Religion As A Strong Temptation
Religion can be a strong temptation because it strokes our narcissistic need to display a compulsion to control others through deception, manipulation and domination. Consider those in your life who insist that you go to church. Why do they do so? Is it a conscious or unconscious attempt to save your soul, or is the subliminal pleasure achieved in being the one you look to to guide your every step? Actually, the enemy often uses people whom you look up to or those who “hold your strings” in order lead you into religious temptation.
The bottom line is that you have to stand before God based upon what He has revealed TO YOU as you have no family and friends group ticket to heaven. With God, we are all on our own. On occasion, the significant promptings of family, friends and church members can be helpful but if its controlling, dominating and overly critical, you can easily be led into religious temptation by the people in your world. Remember that even though we wrestle not against flesh and blood but principalities and powers, we must resist the temptation to “give in to get along with folk.” And once you give in to please, religious folk will tempt you to heed their beliefs and instructions, know that you will be submitting to the world—the religious world. Remember. The world is God’s enemy. The Lord warned in Matthew 10 that the enemy shall be those within our own household, that could result in a false conversion.
Tempted to Love the Religious World
Religion is habitual once we become conditioned to it by ritualistic behavior and routine. We become trained like puppets to be who we are not, to do what we cannot do and to not do what we ought to do. Its a deception of what we believe to be good and right in our own eyes. Religious people try to act humble when in reality, they are proud and disdainful of others. Yet they have no testimony because they have not personally been touched by God.
As a result, a religious testimony begins and ends the same way–repetitive and without life, ornate rhetoric, filled with hot air! Like “Giving honor to God blah, blah blah!” Religious testimonies that begin this way reveal very little about the one who is testifying, other than that he or she is quite religious! Such fluency in religious rhetoric is actually lukewarm, grandiose yet simultaneously spiritually dehydrated. “Speechifying” testimonies appeal to the religious tendency to hide the truth about who God really is or is NOT in our lives , devoid of even a glimpse of what the Holy Spirit has helped us to overcome.
Therefore, as a comfortable place to hide from self, others and God, religion is a peril that can lead you into sin and temptation. For the legalism of man and the accusations of the devil can lead a seeker down a dark, blind path, where ultimately, you will hear Jesus say “I never knew you. Depart from Me!”
The Way of Escape
The road to freedom is to love the truth, no matter how much it hurts. Once you get a taste of freedom, you will desire more truth and as the Lord Jesus said “you shall know the truth and the truth shall MAKE you free”. First and most important, this ministry will guide you toward the truth about yourself. As your love for the truth increases, you will successfully resist the devil and he will flee from you. The enemy will have to devise more sophisticated ways to tempt you.
Through deliverance counseling sessions, books and other virtual learning products, PSM is prepared to help you to break the shackles of religion and find spiritual peace and wisdom in God.
To set up a Zoom session, send an email to deliverancecounseling@yahoo.com
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