's going to take time so you need patience now to have it to work in your life this is a journey this is not a destination and you've got to lovingly look at yourself with grace because there's three terms i'm going to encourage you to delve into and let your heart learn and experience these are not things you just check off a box and learn in a class they're not things you just look up in the dictionary you need your heart to possess them so that you experience them in your life and these three words are love grace and mercy without these things established in the foundation the root system of your life everything else is going to lose its footing and its proper landing and this is one of the biggest problems in christianity we address certain topics without this foundation being properly laid so therefore whatever topic we're talking about it loses context and many topics get into judgmentalism where they get in a posture where you see god as just angry all the time ready to just crush you or you feel more tormented than set free your focus in your journey is love grace and mercy love most likely you're going to have to learn to move from a fear a tormenting fear and punishment based relationship with god into a love relationship with god you see a fear-based relationship creates avoidance you move away from him you don't move close you feel more tormented you're waiting for that punishment the hammer to hit right because that's what you were trained in and to see that way and you could use a lot of scriptures to validate that scriptures out of context in the greater picture of god's love i especially encourage people to learn what does it mean to experience god's love as your father now that's going to take you into deeper healing because it's going to bring up the father image in your life what was your dad like how did he treat you or what was your spiritual father like the pastor you sat under the the sunday school teacher that you sat under who taught you the ways of god and modeled to you what did they model to you well you may need to do some relearning about what love is grace points back to god's ability and what jesus did so now i when you when you're detoxing and you're learning to get out of the confusion you stop trying and striving and you shift your posture to just learning to receive because the work of the cross is a finished work but i'm in a journey of learning how to receive that and i got to give myself permission and grace because grace is about his power working in and through my heart and i got to allow that now that's a relational rhythm this isn't like i got to learn the ten things the three steps the four things it's a totally different rhythm maybe you want to start with just take the word grace and just read every mention of it in the scriptures and let it wash over your heart it's a heart thing not just knowing in theory now mercy is beautiful because mercy is the compassion of god in your struggle in your suffering his tender mercy his loving kindness towards you that is meant to just really empower your heart and to feel his closeness that is near those who are struggling in their hearts and and having a difficult time and he's near you so it's a journey now so this is my first and top recommendation you got confusion and you've got any form of religious legalism whether it was in your home your church or just your own connection and what you cultivated in your own life this is where you gotta park and you gotta allow that to to run its course and you never arrive by the way you're always in process of growing in those areas anyone who acts like they know this and have real estate there and they're self-deceived because you never arrive you're always going deeper and deeper into experiencing the power of what it is and the fruit of it is more freedom by the way number two is you want to run everything through the grid of relationship now so as you move forward you've been taught to run everything through the grid of rules now i'm not negating moral standards i'm not negating right and wrong i'll stand right with you on precepts of right and wrong and standing for good and saying no to evil but as a believer when you're walking with god the grit is relationship so what i mean by that is this if i come over your house and you say hey i want to have you over for dinner maybe we can get to know each other and i come over and i analyze everything in your house i analyze your pictures and ah what book why do you have that book there and oh you got that movie that's that's in your and i'm evaluating everything and then i'm like you know did you spend time praying this morning did you read the bible you'd first go wait a second i don't even know you yet and second of all this is annoying and if in conversation i'm just pointing out your flaws and pointing out things you did wrong and and telling you all the rules you're not following would you invite me over for dinner again no if i kept doing at some point you'd probably go man i think i got somewhere to be you know what maybe make up an excuse to end dinner early right because i'm a terrible houseguest jesus said i stand at the door and knock and when he said that in the book of revelation he was rebuking a lukewarm church so this was not like just a little issue it was a big deal but the remedy he gives is i'm at the door and i'm knocking open the door and i'm going to come in and tell you everything that's wrong with you and all the rules you need to follow and get all the things done right he goes no that's not what he's saying he says i'm going to come in i just want to have dinner with you and see many of us if we got that rebuke of your lukewarm we would go oh my goodness and we'd spin because of our legalistic training what i gotta do i'm gonna try harder god i'm gonna try harder and jesus goes i'm gonna open the door and come in and we go here it goes and he says i wanna have dinner wait and what else what are you gonna tell me at dinner no just wanna have dinner i wanna dine with you you with me see your patterns in your life run it through the grid of relationship your devotional life is it really enhancing relationship then maybe throw it out and reboot the whole thing god i want to learn how to relate to you from my heart and true relationship because my formalities and habits nothing wrong with habits rituals and formalities nothing wrong with them but the activities we engage in how we interact with god have to enhance heart connection and relationship with him so maybe you need to reboot it maybe you need to change maybe go for a prayer walk rather than some of your laborious prayer that just spins and cycles and you feel exhausted maybe you need to just learn to just receive god's love and sit and meditate on his love for you and focusing on that but run everything you do through the grid of relationship would this make a healthy relationship the way i'm spinning about this the way i always feel like i gotta fix this thing and that thing would that be a great relationship of two people if that was the focus all the time that has helped me a lot number three is you're gonna need to detox religious um legalistic environments and that's gonna be a tough one for some people because in some cases it means leaving a toxic church in some cases it means stepping away from a ministry that um added to legalism in your life it may be having to have some space in certain friendships relationships it may be letting go of certain teachers that you used to listen to but they keep hammering that area i know for me there were a few preachers i listened to all the time that for a long span i gave myself permission i for the sake of getting free from condemnation and legalism in my life i need to let go of listening to them for a while now this