Religious Spirit (Part V)

By Odon Bulamba (28 February 2003)

In Col 2:18-23 do not let anyone who delights in false humility in the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize, for such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen and his un-spiritual mind puffs him up with idol notions, he has lost connection with the head from whom the whole body supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews grows as God causes it to grow, since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world why as though you still belong to it do you submit it to rulers, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, these are all destined to perish with use because they are based on human commands and teachings, such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom with their self imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgences.

Amen. So Jesus is asking us why we continue to live like people who are ruled by human beings. It’s true that we can do things thinking that they are in secret but in front of God there is no secret. God can see everything, he knows our lives better than we do, and when we do something God is there observing us and it’s too hard for Him sometimes because of our actions.

Paul wanted to tell us, why do we really accept to live with the rules of human beings, don’t do this, or do that or don’t touch this or that; why do we accept to live like that? If I decide once and say, “Jesus I give you my life, my life belongs to you Jesus Christ”; I think that from there I don’t have the right to lead by life anymore because it belongs to someone. I can never go to Pete’s place and put on his shoes, I have to ask first. Pete can say yes or no because those shoes belong to him, but as Christians we hardly ever ask Jesus, we don’t ask.


Before being born I was not whoever I am today. I was somewhere and God gave me that life, and when I was born I started to live but God has the right to take back my life. When I met Jesus I decided that my conscience tells me and the gospel tells me that I must give this life back to God, “God this is your life, lead me the way you want, I want really to live as a Christian I want to belong to you forever”. I’m sure that a Christian has ever told God that they want to become a Christian for only 2 months or I want to be yours Jesus for 2 years, never, everyone says I give my life to you, lead me.

So Jesus says, “o.k. sign here”, maybe you’ll sign and you give it Him. Now Jesus will start to tell you “do this, what you are doing is not correct do this, stop that”. You’ll start to say, “Jesus, what’s this? It’s too much, I can not handle it anymore, you are putting more pressure on me.” Jesus will say, “it’s my life, you have to do it”. Unfortunately many Christians at that stage forsake the Christian life and say, “no, I cannot carry on in that way I must do this, I must do what I want”.

It’s not really what they want themselves, it’s what their body wants, my body sends me to drink beer, my body sends me to smoke, my body sends me to steal, my body sends me to do something worse in Gods eyes. I will decide and say to Jesus, “no I made a mistake, I didn’t give you my life one hundred percent, maybe I’ll give you forty percent, maybe I told you Jesus that I will not steal anymore but I didn’t tell you I will never drink beer”.

Another man in Africa told us once that Jesus Himself is God and He knows that drinks are important for human-beings, he told us to enjoy life, and I can’t find my joy anywhere in this world except in the nightclub. That’s the only place I can go to find my joy because I can see people dancing, I can drink, music will be there, that’ exactly what I want. He forgot completely the joy in the Lord.

One day Jesus will come back to us and tell us to give Him a report of the life that He gave us, you’ll have to give Him feedback. Jesus will say to you, “You kept that life for a few years and when you were 25 you gave back your life to me, but I as the owner of the life, I found that I didn’t enjoy it, why did you destroy my life?” So you have to justify in front of God and at that time beer will never be there, cigarettes will never be there, whatever was pushing you to do it will not be there.

We met another man who preached to us in Kenya once. He was a brother and he told us that one day he went to meet a prostitute, and he was a servant of God. After meeting that lady, two minutes later he started to think, ‘what did I do, why am I here? I spent my money to pay that lady, I spent my time, my personality and then I disturbed the Holy Spirit in my life, who am I, am I really normal or not?’

