WARNING SIGNS OF A RELIGIOUS SPIRIT

This religious spirit is so slippery that it will wiggle out of almost any attempt to confront it. If the issues of pride, and fears are addressed, insecurities will rise up to attract sympathy. If the issue of fear is confronted, it will change into religious pride masquerading as faith. This type of spirit will drive individuals or congregations to such extremes that they will inevitably disintegrate.

The religious spirit is made manifest in the tendency to see your primary mission as tearing down what you believe is wrong which in turn produces more division than lasting works; the inability to take rebuke especially from those you judge to be less spiritual; a philosophy that you will not listen to other people except God; the inclination to see more of what is wrong with others and churches than what is right with them; overwhelming guilt that can never measure up to the Lord's standards; the belief that you have been appointed to fix everyone else; a leadership style that is bossy, overbearing and intolerant of others' failures; a sense of feeling that you are closer to God than anyone else or that your life or ministry is more pleasing to God; pride in your spiritual maturity especially one that compares you to others; the belief that you are the most important in God's agenda; a mechanical prayer life; doing things to be noticed by people; being over repulsive by emotion; using emotionalism as a substitute for the work of the Holy Spirit; keeping score in your spiritual life; being encouraged when your ministry looks better than others; glorying more in what God has done in the past than what He is doing in the present; the tendency to oppose or suspect new movements or churches; the tendency to reject spiritual manifestations that we do not understand; an overreaction to carnality in the church; the inability to join anything that you do not deem perfect; thinking these signs are only applicable to others and not you.

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