{"id":552,"date":"2010-02-11T17:04:13","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T23:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/?p=552"},"modified":"2010-03-04T15:13:26","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T21:13:26","slug":"interrogating-the-legalist-within","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/2010\/02\/interrogating-the-legalist-within\/","title":{"rendered":"Interrogating the Legalist Within"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just like Ryan preached about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/messages\/Date\/FEB_07_2010.php\">the Pharisee&#8217;s self righteousness<\/a> on Sunday, we&#8217;re all guilty of justifying ourselves instead of trusting in the promise of the gospel.\u00c2\u00a0 Here is part of an article from C.J. Mahaney about fighting against that tendency.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Remember the passion for Jesus you had? Remember the joy and overwhelming gratitude to God that came from knowing your sins were forgiven?<\/p>\n<p>Now think about your Christian life today. Have you moved on to other things? Maybe you&#8217;re primarily focused on fighting lust, or pursuing godly relationships with the opposite sex, or battling pride, or cultivating patience.<\/p>\n<p>If so, life is probably quite different for you now. Perhaps you often lack joy, or wonder why you can&#8217;t make greater progress in spiritual maturity, or feel condemned when you sin. So you study your Bible more, or attend another small-group meeting, or serve in new ways at church, or read the latest book.<\/p>\n<p>All these practices are good. Some are vital. But let me suggest the likely root cause of your problems: Perhaps you have simply drifted from the message that saved you. If you lack passion for God, if you sometimes wonder where the joy went, then consider: Are you still clinging to the gospel? Whether you grew up in church or were saved on the streets, you were saved by the same simple message: <em>Christ died for your  sins<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a title=\"Interrogating the Legalist Within, Mahaney\" href=\"http:\/\/www.boundless.org\/2005\/articles\/a0001465.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">Read the rest here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just like Ryan preached about the Pharisee&#8217;s self righteousness on Sunday, we&#8217;re all guilty of justifying ourselves instead&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/2010\/02\/interrogating-the-legalist-within\/\">Continue Reading &rsaquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,36,41],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":579,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions\/579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desertspringschurch.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}