THE FORMS OF RELIGIOUS SPIRIT

Religious spirit operates in so many forms in the church and in the lives of the people of God. These include the Counterfeit gift of discernment and this thrives on seeing what is wrong with others rather than seeing what God is doing to help them.  Though the truth may be accurate, it is ministered in a spirit that kills. It is suspicion motivated by rejection, territorial preservation or general insecurity.

Religious spirit also takes the form of Jezebel spirit. Jezebel as we know was the ambitious, manipulative wife of Ahab. Her spirit is a combined spirit of both witchcraft and religious spirit; which is the spirit of manipulation and control. It is often, but not always found in women that are deeply wounded. Every trial we face in life will either make us bitter or better, and the cross will heal every spiritual wound if we turn to it. Those deeply wounded by life trials who do not turn to the cross to get healed can easily open themselves up to this deadly spirit. Jezebel's prophets were given to sacrifices, even being willing to beat and cut themselves so their god would appear. A primary strategy of this form of religious spirit is to get the church devoted to sacrifice in a way that perverts the command for us to daily take up our cross and follow Jesus. This perversion will cause us to put more faith in our sacrifices than the Lord's sacrifice. It tries to use sacrifices and offerings to get God to manifest Himself- a form of delusion that we can somehow purchase the grace and presence of God with our good works.

This spirit also takes the form of Self righteousness. We do not crucify ourselves for the sake of righteousness, purification or spiritual maturity to get the Lord to manifest Himself; rather we are crucified with Christ. If we crucify ourselves, it will only amount to self righteousness- Gal. 2:20. Religious spirit makes us feel good about ourselves and spiritual condition because it is self centered and self seeking. It is centered on how we are doing and comparison with others not to God's glory. This results in putting confidence in discipline and personal sacrifice instead of putting confidence in God.

Discipline and the commitment to self sacrifices are essential qualities for every believer but the motivation behind them determines if religious spirit is at work or the Holy spirit. A religious spirit motivates through fear, guilt, pride or ambition; while the Holy spirit motivates through love for the son of God. A religious spirit will always feed our pride while the true spiritual maturity will lead to humility.

Religious spirit is a tendency for one to think or assume he is something when he is actually nothing or to think he knows when he does not know anything, especially in matters of truth and righteousness- Ezek. 33:30-33.

The most bitter enemies of Christ are religious people and they will leave no stone unturned until they see Him crucified. The same way, the most dangerous enemy of true Christian faith and living is religious spirit and it will assume all kinds of religious guises to destroy the true Christian faith and living in a believer or in a church.

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