And some people today can just spend whatever God gave to them. They use the money God gave them for useless things, they can spend their time talking about useless things, they can even spend the time just to criticise others. I can meet my sister here and say “oh, you know Colleen, she’s not a good lady, she’s like this and that”, “oh really, how do you know that”. “Brother Paul told me, he was there at that time and such things happened”. And then you’ll say “oh yeah, I know that she’s not good also, cause I can remember one day I saw such things”. Maybe you’ll spend 10 or 20 minutes talking about useless things and finally “goodbye”, “goodbye”. Why didn’t you pray for Colleen, why didn’t you say ok because she’s crossing a hard situation, why didn’t you say let’s pray so that God can help her.

But you’ll never find the time to pray for people; we are just there to know things like what’s going on in Peter’s life. “Hello Michelle, where’s Peter?” “He went to work” “is Peter working actually, where does he work, how much does he get?” You can see that we really spend our time on useless things and that’s a big fruit of the religious spirit.

When we are going to church on Sundays every Christian wants to be really clean, maybe you’ll prepare a shirt or trousers to put on and then you’ll go to church to pray with other Christians, it’s good to gather together so that you can praise your Lord, it’s not bad, but what’s your purpose when you prepare your body. Maybe I can ask that question, today is Sunday you wake up and say I have to go to church, you’ll have a shower and after that you’ll get your clothes ready and then put them on and go to church. Why are we preparing ourselves before going to church? Why do we clean our bodies, why do we put nice clothes on? What’s the reason for that? Is it culture, is it because the Bible says we have to do so, why? Peter, when you go to church why do you look really nice? Maybe you don’t know. Many people don’t think, they just think that because it’s Sunday I must be there so let me put this on. Maybe we just want people to comment and praise us.

It’s good to embellish our bodies, but our hearts also need care. You know that you are going to pray, find some time to wash your heart, to wash your soul and then try to find really nice clothes for your heart. Let your heart put on those nice clothes and then go and meet God. Human-beings will only see the physical aspect, but God will look inside you, many souls are completely naked in front of God, they are really dirty and when God is looking at them He says that they are wasting their time, they are not praying, they do not really know what they are doing, God’s presence will never touch you, never ever.

When we are praying as Christian’s we all need to hear or listen to God’s voice, we all want to feel God’s presence, we want to feel that God really touches us, everyone wants that but why don’t you hear God’s voice, why doesn’t God touch you? That’s the first question every Christian must ask himself. When I’m praying sometimes I can have some feeling, sometimes I can listen to God talk to me, sometimes even God touches me, sometimes I can even see things, but sometimes also there is nothing, I can pray for 2 or 3 months. The book of Acts tells us that God is not far, He’s here at this moment, why doesn’t he touch us if He’s here, it’s not hard for God just to raise up His hand and start to touch everyone among us, it’s a matter of one second, but why doesn’t He do it? The main thing is because of the religious spirit.

When Paul was called Saul and he met Jesus for the first time he discovered that he was living that religious spirit, he was doing things thinking that he was acting on behalf of God but he discovered that what he was doing was not from God it was from himself and the people who were sending him. So from that day Paul accepted that he was nothing, he recognised that he was not acting on God’s behalf, and God touched him. So we are here and God can touch us also if we will recognise that we have something wrong in our lives, and that thing in our lives that is wrong is maybe criticising others, maybe it’s pride, maybe it’s abusing people or God, we have just small things and those small things can make us become useless in front of God and God will never and ever talk to us.

We have some insects called termites, which eat timber. They are really small, they are not strong, they do not even have bones but they can start to eat timbers and finish them while with my teeth, which are stronger, I cannot eat the timber unless I want to break my teeth. But those small insects will start to eat them slowly but surely and then you’ll sit on the chair and fall, meaning that Satan doesn’t use strength because he’s weak, but if we’ll give him the chance he’ll come into our lives and start to eat slowly.

For example, you can know something in the Bible like Jesus who healed a blind man. Someone will ask you where it is in the Bible. You don’t know, however, two years ago, you knew where it was written in the Bible. You can start to lose little by little small things and ten years later someone can give a story from the Bible and it’ll become like a new story for you, you’ll start to doubt, is it really a new story or not. Sometimes a preaching can become like a story you’ve heard for the first time while someone actually preached that story ten years ago. Why is that? It is because we are not feeding our spirits, we are not reviewing what we are learning, Satan is there and will start to eat what we receive and then we’ll lose.

