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050 | Is Contemplative Prayer Biblical?
451 Plays4 years ago
In this episode we discuss the contemplative tradition: where it came from, who the main players are, and whether spiritual disciplines like the Lectio Divina should be standard Christian practice. More links will be in show notes on the blog. ----Mentioned In This Episode----
- New Age practices to be aware of: https://doreenvirtue.com/2019/07/21/an-a-z-list-of-new-age-practices-to-avoid-and-why
- Overview of the Lectio Divina: https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/fr._keating-classical_monastic_ld.pdf
- Prayer by Richard Foster (book)
- Beginning Contemplative Prayer by Kathryn Hermes (book)
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Verity Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Verity. I'm your host, Felicia Mason-Heimer, an author, speaker, and Bible teacher. This podcast will help you embrace the history and depth of the Christian faith, ask questions, seek answers, and devote yourself to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. You don't have to settle for watered down Christian teaching. And if you're ready to go deeper, God is just as ready to take you there. This is Verity, where every woman is a theologian.
Focus on Contemplative Tradition and Prayer
00:00:30
Speaker
Hello friends and welcome back to the Verity podcast. Today we're talking about the contemplative tradition and contemplative prayer. So I was actually really excited to research and produce this episode because I know that you guys have been wondering about this for quite a while. It's something that has been talked about in the Christian sphere more recently with the rise of new age influences.
00:00:59
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And there is an important question that we have to ask.
Discerning Genuine Christian vs. New Age Practices
00:01:02
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How do we as Orthodox believers discern between a genuine Christian contemplative tradition and something that's actually influenced by new age principles? Hopefully this episode gives you some much needed clarity on this topic. All of the sources that I used in my research for your further reading will be included in the show notes of this episode, which will be on my blog.
00:01:28
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at FeliciaMasonHimer.com. And just so you all know, we are working to have our episodes transcribed. And so we are slowly getting them transcribed two at a time so that we can stay within budget for the podcast. And as those episodes are transcribed, I go back to the show notes on the podcast and the transcriptions
Resources and Transcriptions
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are added. And so I believe most of the posts that are on there right now
00:01:57
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at least all of the episodes in the women's issues series, and then many of the episodes in the canon series have had their transcriptions added. So if you have been hoping to read along or share one of these episodes in an easy to read format, you can do so by going to FeliciaMasonHeimer.com. Okay, without further ado, let's go and look at the contemplative tradition and what this means.
Roots in Catholic and Wesleyan Holiness Traditions
00:02:24
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So if you aren't familiar with
00:02:27
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this concept, essentially what it is, is a manner of approaching the Christian life and particularly Christian disciplines of prayer, meditation, and the Holy Spirit. Much of the content regarding contemplation comes out of the Catholic tradition and the Wesleyan holiness slash charismatic tradition.
00:02:55
Speaker
Charismatic churches are descended from holiness churches, which are descended from the Wesleyan tradition, Wesleyan Methodist. I talked about this in the Dispensationalism episode. So you can go back and listen to that if you want a little bit of the church history there. But essentially, these two traditions, the Catholic and the Wesleyan holiness, are responsible for most of our content on the spiritual disciplines of prayer
00:03:24
Speaker
meditation, etc. Now, of course, all Christian traditions talk about in practice prayer, but specifically contemplative prayer finds its root in the history of these traditions.
Development by the Desert Fathers
00:03:38
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And the Wesleyan holiness aspect of this pulled a lot of their content and their modeling
00:03:46
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from the desert fathers in the early church and in the Catholic tradition. And so if you're like, who are the desert fathers? Good question. They were a variety of nuns and monks, essentially, in the very early monastic traditions. So when monasticism began to rise and become more popular or at least more accepted and practiced, there were groups of men and women who would retreat to the desert
00:04:16
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kind of like John the Baptist vibes, if you will, and practice these spiritual disciplines. They would practice silence, fasting, and prayer, and then they wrote extensively about these things, and those traditions were then passed down throughout church history. They are most read and appreciated in Catholic traditions and in more liturgical traditions.
00:04:42
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And so Wesleyanism and the holiness movement did pull from this in developing their contemplative tradition.
Contributions of Richard Foster
00:04:49
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So when you are reading about this today, one of the primary sources that produces content about this is Renovari, which is run by Richard Foster and his colleagues, also his son, Nathan Foster. I have actually been able to hear Richard Foster speak live. He came to my city.
