The Demonic Spirits of Religion, Accusation and Perfection, Ep 2-30
Welcome Back! I am your host Dawn Simmons and in this episode of Conquering Our Unseen Enemies we are going to be discussing the Demonic Spirit of Religion and how it impacts our relationship with the Holy Spirit. We will also take a look at the Spirit of Accusation and Perfection who often work closely with the Spirit of Religion. We will see how it has damaged the church and continues to grow causing Christians, who are limited by these spirits, to cannibalize the move of the Holy Spirit in the church today. Given that we are in the process of going through each of the 9 Spiritual Gifts it is important to identify and address this demonic influence and remove it from our path as we progress. I will share with you some stories of how it has impacted the lives of people I know and how they are working to be free.
With a Religious spirit working you will generally see the spirit of Accusation, and the spirit of Perfection. So let’s talk further about each of these spirits and what they will do to influence our minds and our hearts.
We will start off with Religious Spirits. This is really a family of spirits where the strongman is the Religious Spirit. The family generally includes legalism, religiosity, traditionalism, formalism, doctrinal obsession, doctrinal error, fear of God, fear of losing salvation, lawfulness, obsession with being right, lack of tolerance for correction, and is works based. This is not an exhaustive list, but it gives you a pretty clear picture of where these demons are leading people. In these types of beliefs, a Christian does not allow for the Holy Spirit to work, but instead creates a place where the individual has to work, and sometimes that means to work for their salvation.
These spirits are typically the ones that serve to drive people away from attending church. There is not a loving atmosphere, but rather a strict guideline, adherence to that guideline is what is considered important. This thinking does not allow for people to come as they are, because it already has in mind how they should be when they get there. All the activities are built on their belief system which may have some seed of biblical application, but by and large are manmade guidelines or requirements in some denominations. There is sometimes punishment if one steps outside of the manmade requirements. This is different than biblical church discipline that Paul describes in 1 Corinthians.
Looking closer at a how a legalist functions. A legalist does not seek to rightly obey and apply every word of the Bible to their own life. A legalist is someone who disobeys the Bible by adding to the Bible human rules and regulations for thought, life, and morality, and proceeds to judge themselves and others by these self-made rules.
I see these religious spirits play out a lot outside of the church as well. When someone with marital discord seeks counsel from a fellow Christian, I have seen some extremely harsh words come out condemning the person for even reaching out and further slamming them for questioning why they are having issues. Where I see this the most often and it is incredibly harmful is when advice is being given to those in a second marriage. In the last few weeks, so maybe 2 or 3, I have seen at least 5 people reach out wanting support from a Christian marriage support group. I am a member of this group and have become extremely disappointed at some of the advice being given. All 5 of these cases, involved a second marriage and all were long-term marriages, in the 20 year range for the second marriage. The issues ran the gamut on severity. There is another member who gives advice and says the same thing to every single one of these people. He essentially says this, “could the reason you are having these marital issues be the fact that the spouse (whichever or both if it’s a second marriage for both) is still biblically married to their previous spouse and you or the other spouse, whichever, is actually committing adultery by being with them? From there he has a huge list of scriptures he uses to them tell them they are living in sin and the marriage is not blessed by God. He does not take the time to find out why they are in a second marriage. In his eyes, every second marriage is a blanket sin and therefore God will not honor it by helping them resolve their issues and stay married. So it doesn’t matter why they are in a second marriage, it’s a sin. That type of thinking and attitude is purely demonic, a religious spirit, and they are using what they think is a biblical doctrine to really kick these people when they are down already. Where did Jesus ever do that? Using the Bible to beat people up is essentially what the Pharisees and the Sadducees were doing and that is what Jesus fought against. An organization filled with people who have no heart, no willingness to listen and understand and only serve to use the Bible to hurt and not heal or guide is an organization that is dead.
As far as that marriage advice group is concerned, I did speak up about how these people were being treated by this individual and that this individual in particular was misusing scripture. He wasn’t the only one, but he was always the first to speak up. I had a long discussion but unfortunately, I was told he was using scripture in his response so he could voice his opinion. My response was that if you let this continue then you are condoning a misuse and even in some cases an abuse of scripture. I stepped back from participating and to my surprise, the same person who told me his opinion was okay began to say the exact same things I was saying about his responses. She even stated he omitted pertinent words from his scriptural references. It shouldn’t be this hard to speak the truth.
Another aspect I have seen of the religious spirit is in 4 women I have been meeting with recently and I have seen in all 4 the use of shame and guilt. In each woman I heard the same words of how the religious spirit working actively in family and church members made them feel they are not able to be loved. Understand how these spirits work on us. They will make you think, and erroneously believe, you are incapable of being loved because you can never measure up to what you are being told you need to do. This in turn produces self-hatred and self-condemnation no matter what your accomplishments or how hard you “work”. This demonic influence uses a rule-based mentality and creates a series of rules that are impossible to keep because in many cases they are contradictory. When you are rules based, you cannot function in love. These demons will influence you to hate the fruit of love. Without love, they can keep you in spiritual bondage with self-condemnation knowing if you cannot love yourself, you cannot love others. If you cannot love others, then you can’t develop relationship and this does not just extend to those around you, but in your relationship with Jesus, with God, with the Holy Spirit. This demonic influence stresses performance over relationship and when it can get you to a place where you think you failed, then you cannot develop relationships that will lead you to freedom in Christ.