Once termites eat something it is impossible to replace it, it’s not easy. When someone loses Jesus Christ in their life and goes far away, Satan will not give you the chance to come back easily. The Bible says that if someone had 7 evil spirits and are cast out of his life and he gives those spirits a chance to come back into his life, 49 evil spirits will return.

So you’ll now see that Christians are living worse lives than pagans. Pagans believe it’s better to live the way that I am instead of living like you. At court, in our society, pagans can say that if I see what Christians are doing it’s better to live the way that I am. This is because the spirit that doesn’t belong to God leads us and we are out of line.

We must really pray for our souls. To pray for others is not bad but we have to pray for ourselves, “God, do I really belong to You or not? Jesus, help me to understand, the spirit that’s leading me, is it your spirit or not, whatever I’m doing on this earth does it please you or not?” I know that God is good; no one will say that I don’t know if I’m a good person or a bad person, no one. Everyone knows whether the actions they do please God or not. Your conscience will tell you what you are doing is not good, your mind will even tell you this is not good, but your body will push you to carry on.

So we have to tell God that before everything I ask you to help me so that I can be able to overcome the temptation of my body. That is the first thing, tell God, “I want really your help, your help is to make me overcome what my body is pushing me to do, I accepted to die with you and I rose up with you, I gave my life to you so why is my body leading me instead of you? Jesus, help me to understand how we can lead people.” Then you’ll hear and listen to His voice, Jesus will talk to you, you will know what you are doing is not good, come back to Him. He’ll talk to you and you’ll reply and you’ll feel that joy will start to grow up in your life.

There is nothing more encouraging for a Christian than to hear the voice of God. You’ll feel really that you are filled with joy, you’ll testify to people and say I heard God’s voice this morning, and then you’ll really feel encouraged to keep praying everyday. But if you never hear His voice and you are waiting for Jesus to come down, you’ll never hear it. Come close to Jesus and He’ll come close to you, go far away from Him and he’ll go far away from you, that’s the principle.

We’ll stop there and end by saying that the religious spirit is not a good spirit to have among Christians, it’s not a good spirit to have in the church of Jesus Christ, it’s not a good spirit for ourselves because it does not enable us to co-operate properly with God. All parents need to have a good relationship with their children and vice versa. No parent will be happy if his child or children are crazy, who can not submit or except what he is saying, but if you have nice children who respect what you are saying, you will be proud of your children. God is also proud of us when we respect Him, He’s proud of us when He can testify and tell people, “you know Joan she’s my daughter, because she respects me, she does whatever I want her to do”. At that time God will start to speak to you. It’s not hard, it’s a small thing; try to avoid the religious spirit.

Let’s pray:
Thank you so much our God because You are the same yesterday, today and forever. We thank you God for Your presence among us, we need You Lord Jesus to help us because we are weak, we need Jesus our Lord to touch our hearts so that we can live according to your will. It’s true that many times we can go far away from your will, we can forget about your word, we can forget about your presence in our lives, we can even forget that the life that we are living doesn’t belong to us. Oh Lord Jesus God of mercy, we ask you God to touch us, to transform us, to take away from us that religious spirit, to take away the pride, to take away whatever doesn’t please You, God help us, give us strength, we need your strength God, we need the Holy Spirit to lead us, we need your power to be with us everywhere, we need God to hear your voice, we need God to feel your touch, we need God to see your presence in our lives. It’s true that Satan is attacking us, it’s true that Satan is against our souls to be saved but God our Lord You are the only God who can protect us, God we call upon you, come and protect us, don’t allow Satan to protect our lives, we want to be led by You from now up to the end of our time on this earth. Thank you God because you are here, bless every person who is present here; bless also people who are absent among us. Lord our Lord we will go back home now, we need you to lead us, we need you oh Lord to protect us, we need you Oh Lord to touch our activities to touch our studies to touch our jobs, to touch everything that we are doing, our families, our husbands and wives, our children so that everybody in our family, everybody in this world can be saved through us. We need oh Lord your light in our lives so that we can be a light for others. We are praying in Jesus name who is our Lord, Amen

