Religious Spirit
A religious spirit is a demon that seeks to substitute religious activity for the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Its primary objective is to have the Church “holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power…” (2 Timothy 3:5). The apostle Paul completed his exhortation with “avoid such men as these.” This religious spirit is the “…leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matthew 16:6) of which the Lord warned His disci-ples to beware. Satan seems to understand even better than the Church that “…God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble…” James 4:6 NKJV). He knows very well that God will not inhabit any work that is inflated with pride, and that God Himself will even resist such a work. So satan’s strategy is to make us proud — even proud of good things, such as how much we read our Bibles, or witness, or feed the poor. He knows that if we do the will of God in pride, our work will be counterproductive and could even ultimately work toward our fall. Pride, by its very nature, is the most difficult stronghold to remove or correct.
- A religious spirit keeps us from hearing the voice of God by encouraging us to assume that we already know God’s opinion, what He is saying, and what pleases Him. This delusion is the result of believing that God is just like us.
- A religious spirit encourages the rationalization of Scripture, having us believe that rebukes, exhortations, and words of correction are for other people, but not for us. If a religious spirit is a problem in your life, you have probably already begun to think about how badly someone you know needs to know this piece of information.
- One of the most deceptive characteristics about the religious spirit is that it is founded upon zeal for God. We tend to think that zeal for God could only be good, but we need in consider why we are zealous for Him.
- Like most of the enemy’s strongholds, the religious spirit builds its work on two basic foundations: fear and pride. The religious spirit seeks to have us serve the Lord in order to gain His approval, rather than receiving approval through the cross of Jesus. We can be patient with people who have religious spirits, but we must not tolerate their ministry in our midst! If this spirit is not confronted quickly, it will possibly do more damage to the Church, our ministries, our families, and our lives, than any other assault that we may suffer. A person with a religious spirit based on idealism will usually seek the perfect church, and will refuse to be a part of anything less.
- One with a religious spirit can usually point to problems with great accuracy, but seldom has solutions, except to tear down what has already been built. This is the strategy of the enemy to nullify progress that is being made and to sow discouragement that will limit future progress. This produces the mentality that if we cannot go straight to the top of the mountain, we should not climb at all, but just “die to self.” This is a death that Christ has not required and it is a perversion of the exhortation for us to take up our crosses daily.
- Those with a religious spirit will usually claim to be open to more understanding, but most of the time this is done to convince everyone else to be open to what they teach, while they remain steadfastly closed to others.
- The religious spirit has been the most deceptive and deadly, because it comes as pretense of righteousness and goodness.
- The religious spirit will make us feel very good about our spiritual condition as long as it is self-centered and self-seeking. Pride feels good; it can even be exhilarating. But it keeps all of our attention on how well we are doing and on how we stand compared to others — not on the glory of God.