I tend to look for a more effective way of communicating concepts than the garden-variety way of describing things. Or I enjoy describing things that keep people from the rote “amen” and “preach”.
The religious spirit is no different.
There are a bunch of ways people have described the religious spirit, but I personally like the following description.
The religious spirit, which parallels the Redemptive Gift of Teacher as the root stronghold in your gift of Teacher individual, group, community, state, nation, or organization, is the spirit of “one thing”.
Do anything or anything except the one thing you are supposed to be doing?
Engaging in a flurry of activity, even devotional activity…just do not engage with the one thing G-d wants you to do.
There is a tie-in to this concept. The Philistine Curse….which in a nutshell is, one thing short of a full package. The one missing item that leads to a life-giving package, which is usually missing because we choose to do without the One Thing we need to engage in.
And the way that curse is broken is usually with the One Weird and “does-not-make-a-lick-of-sense” solution or tool.
For Samson and Shamgar they beat the Philistines with Ass Jawbones and Oxgoads. The strange or unusual. And usually along the way, you end up looking or feeling pretty foolish doing whatever you are doing on the way to disempowering the Philistine Curse, O Teacher, since this is the third of the Seven Curses.
That is, regardless of all the other descriptions you can layer on top of the religious spirits and regardless of thr comparisons to the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the rituals that are dry and full of dead man’s bones, the religious spirit will busy you doing a bunch of crap that is not His best for you.
Just some thoughts here as I head to bed, gang.
So if you struggle with the one thing, find out from the King if there is one thing you should be engaging…
Benisons…..
Category: Curses
From the Desk Jim Alseth: Dealing With Hidden Covenants With Death, A Possible Application: Marriage Covenants With Death, Unintentional Implied Things and Welcoming Death Maybe Where We Should Not
Jim Alseth is a friend and physician from Alberta, and he penned the following, that I would like to set forth as a way to better reframe marriage vows. Something to ponder and apply as you see fit, gang.
Jim writes:
Much has been said about the necessity of renouncing our hidden agreements with death.
Michael C. King spends time on that one in his book.
This morning I found myself going over that ground—in particular, our wedding vows, of all things. “Till death do us part”, and “in sickness and in health” are common components of those vows. We said them ourselves (or at least the pastor did, of which we came into agreement).
Isn’t it interesting how an event so innocent and precious to the human community can get unknowingly infected with sickness and death! This is not hyperbole, friends. Remember, the unholy realm are legalists, to the extreme.
I understand we had only good intentions and romantic notions in uttering those vows. We all want to be loved when we’re down, but the fact is they weren’t necessary. In our allegiance to Christ we already made the vow to love: “love one another”, “love your neighbor as your yourself”, etc., etc.
When we say to our future spouse, “I love you”, this ground is already covered. There simply was (is) no need to open the doors of sickness and death to the predatory legalists—in front of a house full of witnesses, at that—in such a binding agreement.
In Matthew 12 when Jesus says we would have to give account for every careless word we have spoken, He’s not being the legalistic, harsh judge I just mentioned. He himself is Love and He knows how powerful words are, for good or for evil, AND what a predatory legalist our enemies are. He doesn’t want us to get caught in our words. Praise his Name.
So I spent time confessing, repenting of and renouncing those words uttered in innocence, yet ignorance, and sending them and all their effects to the Cross of Christ; and further, asking Him to close those doors to sickness and death forever. Hallelujah.
May the Life and Health of the King be upon you undiminished this day, beloved. Amen and Amen.
Endurance and the Exhorter: Getting Chiseled
Text
And the hand of the people of Israel pressed harder and harder against Jabin the king of Canaan, until they destroyed Jabin the king of Canaan
Judges 4:24 (ESV)
Thoughts Here
Gang, I am doing a read-through of scripture, and this text really hit home for the Exhorter, especially given it deals with an aspect of breaking the Canaanite Curse, one of the Seven Curses against design.