00:05:10
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couple years ago and I went and heard him speak. I've read two of his books, one on prayer and the other one on spiritual disciplines, and I have read extensively on his website. So I'm actually quite familiar with what Richard Foster teaches and what he says in his books, and I can in good conscience recommend him as an author distinctly. However, I have not read every single thing
00:05:36
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that his colleagues have written or what they're doing or who they're endorsing. And so I can't speak to all of them and all of the people who are at Renovare, but I have read Richard Foster himself and I've heard him speak and his content has been extremely powerful in my own spiritual walk. And I've checked it against scripture because I've been studying the word as I've been reading it. And I have not found anything to be concerned about in his specific works.
00:06:05
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I pulled, as always, directly from the source when developing this episode, and I want to use that content in sharing what we see of the contemplative tradition today and how we can discern that from New Age material.
Christian vs. New Age Contemplation
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So before we talk about what contemplation looks like for a Christian, I want to talk about what it looks like in the New Age.
00:06:34
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because I think this gives us kind of a foundation for knowing the difference. So the New Age is essentially what we see in this kind of earthy mysticism spirituality that has risen out of Buddhism in a way. And there are some people who have been really pivotal in exposing the New Age and its teachings
00:07:02
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Stephen Bankars is one and Dorian Virtue is another. Both of them were deep in the new age and practiced many of its very characteristic liturgies. I guess that would be the best way to describe them, such as using tarot cards and practicing mystical earth goddess based healings and earth worship and things like that.
00:07:32
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Now I'm familiar with the new age because I live in a very agnostic area of the country. I also run in the crunchy circles. So the health food store types, because I'm a home birth mom. And when you are in those circles, you inevitably run across new age content. It's going to be there because it's a big part of the home birth movement.
00:07:57
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this new age kind of concept, connecting with your inner goddess, connecting with mother earth, worshiping the earth, connecting to the earth through your baby, through the placenta. It's a whole thing. I won't get into that here, but essentially what I'm saying is the new age and the concept of becoming spiritual and spiritually connected to the earth, pulling in some Wiccan influences, even there's a lot of crossover there. All of this
00:08:27
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is a reality, a spiritual reality, and a cultural reality that we do need to reckon with as Christians and be aware of. Okay? But here's the other thing to know. All religions, all spiritual traditions have some kind of mystical aspect, including Christianity. Yes, including Christianity. All of them
00:08:52
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operate with the idea that you're connecting to some kind of higher power or God. You are communicating with another spirit through prayer or chanting or whatever it may be. And because of that, each one has some experience with the miraculous or with this spiritual feeling and things like that. The difference for the Christian
00:09:18
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is that the Christian is communicating with a holy God who is historically grounded and who is representing true goodness and holiness, whereas for the Christian, every other religion is not communicating with that God. So yes, you can have spiritual feelings, you can have spiritual experiences, you can have mystical experiences as someone who is in the new age,
00:09:47
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But for the Christian who is looking at that, we would say, you are not experiencing the Holy God through Jesus Christ. You are experiencing something demonic. And Stephen Bancar's enduring virtue both back this up, that there is a demonic presence in the new age, and it can be experienced. It can even manifest as an angel of light, which we know scripture says about Satan. And so this idea that
00:10:14
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the new age kind of has a monopoly on the mystical or that mystical is always bad or spiritual experiences are always bad always new age. That's not true because Christianity also has a mystical aspect. It has an aspect of
00:10:31
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this miraculous and the spiritual work where God will transcend the natural law, such as in the ministry of Jesus Christ, where we see Him healing people and bringing total newness to their physical bodies and to their spiritual lives. We see it even today. People experience miracles today in our individual lives. And I won't get into the ones that I've experienced or that I've seen others experience, but
00:11:00
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miracles are a reality in the Christian life and we know what the source of that is. We also have spiritual experiences through prayer or in walking side by side in the church alongside other people who who are walking in the Holy Spirit and who may have a dream or hear from the Lord that there may be something that you need to hear and they might share that with you and you check it against the word and it ends up being true. In the Christian life there are
00:11:28
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what we would call mystical experiences. And the greatest experience or truth that we have is the fact that we believe Jesus Christ is the son of God who came into human flesh, died on the cross and rose again three days later. You guys, that is a pretty crazy thing to believe. I mean, we're all used to it. If you're a Christian, you're used to it. But if you're hearing that for the first time, I mean, it's a little wild.
