A year or two ago, we had a message about the dangers of having a “religious spirit.” It is one of those things that we all have to work on and sometimes it has been so ingrained into us [older christians] that we do some of these things without even realizing it. We all need a wake up call if we ever want to have some sort of semblance of unity in the body of Christ. Unity can’t happen with a critical condemning spirit. For those of us in Christ, there is no longer condemnation � For we have been set free from the law of sin and death! Every now and again, it is good to review these:
Warning Signs of a Religious Spirit
� The tendency to see your primary mission as tearing down what you believe is wrong.
� The inability to take rebuke, especially from someone those your judge to be less spiritual than yourself.
� A philosophy that will not listen to people � “only to God.”
� The inclination to see more of what is wrong with other people and other churches than what is right with them.
� Overwhelming guilt that you 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 the failure of others.
� A sense that you are closer to God than other people or that your life or ministry is more pleasing to Him.
� Pride in your spiritual maturity or discipline, especially when you compare yourself to others.
� The belief that you are on the cutting edge of what God is doing.
� A mechanical prayer life.
� Doing things so that people will notice.
� Being overly repulsed by emotionalism.
� 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� ministries.
� Glorifying more in what God has done in the past than what He is doing in the present.
� The tendency to be suspicious of / or oppose new movements or churches.
� The tendency to reject spiritual manifestations that we do not understand.
� An overreaction to carnality in the church.
� An overreaction to immaturity in the church.
� The inability to join anything that you do not deem as being perfect or near perfect.
� If while reading these signs you were thinking about how they applied to someone else, you may have a serious problem with a religious spirit.