#451

It’s Getting Cold In Here

Bad Testimonies Are Rampant

Sin will be rampant everywhere and will cool the love of many. (Matt 24:12, TLB)

I have a confession to make. I am a doom scroller. There, I said it. So you don’t know what doomscrolling is? Here is how an article from webmd.com defines it:

It’s late, but rather than sleeping you’re devouring yet another negative story online. When you binge on news or social media content about troubling things -- like a tragedy, crisis, or disaster -- it’s called doomscrolling or doomsurfing. Lots of people have done it.

The article goes on to tell us the dangers of doomscrolling:

As you might guess, it’s possible for all that bad news to take a toll on your emotions and more. Doomscrolling can send your mind racing and lead to burnout. It can also make you feel uncertain, anxious, or distressed. And those feelings can steal your sleep, appetite, motivation, or desire to do things you usually enjoy, research suggests.

If you’ve had mental health conditions like anxiety and depression, it’s also possible for doomscrolling to lead to panic attacks, one expert says.

For me, it just wastes a lot of my time, but there are some short videos that are starting to bother me. More and more people are telling us how they ditched being a Christian, many Pentecostal or Charismatic ones and how stupid it was.

A Few Examples

While I could give you the links to the videos, I prefer not to give them any more attention to make them think what they are saying is accepted by more than it should. You see the social media platforms measure views regardless of whether they come from supporters or not and if you watch it the algorithms will automatically increase how many more people are going to see it. For now, I’ll just tell you what I saw and let that suffice to make my point. One young woman used to be a Christian who was taught about the Rapture would go outside with her brothers and took turns looking up in the sky counting down from 10 and would be convinced that Jesus would return in that time. She experienced what some call “Rapture Anxiety” (you can read a CNN report on it here) and still considers herself a Christian, but she’s not your parent’s kind. Unless your parents believe that living with a person and having children out of wedlock is totally acceptable with God. Another young woman posted a video of some things that she used to do that she now sees as embarrassing. What things were those? Having people pray for her with laying on of hands and speaking in tongues. Another man also posted a video about how he used to speak in tongues and now sees it as just making up nonsensical words. Mind you, these people all seem to be extremely sincere and are on campaigns against what they used to embrace. One person used to be a producer for CBN and sang for their fundraisers.

The Chill Starts With What The Devil Hates The Most

That may qualify as the longest headline ever, but I digress. What I’m noticing is that the kind of people living the most Biblically based are now the main targets. And what they believe is now being seen as out of touch or puritanical. If you are say, a person who believes like the early church after the book of Acts, well you are dead wrong and actually hurting the cause of Christianity. Let’s break that down a little. First you believe that Jesus is your savior and that He died for your sins. Then you are fully Pentecostal and speaking in tongues. Then you believe that Jesus is coming back in the Rapture. A Pre-tribulational Rapture just to be clear. You are doing your best to live as purely as you can which means that you abstain from sins like homosexuality, sex either before marriage or with people other than your spouse and many, many other things that you read in the Bible. You are totally missionary supporting and you believe that we should pray for Israel as God’s chosen people. And the cherry on top is you believe in prophecy making you totally unhinged. God forbid that you actually hear His voice! If you look around, those are the main things that are being called wrong by people who actually used to live and believe that way. You are now being accused of being hurtful, a bigot, unloving person who is prone to conspiracies. You are harmful to impressionable children and should have your children taken away from you since you are brainwashing them to be just like you. Is there a spiritual force also at work here? As they say in Minnesota, you betcha!

A Religious Spirit Will Chill Christians

I know we hear a lot about the spirit of Jezebel and the spirit of Ahab, but there is a spirit that is way worse and has been around a very, very long time, well even before time began. That is a religious spirit. Here is how curtlandry.com defines it for us:

A type of demonic spirit that influences a person to replace a genuine relationship with God with works and traditions. When a person operates out of a Religious Spirit they attempt to earn salvation. This attempt to appear righteous is often hiding behind anger and resentment. They often set standards for those underneath them that are impossible to fill, withholding love from the individual when they fail to meet their standards. The Religious Spirit is highly critical and judgmental of everyone, especially those in leadership.

A religious spirit actually works both sides of the aisle as it were. It puts a harsh burden on believers, especially young ones and causes them to rebel the first chance they get. Then it inspires them to be extremely critical of those who believe like those things they were forced to believe, even if the Bible supports those beliefs. Following the letter of the law without the spirit of the law to guide and support one will lead to exactly what we are seeing. It forms a new Christianity, one that errs on the extreme of false love and worships a god who won’t send anyone to hell for example. Unfortunately in the world of social media, those who are still following the Bible are the harshest critics of these wayward believers, believers that God has a plan for and sees them like a prodigal son He will run to hug when they come back to Him. But to get back to Him they have to get around the hurtful comments of the older brother.

How Can We Stay On Fire?

For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.”(2 Corinthians 11:13-14, KJV)

Well, for one we need to recognize the religious spirit that causes this falling away. Our discernment must be fully energized as this demonic influence can be seen as an angel of light. And it will manifest itself in believers that we may even look up to, believers who just got judgmental the more they involved themselves in your life. Forgive them but discern the error of forced obedience to the law as a means to righteousness they encouraged you to follow. It is that spirit that these fallen believers fought against and still do. The fake produced and programmed life that was modeled for them needs to be rooted out with any tiny part of it thrown into the refiners fire to be burned up. Unfortunately they all seem to be charismatic and well spoken and act like they have been freed from they perceive to be false theology. They have a form of godliness from years and years of routinely living it, but the now deny the power it could have given them. They are the perfect spokespeople for a carnal Christianity that will appeal to others harmed by the same religious spirit. We though must model real Christianity for them both in our responses to them if Holy Spirit leads us to engage them but in how we live our lives. They will come across our social media from time to time and we must model what they missed growing up. Here is a brief way to also break the influence of a religious spirit in our lives and the lives around us from an article from www.riverlifefellowship.com

One of the ways we overcome the religious spirit is to make our flesh our slaves (1 Cor. 9:27) and that includes our minds. It has been said that the mind is a great servant, but a terrible master. If we allow our minds to rule us, a religious spirit will influence us.

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. 29 Walk with me and work with me — watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. 30 Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matthew 11:28-30 (The Message Bible).

Another way to overcome the religious spirit is to have on-going times of “getting away with Jesus” in our hearts. This is a time when our minds are washed and renewed and we freshly receive His perspective on life and the result is “walking with Him in life and working with Him in ministry freely and lightly”.

Good advice if we are to avoid our faith to grow cold.