When we add to God’s word that is legalism. So what is the opposite of legalism that is also not in alignment with God? Rebellion. What I see happening in the lives of the people I talk with who have been dealing with the fallout of legalist churches or family members is a spirit of rebellion develops. It looks similar to the fight or flight response we face when we encounter danger. Rebellion is the fight aspect.
One of the women I am working with now has a very heightened level of fight so that even when she wants to submit to Jesus, she is fighting it because she is having issues trusting that God is going to walk beside her, even when she knows he already is walking beside her. He has made some unbelievable changes in her life a reality and she still struggles to let her rebellion go fully. We had lunch a few weeks ago and she looked at me and said, “I want to get closer to God, I want to hear His voice, I want to know what He wants for me in my life. I know I have to get all of this demonic influence out of my life, but I am fighting myself.” She was still in her rebellion mode from what happened to her as she grew up and religious spirits in her family that forced her to make decisions based on what family members wanted her to do, not what she was ready to do. As she talked, you could see her blood pressure increase, she became more animated, her volume increased, her neck turned red, her relaxed smile became an angry smile as she spoke. She was so tired of carrying around all of this weight and wants to be free of it once and for all she just couldn’t get rid of it no matter what she tried. So let’s talk about why it is hard to rid ourselves of this kind of baggage and evict the enemy.
To do that, let’s move on to the Spirit of Accusation. Have you ever had someone accuse you of something you didn’t do, and just wouldn’t let it go? They kept hounding you and telling other people, damaging your name and reputation. If that is happening to you, you are likely doing all you can to clear your name, prove you didn’t do whatever or even confront the person telling lies. It’s a terrible position to be in because you know that it’s likely you will never be able to put yourself back in the position you were in before the false accusations started.
Now imagine if you did do something, but not what you are being accused of and you don’t know how to defend yourself. You are less likely to be able to speak up. What if you did it, but you made the situation right and you are living correctly already. People in these situations find it harder to clear their name and this is exactly how the enemy wants you to feel. Even after you accepted Jesus’ forgiveness, the enemy drags it back up again. The enemy will take everything you do and twist it and make it sound unforgivable, pick you apart, and if he sees it is working, then it goes at you harder. That is Accusation.
Accusation…This spirit functions by using Judgment, Criticism, and Faultfinding in everything you do. It will twist your motives and make you question your beliefs in the Bible. A small mistake will look like an insurmountable mountain. You can’t move past it, you keep dwelling on it week after week second guessing what you should have done instead. It brings to mind that if you had been better, you would have reacted better, you would have made a better choice, you would not have handled that situation incorrectly. Then you have to focus on how to correct it and all the while telling you that nothing you do will actually correct it. So you are really just being kept in a suspenseful state with all the what ifs and how tos. You aren’t meant to find a way out of any of this. If you do manage to do so, well that just starts a new cycle.
In Revelation 12:10, Jesus refers to Satan as our accuser, “For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night,”. The enemy enjoys listing our sins, continually bringing them up so we won’t accept the forgiveness that Jesus provides. If we are continually having our sins placed before us, it makes it difficult to repent and trust in our relationship with Jesus. In that state, we can’t see our Advocate, Jesus, as our defender and realize he is able to address the accusations against us. He paid the ultimate price for us. I John 2 tells us Jesus, the Righteous One, is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, covering us in all our transgressions. Accusation only wants to distract you and call you a failure in an attempt to put you on trial and punish you. This is why it pairs so well with the spirit of Perfection.
The Spirit of Perfection is rampant in our world today. For many people, the only image they want to portray is the image that their life is perfect, they look perfect, they have the perfect house, the perfect job, car, whatever. The reality is, none of us have a perfect life. We cannot ever be perfect. We don’t need to be. Jesus was and we have Him so we don’t need anything else. That’s great if we have a nice house, but that doesn’t mean you are any better than someone who doesn’t have a nice house. When our time comes and we face the Lord, we can’t say, “Lord, I may not have been very close to you, but I had the perfect house.” The Bible does not tell us anywhere to be perfect, we are not striving for that. We want to be righteous, Christ like, but righteous and perfect are not the same thing and righteous and self righteous are not the same thing.
When dealing with the spirit of perfection, you are dealing with Pride, Vanity, Ego, Frustration, Criticism, Irritability, Intolerance, Anger, Impatience, need for approval, need for attention.
