The Religious Spirit:
1) Contains: Spirit life is about freedom and identity. The religious spirit places unholy limitations upon people’s lives and tries to mask their true identity in Christ.
2) Confines: the religious spirit rejects revelation and breakthrough. It boxes people in and stalls their progress.
3) Complains: wherever there is a religious spirit in operation there will be much murmuring, complaining and wrong speaking.
4) Criticizes: one of the most prominent operations of a religious spirit is a critical attitude. The spirit life brings gospel power and demonstration, while religion enjoys debate and disagreement leading to endless disputes without any supernatural power. A person bound by a religious spirit is dry in the spirit and lacking the life of God. This creates an attitude and mindset of negativity.
5) Controls: the religious spirit establishes false mindsets and false belief foundations in the lives of individual believers. This is one reason the office of the teacher is so vital in today’s church, as well as a regular spirit life consisting of strong prayer in other tongues. The religious spirit works to control, bind and hinder regions. It stifles the flow of God in churches and ministries which can bring great discouragement to those in leadership, even causing them to quit.
6) Compromises: religion spends the vast majority of its time focused on works without power. It creates a heart that is trapped in lifeless activity and easily opens the door to compromise. It abandons the plans of God in pursuit of building it’s own kingdom.
7) Condemns: Jesus came to set each of us gloriously free from condemnation and the works of the law. As we awaken to all that He is and all that He has called us to be, we step into a bold, uncommon realm of liberty. The religious spirit continually harasses and condemns people placing value on judgment above mercy and blinding the eyes of it’s victims to the real power of the gospel.