Time after time, I, and others, have encountered those who believe the only thing necessary to break a curse is to utter a renunciation, or have a court case, or __________ (fill in the blank with tour chosen thing to utter). And frequently, Exhorters who are built for the long haul of endurance are hunting for the magic spell or incantation or eight key. THE SOLUTION TO ALL MY ILLS.
And while renunciations are excellent, they are not the whole picture.
There must be, resident within the Exhorter, a commitment to grow and increase through consistent righteous actions of sowing and reaping in order to break a stronghold through overcoming.
Exhorters MUST, non-optionally, and non-negotiably, build a reservoir of endurance and strength.
They have to develop life-strong, sinewy muscle (Muscular System of the body is Exhorter) in order to win at many situations.
Press HARDER AND HARDER. Over and over and over. Keep pounding. Hammer to nail. Pull and push and develop. There is a reason that well-built people are referred to as chiseled and cut and ripped. Such adjectives speak of a PROCESS that happens layer by layer.
Such an appearance is pleasing to the eye.
And such an appearance will be the result of building out groups of musculature. In the gym. In the kitchen. In the community. In the secret place. In all of the places.
Gang, especially Exhorters, it’s time to get cut and peel back some things that you have tolerated in previous seasons.
Much love.
And be at peace.
The Curse of One Thing
The Philistine Curse is one of those things about which I have thought very deeply, so let me see if I can over-simplify it.
A Better Definition For the Religious Spirit
Our definition of the Religious Spirit does need some refining. We like to define it as not doing the stuffy things that certain denominations do. And then we list our favorite denominations that exemplify this behavior. And we bash Catholics, and Anglicans, and Methodists, and Baptists, and anybody except our own favored special group, who somehow does it right and is somehow more special than others.
Bologna.
I define the spirit of religion as “doing everything except the one thing that G-d told you to do”.
Dear Charismatic, if G-d told us to quit engaging in whatever our pet sin is, and we are engaging in this flurry of activity that includes passionate worship, flagging, dancing, prophesying, and a bevy of “spiritual” or “spirit-filled” charismatic activity, accidentally or intentionally, when we should be giving our energies to overcoming whatever that sin is, then that is a religious spirit. We can claim to be free of a religion and yet change the color of the religion.
In another vein, the religious spirit can also be identified by those who squelch their design and act in a way that is incongruent with how G-d designed them to act.
Yeah, worship can become a sin if we are engaging in all kinds of displays of activity at the expense of the one thing.
This is why G-d through the Teacher Isaiah was so concerned about the Israelites practicing justice with certain groups (the widows, the orphans, the fatherless, etc.) and correcting their own systematic practicing of injustices.
The One Thing and Squelching Ourselves
In our execution of the One Thing G-d gave us to do from season to season, He also gives us the gift our our unique design to complete the execution. So, the same One Thing given to two different people, will probably look different in the process of its execution.
If G-d told us to quit squelching how He made us, and we accedentally or intentionally do that in order to fit in, we can end up in trouble.
When we squelch our design in order to fit in, and resist doing the One Thing or series of things He is leading us to do, we then are:
- Rejecting the One Thing that Father hardwired us to do,
- Rejecting our One Principle, One Gift, and One Design,
- Rejecting the One Place where we will have disproportionate ROI,
- Rejecting the One Reason G-d made us,
- Rejecting the One Pathway of His grace flowing, disproportionately in our lives (contra Romans 12:6–gifts given in accordance to the grace in our lives),
- Resisting the One Thing that will cause us to possess our birthright,
- Resisting the enthronement of the One Man, Jesus, on the land that is our lives,
- At risk for Empowering the Religious Spirit, the Spirit of Anything But the One Thing
- At risk for Empowering the Philistine Curse, the Curse of One Thing
- At risk for Lacking the One Thing that we need constantly, because the One Man is not enthroned in our lives, and we are rejecting the One Key that will turbocharge our lives.
All I can say is, I am guilty of doing this as well, and I am in desperate need of liberation, so I am not throwing stones at anyone before I throw them at myself.
So let’s look at the One Thing and intentionally go after dealing with it, because if we do not, and we keep doing what we have always done, then we will keep getting what we have always gotten.