thing in my head would say that means you're compromising and you don't want to hear the truth no i don't know what love is i don't know what grace is i don't know what mercy is and i need to learn that and so i'm giving myself permission and at some point down the road maybe some of those teachings will come back into play in the right context most likely i'll just move on and i'm now evolving and that's okay that's okay because i believe in the importance of everything you teach in here should be enhancing your walk with god producing more freedom adding more fruit into your life if not examine what's influencing your grid and how you're pursuing the things of god i'm also going to need to put away guilt as a motivator because guilt is a big time motivator it makes you anxious it creates conflict and many christians they see guilt as a way that god always talks to them so the primary mechanism is i did this because i feel bad i felt bad so i i felt bad so i now again run that through the grid of relationship is are great relationships formed out of guilt you know top 10 reasons you have a great relationship i have a lot of guilt no anyone who has has high maintenance relationships that drain them one of the things is a lot of guilt and the problem is in legalistic churches guilt is a primary emotional motivator so when the offering bucket is passed guilt is used when in service get involved in the church guilt is used to motivate make you feel bad so then you live out of feeling bad that's not the christian life we are that's not freedom because then what happens is you can be easily manipulated in that area to take action and god is not a manipulator he will not manipulate your emotions he wants love relationship so you can literally choose it and choose not to guilt forces a religious hand on you to condemn you accuse you and get you move in right this i find takes time and patience because honestly people admit yeah guilt motivated a lot of my life they read the bible because they feel bad oh i haven't read the bible oh i better pray feel bad again i believe in bible reading and prayer so passionately but are we motivated by guilt because then that puts the weight and pressure back on us that's not going to produce the righteous freedom that christ paid for okay so i had to learn to put away and it took time it took time to identify and go i i can't keep serving that guilt i can't keep obeying it every time it comes up now this is where the grace is really going to kick in i need to make room what does that mean make allowance and even appreciation for weaknesses paul said i boast in my weaknesses i don't know that i don't know that we're there yet right boasting and bragging about our weaknesses we're still running and hiding from them right struggle and you know what it's okay you're not okay you're in process get out of that black and white perfectionism and vulnerability see in legalistic environments vulnerability is very rare when it does happen it's used manipulatively to guilt people or to manipulate people's emotions but it's not true vulnerability because true vulnerability admits to struggle admits to weakness it allows for repentance i'm sorry i'm sorry you know because now when you're in this place and you detox this you value relationship in legalistic environments i value what you can do to keep this machine going here i value compliance so you do what we tell you to do but it's absent of relationship and creates performance driven cultures where your only connection in the church and sadly for many people your only connection in the church is because you fill a role and if you didn't have that role there wouldn't be as much relationship connection i experienced that in my own life it's like if i didn't have something to offer here or fulfill a role would i still have community and in some cases there was a grieving i had to go through and realizing that that i didn't have true relationship connection was based on what i did now number six what i would encourage as a practical step is find mentors teachers shepherds now don't rush this don't rush this let just be open to it and these are various areas because mentors speak of people that personally speak into your life those you might need you might need at first a counselor or a coach that you trust to to to to be a mentor for a season or teachers people materials that do what they add love grace and truth in your life and preferably in that order because many times you get truth but it's not really truth and there's an absence of grace and love or they'll say well i said it in love did you really cultivate a love environment is there really grace here because love and grace are what truth needs truth needs to land itself in the context of loving grace that's what the bible says speaking the truth in love right so even if something i say does not produce greater love grace and truth in your life together and you feel condemned or confused i tell people just set it aside and if what i'm sharing with you doesn't land with you it's where you're at in your journey it's all right too i'm speaking to those that god's brought into my path that can be blessed out of what i've learned and what god's helped me to grow in and shepherds now these can be you know many times we use the official word pastor and many times pastors are people that they're they look out for others they're the people that like hey how are you doing how are things going they make fantastic group leaders true shepherds i'm not just talking about a title i'm talking about someone who really shepherds because many pastors aren't actual shepherds they're just they're organizational leaders right i'm talking about shepherds that look out for the life of people and when they haven't heard from you a while they check up on you and and things like that those are treasures those are treasures the people that really operate in that organically but i'm going to look for input in my life to teach me in these love grace and mercy i want to know the truth but i want to know it in the way that i experience freedom jesus said you'll know the truth and the truth will set you free and in some translations it says make you free it's like just being connected to truth you're gonna the byproduct is freedom so many people say well i want to know the truth and i think and they have a gage where they think they're listening to the truth but really they're listening to legalism condemnation or maybe they maybe they struggle with obsessiveness over it and they think it's truth but i go look at the fruit are you more free as a result of that mindset and that behavior in that pathway no mark okay then you're gonna have to make a decision are you willing to let that go and now let god's covenant in christ jesus teach you his love his grace his mercy towards you now enhance relationship now detox from the the bondage and the weights that are on you put away guilt and now be free to live out of love free to make your own choices and not have the guilt trip hanging on you and now make weaknesses when you make mistakes and you're struggling and you have even failures you make room for it it's a part of the process it's a part of the learning and now i'm gonna welcome teachers that are speaking you'll bear witness and go there's something here that i need in my life so i pray this helps you in your journey and i pray most of all it produces more freedom in your walk and i look forward to seeing you in future resources god bless you

Channel: Mark DeJesus

Views: 4,217

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Religious Legalism, Toxic Faith, Confusion, Christianity, Heart Healing, Grace, Love, Mercy, Performance Driven Christianity

Id: PFkedtX8jRI

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2020