00:11:59
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And that's understandable. It is wild, but we have the historical gospels. We have these eyewitness testimonies. We have all this theology that is rooted in the Jewish scriptures that tell us why we believe that Jesus Christ did this and why we can trust it. And therefore we say, you know, we're putting faith in this. We're putting faith in this person. And this is who we believe that he is and our lives are given to his Lordship. That's what we do. That's our gospel.
00:12:28
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but there is still a spiritual aspect to that. And so I hope that gives you a little context here that yes, the new age is incredibly off base, dangerous and deceitful, but it's also sneaky because of the very fact that Christians will experience spiritual things that may seem similar to what new age followers experience.
00:12:58
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that does not make the experience in itself wrong. The question is, what is that experience based on and who is it pointing to? Okay, so let's look at how Renovare, who again is the, you know, primo organization really talking about this defines the contemplative
Nature and Distinctiveness of Contemplative Life
00:13:21
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life. They say this, put simply,
00:13:24
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contemplative life is the steady gaze of the soul upon the God who loves us. It is an intimate sharing between friends to use the words of Teresa of Avila. And so here are some of the descriptions they gave to describe what they call the six streams of the contemplative Christian life. Number one is it's prayer filled. It's prayer filled. So the steady gaze on Christ
00:13:47
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how they define the prayer-filled life. And this is important, you guys, because they very specifically define prayer as focusing on Christ. That's distinctly Christian. That's important. Secondly, this life is virtuous. So they said it's not about just getting into heaven. It's not just about getting saved from hell. It's about getting heaven into us. So learning how to walk
00:14:16
Speaker
in the Christian life so that we reflect the character of a heavenly God in our own lives, of virtuous and holy life. Third, it is spirit empowered, fueling our lives and the power of God. And this is the one that cessationists, people who do not believe that the Holy Spirit operates today the way he did in the early church, will probably have the biggest problem with. And it's why oftentimes
00:14:46
Speaker
The people who butt heads the most over the contemplative life are cessationists, people who do not believe that spiritual guess up for today or who believe the Holy Spirit operates in a much more limited way than continuationists do. And I have a whole episode on that, so I would recommend going and listening to that for more information to get some context.
00:15:10
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That difference of opinion, that theological difference is really at the core of the fight over the contemplative tradition, ultimately, because the contemplative tradition focuses a lot on the Holy Spirit's role and on prayer in the spirit, on walking in those gifts. It probably crosses over more with the charismatic traditions or the charismatic Catholic traditions. And because of that, cessationists
00:15:39
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Get a little bit wiggly about it. So prayer filled, virtuous, spirit empowered. The fourth is compassion. Love of God makes love for your neighbor possible. So it's a compassionate life. The fifth is word centered. So living the life-giving message, living out to the gospel, word centered. And then sixth, it's sacramental, which is the unity of the physical and the spiritual. So the Eucharist is a physical reminder.
00:16:08
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of a spiritual reality. We do communion as a physical reminder of the reality of what happened in Christ's sacrifice. So these six things are at the core of this tradition. Now, what's the point of it all?
Transformation Through Contemplative Practices
00:16:25
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The point of it all, and this is according to Richard Foster, is that God gradually and slowly captures our inner faculties, first the heart and the will, then the mind, the imagination, and the passions.
00:16:35
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The result is a transformation of the entire personality into the likeness of Christ. Now, it's important that I pause here and let you know that he is not saying that by practicing a very specific step, you're going to shortcut sanctification and like suddenly you're going to be in the likeness of Christ. He's not saying practice this really specific thing and then you will become the likeness of Christ. What he's saying is when you live your entire life, evidencing these
00:17:05
Speaker
Six traits, prayer and holiness, and walking in the Spirit, and showing compassion, and being word-centered, and practicing the sacraments, when you live that way, you will be transformed into the likeness of Christ. And you guys, every Christian should agree with that. Because those six things are all fundamentals of being a Christian. And the ensuing transformation is a fundamental of being a Christian.