The woman I spoke of previously who was dealing with rebellion, when we dug deeper into what was at the root of some of her issues, we also found the Spirit of Perfection. For years she was raised thinking she had to always be perfect. All of her activities, how she looked, how she behaved, her school choice, her degree choice, how she presented her family life. As she was talking to me about her frustrations and her expectations of God, I could see her rebellion taking her in the wrong direction. She was becoming critical of what she thought God did and His judgment of people. It was really the religious spirit trying to push back against her trying to submit to God. For me, it was almost like watching a toddler trying to persuade a parent for some candy or something. If you have ever watched them try different angles, it’s a part of learning, a part of communication and negotiation, but when she was doing it, it wasn’t cute, it was pointed and it was against God. There were a few topics she was really stuck on, wondering how God could do such a thing or be such a way. As I listened, I could tell that her view of God was not actually who God is, it was who legalists say He is and hateful behaviors they exhibit. So after we walked through that I redirected the conversation to what we were actually talking about, her being raised thinking that she had to be the picture of Perfection. We talked about it for a few minutes and then I asked her point blank, when did she achieve her perfection. She looked at me and you could see her countenance change as she laughed and said, “never” and then she started to realize she too was placing expectations on herself she could not meet. She still felt like a failure no matter what she achieved. Her self-condemnation was on its way to eclipsing any expectations she felt her parents had of her, keep in mind, she is 28. Her need for approval has shifted over the years, but in the beginning, when she was young, it was very strong.
Allowing ourselves to be influenced and follow these demonic spirits will rob us of our experiences with the Holy Spirit. We will close ourselves off, sometimes feeling comfortable in the unpleasant conditions because at least we know what that is like. Fear of the unknown with the Holy Spirit means you won’t know Him personally, you won’t hear Him clearly and will stay just as you are, living less than the full life Jesus promises us in John 10:10.
Why are all three of these demonic influences are extremely harmful?
Religious spirits, accusation, perfection, they all destroy from within and carry forward to damage the relationships you have with those around you. This works to isolate you and pull you away from God. It’s a common and basic tactic the enemy uses to pull us down and pull us apart. We have to see how they work against us to separate us so we can stop it as it comes to attack. We don’t have to endure any of this if we maintain our focus on who God is and know who He isn’t.
I hope you have enjoyed our time discussing the Spirit of Religion and its associates Accusation and Perfection and I hope it has helped to build your understanding. We cannot fully conquer our unseen enemies until we understand everything the Holy Spirit makes available to us. If you know anyone who might benefit from this, please share.
As always let’s discuss our Top Show Points:
· The Demonic Spirit of Religion and how it impacts our relationship with the Holy Spirit. We also took a look at the Spirit of Accusation and Perfection.
· Discussed a family of spirits where the strongman is the Religious Spirit. The family generally includes legalism, religiosity, traditionalism, formalism, doctrinal obsession, doctrinal error, fear of God, fear of losing salvation, lawfulness, obsession with being right, lack of tolerance for correction, and is works based.
· This spirit does not create a loving atmosphere, but rather a strict guideline, adherence to that guideline is what is considered important
· A legalist does not seek to rightly obey and apply every word of the Bible to their own life. A legalist is someone who disobeys the Bible by adding to the Bible human rules and regulations for thought, life, and morality, and proceeds to judge themselves and others by these self-made rules.
· Gave story of a legalist giving advice in a Christian Marriage Group that was blanket advice for everyone condemning second marriages
· This demonic influence stresses performance over relationship and when it can get you to a place where you think you failed, then you cannot develop relationships that will lead you to freedom in Christ.
· So what is the opposite of legalism that is also not in alignment with God? Rebellion. It looks similar to the fight or flight response we face when we encounter danger. Rebellion is the fight aspect.
· Accusation…This spirit functions by using Judgment, Criticism, and Faultfinding in everything you do. It will twist your motives and make you question your beliefs in the Bible
· In Revelation 12:10, Jesus refers to Satan as our accuser, “For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night,”. The enemy enjoys listing our sins, continually bringing them up so we won’t accept the forgiveness that Jesus provides.
· Our Advocate, Jesus, as our defender and realize he is able to address the accusations against us. He paid the ultimate price for us. I John 2 tells us Jesus, the Righteous One, is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, covering us in all our transgressions.
· When dealing with the spirit of perfection, you are dealing with Pride, Vanity, Ego, Frustration, Criticism, Irritability, Intolerance, Anger, Impatience, need for approval, need for attention.
· Story of woman dealing with a legalist upbringing struggling with rebellion and a spirit of Perfection.
· Religious spirits, accusation, perfection, they all destroy from within and carry forward to damage the relationships you have with those around you. This works to isolate you and pull you away from God. It’s a common and basic tactic the enemy uses to pull us down and pull us apart.
We encourage you:
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· If you want to learn more about how to Hear God's Voice, take a look at my book, Loving Conversations: How to Pray and Hear God's Voice. There is also a Study Guide available and two new devotionals out based on the Loving Conversations Book. One devotional is for women and one is for men. Those are available on the website.
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