Beware of religious goodness! What makes this walk with God live for the younger generation is the fact that there is a spiritual reality and a dedication. There is also a certain freedom.
Religion tends to put people in straitjackets. Because they can’t reach the basic thing of a person’s spirit they try to reach them in the ruts of their soul and put them in channels and grooves.
That is why people have been kicked out of churches: because of an infraction of a rule, a little habit or manner of dress or speech, “kick them out”—they just had to go because that was “great wickedness.”
And yet, the people who were doing it were so bad in their spirit that if you put them on a scale, the people who were thrown out often had a better spirit than the people who did the tossing.
Where there is no way to get down to the basics of a person’s spirit, the things of religion can often be a rut, a habit, a restraint to irritate under. That is the reason there is so much hypocrisy when the people follow the pattern of religion. They become irritated under the straitjacket.
It is better to preach the grace of God. In preaching the grace of God we are not excusing a lot of things, but we get right down to the basic thing in a person’s spirit and say, “This is the way you are going to walk with God.”
I suppose everyone who is raised under religious restraints comes to the place that they say, “If I can get rid of this, I am not going to be under this bondage.” Parents who are very religious generally have children that are rebels, because they grow up to rebel against the restraints that religiosity brings.
We are not actually teaching religion, we are teaching something else. You may wonder, “Well, don’t you have teachings and doctrines, etc?” Yes, but our approach is different. Instead of trying to produce a religion it is producing a state of spirit, of spirituality—the difference between being religious and spiritual. A person can be very spiritual and not necessarily religious.
I make it a special point not to be religious. I want to be spiritual and not soulish. Certain ministers’ conventions—chafing at the artificial tone of voice, “Oh, we praise God today for this marvelous, wonderful congregation of people.” Actually, they hated each other, but they were going through the motions of piety.
You could always tell if certain denominational speakers believed they were anointed, because their arms were going around like a windmill and they were yelling in a certain tone of voice.
Another denominational people had that “holier-than-thou” attitude. There is only one thing that can bring us out of it: God brought the day of spirit to replace the day of soul. Now we have a way to be spiritual instead of just soulish with a religious aspect to it.
In some denominations, taking wine is against their religion. Jesus drank wine, in fact, He made the best wine that was ever made in the history of the world. He made it right out of water.
Because we have no religious rules against wine, does not mean that we are throwing down the walls to the world. We are following a different rule. Because we are people of spirit, our spirits cannot adjust to the world. When you become spiritual the pull of the world is gone; but when you are just religious in a soulish way the world is always pulling you.
This walk with God in the Spirit is the most real thing in our lives.
I am waiting for the crop of babies to come forth who have been blessed from the time of conception, to see what God can do with those little creatures so anointed and blessed of Him. We have already seen some of them come forth, moving in the Lord in fantastic things at an early age.
Everything is in this walk, because God is a Spirit and we approach Him through our spirit; that is what “spiritual” means. Now, that means there can be direct communication.
In the religious churches, where they are very religious and soulish, they don’t know whether they had a dream or whether they had a vision. They don’t know whether it is a word from God or if their own thinking has inspired them. They cannot know.
But when you separate, as Hebrews 4:12 quotes it, between soul and spirit, then you come to the place where you know the voice of God—He speaks to you.