00:17:30
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So why would somebody disagree with this then? Why would we run into a problem? Well, here's why. Even the very best teachers and leaders who start something that is beautiful and grounded in scripture and dedicated to the Word will have followers who abuse their teachings. This happened during the Reformation, it's happened all through church history, and it's happened here. There are people who've taken what Richard Foster has taught, what other contemplative teachers have taught,
00:18:00
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they've taken it way further, they've made it way more vague, and they've downplayed the person of Christ, they've downplayed Scripture to the point that the resulting language sounds exactly like something you would see in the New Age. And when that happens, we have a problem. Because we need to be keeping that source at the center. We need to be keeping the Word of God, the Spirit of God, the person of Jesus Christ at the center of the conversation,
00:18:28
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or it's no longer the Christian contemplative tradition. It's just, you know, contemplate and whatever you want to. A couple of interesting people who had a big part in developing the traditions that are now pulled into what we see today. One of them is Saint Teresa. She's a Saint in the Catholic Church. She was a nun. She did a lot of work in teaching on intimacy with God and prayer with God.
00:18:57
Speaker
and that personal relationship aspect of seeking him. She also had a huge role in reforming the nunneries or the convents and really bringing that contemplative tradition to light and her writings are fascinating. I'm actually really excited to read more of what she had to say because first of all, she's a little bit sassy, which cracks me up, but her story reminds me a lot of what I've read of St. Augustine and Luther.
00:19:24
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And I'm just interested to do a little bit more reading into her, but she had a huge role and you'll see her quoted a lot in these traditions. The fact that she is Catholic is also a red flag for some people because there are certain Christians who will object to anything with Catholic overtures. And I could get more into this here.
00:19:52
Speaker
Instead, I will refer you to an interview I did on my friend Rebecca Hargrave's podcast, Home in Hearth, I believe it's called Hargrave's Home in Hearth, where I talked about Catholicism and Protestants and how we are to understand those differences. If you want a resource on that, you can go over there. Essentially, we do have to be very careful in writing certain things off simply because they came from Catholicism.
00:20:19
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There are some major disagreements, things that I definitely disagree with and are reasons why I am not Catholic. Things that I don't think line up with scripture, but there are also plenty of things that do. And the very reason that we are able to stand here today and still have a gospel is because the gospel continued to be carried through the Catholic church throughout the middle ages and during the lifetime of people like St. Teresa.
00:20:44
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And so she had an impact on this emphasis that the contemplative tradition has on intimacy with God, personal relationships, seeking him in prayer, spending time with him in silence and meditation, and just learning how to walk with him in daily life. That's really the goal of this tradition is how can I live a personal daily walk with Jesus Christ? How can I spend real time with him?
00:21:12
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and not just check him off the list or run through the reading plan or, you know, try to follow a list of rules out of the Bible. It's really about immersing yourself in Christ and thinking about him and praying to him throughout the day. And in that sense, it emphasizes a slowing down, a sitting with the truth of scripture, really meditating on those truths, thinking about them. And that leads us to the Lectio Divina.
00:21:43
Speaker
So many, many moons ago, when I was a younger woman, gosh, 21, so 10 years ago, I was practicing the Lectio Divina. And one of the reasons I did this was because I took Latin in high school. I love Latin. And one of my favorite practices is actually to read the Bible in Latin, which is called the Vulgate.
00:22:07
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It's something that I do periodically in my own quiet time because it just helps me feel more connected to the Lord. I've heard from people who are bilingual and prefer to read the Bible in Spanish during their quiet time because it helps them feel more connected, things like that. Same thing for me, except in Latin because of the connection to church history. And so through my interest in reading the Vulgate, I stumbled upon the Lectio Divina and I love the process so much, I actually practiced it for several years.
00:22:37
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Well, fast forward a decade and suddenly I'm seeing people saying that this is absolutely unacceptable, that it's wrong, that we should never do it. And I thought, well, goodness, I never encountered anything like that when I was practicing it. So I did a little digging and I'm going to describe exactly what this
Lectio Divina Practice Steps
00:22:55
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looks like. Again, this is a distinctly Catholic thing that Protestants kind of picked up. And I think that's at the heart of why many Protestants are resistant to it and find it.
00:23:07
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potentially problematic. And so in practicing this, you are essentially trying to dialogue with God through his word in prayer. That's basically what you're doing. And at the beginning of this process, you spend some time in silence. You basically sit there, find a good place to sit or pray. So I had a closet at the time that I was doing this and choose a text from scripture that you're going to be going over.
00:23:35
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I usually prayed at the beginning and said, Lord, just speak to my heart through scripture and then would open the text. So the very first step in Lectio Divina is reading. So you read the text and a lot of people will read it out loud. So you're looking for phrases that stand out to you and looking for phrases that you think you will meditate more on later. The second step is meditation. So what does this text?
