The religious spirit likes to keep us from the things of the spirit. Under its influence, many times we become so law-focused, or doctrinally obsessed, that we lose the passion for power and anything that involves feelings. We also can easily walk in law instead of love. When we become more determined to punish someone for not following the letter of the law than to love them and see human need, it might be a good sign that we are operating under the influence of this spirit. Many times when we are giving ourselves over to this judgmental heart, we ourselves are doing the same or worse things. The religious spirit likes to get a person stuck on one particular passage of scripture. They will war over that teaching, even at the sake of losing their Christian character, by getting angry and raising their voice to argue the point. Even if what the person is saying is real truth, because they get out of the character of Christ, the words are no longer spirit and life. The religious spirit loves to get a person stuck on doctrine. The religious spirit gets people into doctrinal error, actually. Remember the Sadducees who were controlled by the religious spirit? They were determined and obsessed that there was no resurrection. They were not open to anyone showing them differently from scripture. Their outward appearance when they came to Jesus tried to look teachable, when all along their motive was to get Jesus to speak what they considered blasphemous so that they could get Him in a trap.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 15:48:25 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015