legalism vs discipline

Legalism, is essentially placing too much emphasis on the law, codes of conduct, rules & regulations. Often this leads to pride, superficiality, absence of mercy, and a lack of emphasis on God's grace. The letter of the law is highly esteemed instead of the spirit of the law. Legalism claims that obedience to the law is the way to salvation instead of believing that God's grace and the shedding of Christ's blood redeems us.

We should never seek to read the Bible or pray to God with the motivation that we will be more spiritual than the next person. Too often, we compare ourselves with one another and convince ourselves that certain activities will raise us to a higher level of spirituality. We must banish those thoughts from our mind and cling to the desire to know and love God above all else.

On the other hand, there are times in our spiritual walk that we find ourselves without that desire. We find ourselves complacent and lacking in the want to. There are times in which we must choose to be disciplined. We must choose to seek God even though the feelings of "want-to" may not exist. However the motivation is similar, the desire to know God instead of the desire to be seen as better than others.

A spiritual discipline is considered a practice which helps to cultivate spirituality. There are many spiritual disciplines: fasting, silence, solitude, prayer, meditation, and the list goes on.

I guess it all comes back to the position of the heart and the motivation behind the action. We can go back to the idea of the Do To Be Tree and understand that the motivation was to "be" something as a result of the action a person took. God wants us to take action because we already are; we are His children and that alone should motivate us to desire or discipline. But the fact that we are God's children should never lead us to legalism.