Grace, Faith & Life

Attitude testifies to a person’s view of Christianity as a spiritual experience from God or as a religion trying to come to God or please God on their own terms ….. 
  
Everyone should understand that there are a lot of counterfeit Christians and counterfeit Christian denominations out there.

There are some who practice a counterfeit religion because they have been deceived. There are also alot of charlatans whose purpose is to deceive. They get personal gratification from controlling others through religious deception. Some may even be well meaning, but they can’t stand to have people really understand their freedom in Christ, so they keep people in all kinds of religious bondage, and the people are willing because they don’t take responsibility for knowing the scriptures.  Jeremiah 5:26-31

In order to be accepted or to belong to a group, some people will pretend that they have had the same experience which others claim that they have had. (Many denominational clergy and cult leaders are all to willing to allow this and to use these people to their advantage.)

Some people are discouraged in their faith when they do not experience God in the same way as others claim they do. They may fall away from a counterfeit religion and never come to understand that their faith should be based on their own relationship to God as revealed to them in scripture and not what someone else claims. There is a big difference between what God puts into our heart and what someone else puts into our mind.

I don’t believe that we need to see God controlling every aspect of our life and causing bad circumstances when we don’t do what He expects. (This is the basis for the success of cults, false hope and/or fear.) Scripture says, “we have been given everything we need for life and godliness in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1:3

I believe God is spirit and speaks to us spiritually, and His voice is a very still small voice, which is easily drowned out by our own thoughts. It takes time for us to mature enough to even know when it is actually God revealing something to us and not something in our own mind. Some, because of their counterfeit experience, never get to the quiet attitude needed to experience this kind of relationship, because they have been taught that what they do is the evidence of God working in their life, and they pretend it is so.

It is not unusual for a person to make a profession of faith and then a year later never be seen in church again. Some would say their profession of faith was not real, I would say they were not taught their Christian walk in terms of a dynamic personal spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ. They were probably taught denominational organization, and denominational methods and motivated to grow a church. When they realize they are being used rather than being edified spiritually, they drop out.

We don’t need to pretend. We need our experiencing God to be based on spiritual truths which He teaches through His word, not on some false expectation based on someone else’s claim. So what if it takes a couple of years for us to really begin to know how God works in our life. When we don’t need to expect or pretend to see God’s hand in everything, then we are free to try to be honest to ourselves about how God can change our heart and mind by teaching us spiritual truths which is what He promised to do.

Christians need to quit relying on the claims of others and study scripture as the basis for their relationship with the Holy Spirit.                            Print This Post