00:24:04
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say or how does it speak to my heart in that moment? As you find parts of the text that stand out to you, you bring them to the Lord in prayer. You have a dialogue with the Lord about that. If it brings up memories or thoughts about a certain something in your life, you bring that to the Lord. You're basically dialoguing with God about that passage and how it speaks to your situation. Some would say at this point that this isn't
00:24:31
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It's just meditation because the third step in the Lecture Divina is actual prayer. So what am I saying to God? I would say the meditation and dialogue portion is still prayer. It's just more of a conversation and a questioning. Whereas in the third step of prayer, you're asking, praising, thanking the Lord. You're talking with him in a more direct way instead of just meditating on the text. And the fourth step is contemplation.
00:25:01
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So what is the Lord saying to me through this? And this is where they'll often say things like rest in the divine presence, rest in the Holy Spirit, enjoy the silence, listen for the voice of the Lord, enjoy the presence of God. The whole point of this process is simply to dwell on the presence of God. There's no like, all right, let's check, you know, write down three things you're going to do today out of this time that you just spent. The whole point of it is just to dwell on the presence of God.
00:25:31
Speaker
So why would a Christian object to this? I think there's a couple reasons. I think that there is a lot of fear around meditation. I think that we have known people who were weak believers who got sucked into a secular kind of meditation. And here's the thing, meditation in secular and pagan traditions, non-Christian traditions, has an entirely different goal and foundation
00:26:01
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than meditation does in a Christian tradition.
Christian vs. Secular Meditation Goals
00:26:04
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That's the first thing that we should know. And I think there's a lot of fear surrounding meditation because we have seen and known people who've gotten sucked into something that is not a Christian kind of meditation. I think there's also some hesitancy about sitting with a text and just simply quietly asking the Lord to speak to us.
00:26:29
Speaker
There have been people who've said that doing something like that constitutes, you know, a Buddhist way of approaching God. And I would say that's not, that's not true. I look at Psalms, I look at church history and look at how Christians practice their faith over the course of history. And I think the knowledge of history that I have has actually helped me understand the contemplative tradition because if the word of God is your basis for your sitting with God,
00:27:00
Speaker
you do not have to fear straying into some kind of false teaching. The starting point for the Lacto Divina is the word of God. If you are in a church or if you're in a small group where the starting point is not the word of God, if it's just your feelings or your ideas about God, then yes, there is room for concern. But if you were practicing it the way it was originally intended, which is with an actual text or truth of scripture, then
00:27:29
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the practice should direct you into a deeper walk with Christ because that's the entire point. As I've said in other episodes, we can't build a Christian life out of fear of what could happen or say, well, I knew this person who walked off the deep end because they started practicing the Lectio Divina and all of a sudden this is where they're going. The issue there was not the Lectio Divina.
00:27:56
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The issue there was their own weakness and their lack of grounding in scripture and most likely a lack of strong church community to hold them accountable. You have to look at all the factors. You also have to look at your own bias and assumptions. If you're saying, I knew someone who was Catholic who practiced this and I think Catholics are wrong, therefore it is completely wrong without ever researching it or reading about it or how it works, then you may draw conclusions that aren't biblical or true. So the question then is,
00:28:26
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Can you practice the Lectio Divina in a contemplative way based on Scripture? And can it ground you in your relationship with Jesus Christ? And the answer is yes. You can practice it in a way that's biblical, or you could practice it in a way that draws you away from Scripture. And the question then is, when you encounter it, which one is being practiced?
00:28:51
Speaker
I am going to include in the show notes of a variety of articles on what we've talked about thus far, including a couple of links about the Lectio Divina and a PDF that describes how to practice it and in what context it's to be practiced. I'm also including a list of new age practices to be aware of written by Doreen Virtue. And in this article that she wrote, she talks about how meditation,
00:29:21
Speaker
when it is not on scripture, that's your first sign there's something wrong. Or prayer when it's not on scripture or not related to Christ at all or Father God, that's where you start to see a problem for sure. I also want to look at Buddhist prayer. This was a little rabbit trail I went down when I was researching this episode because I think understanding Buddhist prayer and how it works helps us
00:29:51
Speaker
have a clearer idea of what Christian prayer should look like and how it's different from Buddhist prayer. Now obviously we have in John 17 Jesus' example of the high priestly prayer. We also have the Lord's Prayer outlined in the Gospels and I think those are really helpful resources that I would recommend reading regarding prayer. But I also think when we look at Christian prayer and how it's outlined and then we go over and we look at Buddhist prayer we get a clearer idea
00:30:18
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of what that new age spiritualistic influence will look like. And we are then able to compare it to the Christian version. So this is from an article I read. Actually, it's a WikiHow article on how to say a Buddhist prayer. It cracked me up, but it was quite helpful for understanding it. And in this article, it said that the core of Buddhist prayer is connecting to yourself spiritually.
