Finding Peace Beyond Religious Legalism

Hey friends, this week’s clip is from season three, episode seven.

This episode deals with the idea of legalism. If you aren’t sure what that’s about, you definitely want to listen to the whole episode.

It’s important that we know the difference between obeying the rules and having a relationship with God, and that is what this whole episode is about.

But the main reason why I wanted to feature this one is that I met a wonderful friend in this episode.

Desiree Taylor was my guest, and I was the very first podcast she ever went on to promote her book.

I read that book, I binge-read that book in a day and a half because I related so much to it.

And after this conversation and the one we had afterward, we realized we were close enough to meet in person, which we did. We are friends to this day, and I love her to bits.

She is one of my favorite people in the world.

And also, this episode has gotten the most downloads of all my episodes.

This is clearly a winner all around.

You are going to enjoy this clip.

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Refurbished Clip: Season 3, Episode 7

Fun. I love that, because I knew that one chapter was going to be challenging.

Talking about it with people, because it’s almost offensive when I talk about that, the memorizing scripture, and I tried to put it in a respectful way, in the sense that not everyone has that battle.

Not everyone has this struggle.

Memorizing scripture isn’t necessarily wrong, but it is wrong when you put that in a box, and your identity is based on whether you can memorize this or not.

And as a mother, too, because my kids grew up while I was trying to figure this out.

So they were still in a lot of that along the way.

And it was the same thing with them.

I was identified as the kind of mother I was by how well my children could memorize.

And it made me so angry.

How dare you put that on me?

And we do that to people.

That’s what makes me angry, I think, is that we have put identity markers on people.

You have to be this, do this in order to be something or someone.

And that’s not what God says.

And I think it was too much of an emphasis.

And I really wanted to bring that out.

And I did.

And so we’ll see where the conversations go on that.

But it really blesses my heart to hear that you, not that you experienced it, but just that you can relate to it.

Because sometimes I feel like I’m the only one.

And the conversations I have with people sometimes seem odd.

Everyone’s all about the scripture memorization, which is fine.

It’s just, yeah, it becomes a little bit too much, I think.

Yeah, it can, yeah, it can become just a thing you check off the box, which is another thing that you mentioned was box-checking.

I love my to-do list.

I’ll check things off all the time, and I’ll feel accomplished.

I’ll feel relaxed because I remembered something and I put it away.

I finished it.

But that’s not how we should be with God or our walk with him.

That’s not a relationship.

That’s a to-do list.

And I like how you mentioned that.

It’s okay to memorize scripture, but if you’re doing it with the wrong motive, then what’s the point?

Then it’s just another thing you’re doing.

It’s like what I did in school didn’t honor God.

I didn’t have the scriptures memorized.

I don’t even remember half of the ones that I memorized before my test.

That’s not what he wants.

He wants our hearts.

He wants all of us.

And that includes the sacrifice of, if you do plan on memorizing, do it for the right reasons.

Don’t just do it because you’re worried about what your school will think, your friends will think, your church will think.

You need to worry about your audience of one, which is another thing you mentioned.

Thank you for listening to this clip.

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🎧 Original Episode:

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