00:30:47
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connecting to yourself. Even though a Buddhist may pray over their food, over their family members, or all of those things, the focus is totally different than those same things are for a Christian. So our focus is on God, who is historically revealed and personally engaged with us. The focus of a Buddhist prayer is on connecting to yourself, and it's the same in the new age. So when we look at these practices, the question is, where is the focus?
00:31:17
Speaker
Is it on Christ and becoming like him, or is it on ourselves and becoming a better version of me? That is the question that I would start with and then begin asking these other questions. You know, what other influences are there? Who is talking? What's the focus? How involved is scripture in this tradition and in this practice? But the spiritual disciplines themselves are not unbiblical. Fasting, meditation.
00:31:46
Speaker
silence, sitting with a text quietly and just waiting for the Lord to speak, listening for the Holy Spirit's voice to enlighten the word to you. These are things I have practiced over my entire Christian life. And I do think that when you have been exposed to the Charismatic Church, you're much more likely to understand those aspects of the Holy Spirit. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's a gift of the Charismatic Church
00:32:12
Speaker
that has been good for us, but at the same time, every branch of the church has its weaknesses. And the Charismatic Church's weakness is that they don't always ground their talk about the Holy Spirit in scripture or theology, or they give him credit for things that maybe aren't actually his leading at all. And so everything that we do in the Christian life should be tempered by, first of all, looking at the word,
00:32:41
Speaker
and what it says, growing in our understanding of that and reading broadly across the tradition so we can see, Hey, maybe I could benefit from some growth in this area. Maybe, you know, I have been practicing spiritual disciplines, but I haven't been grounding myself enough in the gospel. And now I'm starting to get distracted from the whole point of these disciplines. Or maybe you've been reading your Bible and you're wondering why it's super dry because you just don't feel connected with the Lord personally.
00:33:10
Speaker
And your next step is to integrate those spiritual disciplines, to integrate more meditation and more quiet prayer and sitting in the presence of God as you're studying. Every Christian will have to walk through their life with the Lord in different seasons and have growth in different ways. And that's why understanding the diversity of the body of Christ is so important because it helps us to see where we need that growth and it helps us to see
00:33:39
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where our own tradition should maybe be growing and understanding certain things with more grace and more depth.
Encouragement to Explore Further Reading
00:33:49
Speaker
Hopefully this episode was helpful to you. I hope that all of the readings will be in the show notes on the blog, as well as the transcription in due time. Thank you for your patience on that. And I hope that this encourages you to do a little bit more reading into this. The two books that I read by Richard Foster that greatly encouraged me were Celebration of Discipline,
00:34:08
Speaker
and his book on prayer.
Announcement of New Book
00:34:10
Speaker
Those would be a great start if you want somewhere to begin. I think all of us have been at a women's conference where we were told, you are a beautiful daughter of the Most High King. And it's true, but it's not the whole truth. The beauty of being God's daughter has some backstory and it's left out in a lot of messages preached to women. So if you're tired of hearing the watered down Christian teaching and you're hungry for a deeper spiritual life,
00:34:38
Speaker
I have something for you. It's my brand new book, Stop Calling Me Beautiful, Finding Soul Deep Strength in a Skin Deep World. Stop Calling Me Beautiful is a book about going deeper with God. I'm going to talk about pursuing the truth of who God is and who we are in relationship to Him, how to study scripture, how legalism, shallow theology, and false teaching keep us from living boldly as a woman of the word. I'm so excited to put this book in your hands.
00:35:06
Speaker
You can grab your copy on Amazon or for more information, head to my website FeliciaMasonheimer.com and click the book tab.
Connecting on Social Media
00:35:16
Speaker
Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Verity. You can connect with fellow listeners by following me on Instagram at Felicia Masonheimer or on our Facebook page by the same name. Also visit FeliciaMasonheimer.com for links to each episode and the show notes.