The Religious Spirit (Part IV)

By Odon Bulamba (28 February 2003)

When Moses went to see Pharaoh to ask for the freedom for the people of Israel, Moses could perform miracles by using Aaron’s staff. Aaron would throw the staff and it would turn into a serpent and those people Jannes and Jambres could also do the same thing, they could imitate exactly what Moses and Aaron were doing. Today we even have Christians who can imitate speaking in the language of the Holy Spirit; when we are praying they will start “ahhh bla bla bla” and they are not filled by the Holy Spirit, it is just to give an impression to people around them so that they can think “oh, really this person is powerful, he can speak in tongues, he can do this and that”. When people are gathered in this way they can rise up their voices and pray to give an impression to people that God visits them. It’s true that they want to cheat people around them but they are cheating themselves because they can never cheat God.

Jannes and Jambres use to do the same thing, but one day God put them in confusion. When it was the time for every first born in every family in Egypt to be killed, the family of Jannes and Jambres were also punished. Why couldn’t they be protected by the tenth plague? Because that was the day that God opened the truth about people’s souls and spirits. Jannes and Jambres were acting on behalf of Satan but covering themselves as people who can perform miracles with the same spirit of God. That’s really another big and serious problem in churches.

Some Christians want to make people who are younger spiritually than themselves to become like a slave to them. They become like their younger brother or sister instead of taking them at the same level and considering them as a friend.

When Jesus himself came among us He considered us as His friends. Jesus doesn’t say that you are there and I am here, no never, He puts everybody at the same level and He loves us. Even if you are younger and you pray, He will answer you. He doesn’t care who you are, or your nationality, no.

But people who have the religious spirit first of all check, observe and analyse before acting. I can look around me and see Peter, oh he can’t give me anything, “Peter what are doing”, “I’m studying” you’ll ask someone else “oh, what are you doing brother”, “oh, I’m a doctor”, “oh, that’s a nice Christian to be, so brother praise the Lord, God is blessing you, you know I was praying for you and your problem you had yesterday and God told me such, such and such things”. These people can even lie and say that God told me so I can pass the message on to you; they are flattering those people because if they know a friend who is a doctor then tomorrow when they’re sick he will treat me freely, maybe when he’ll bring his tithe I’ll gain money and so on. The doctor will also believe that that person is a servant of God, but maybe God doesn’t even recognise that person. We must be really careful in our way of living because if we are Christians and pretend to act on behalf of God while He didn’t send us, it’ll be a serious problem.

There was a man at the time of David. When the ark of the Lord was taken from Philistine to Israel on the way while it was being carried, it nearly fell, and someone intervened so that it could not touch the ground, God killed that person. Why did God kill that man? He killed him because he did something which was not supposed to be done by him. He acted like a Levite while he was not one, only a Levite had the right to touch the ark of Lord, but he touched it. Really it was a good action, which everyone appreciated, but in front of God it was the worse thing to do.

So we must also be careful. Sometimes we can say, “o.k., I have to tell my brother God said this and I want to show you that God is really acting through me”, while God is offended and God can say, “no, it’s not true, I did not send this person, it’s just a religious spirit in him”. It is like the way that that man wanted to prove to people that he stopped the ark from falling; he knew that only the Levite people could touch the ark but he ignored it, he didn’t think about it. So the religious spirit can sometimes make people to not think before acting. We need to find time to think about what we are doing so that we will not do something that will displease God.

The two men in the book of 2 Timothy had a wrong spirit, which meant that their faith was useless. As we can see there are many people whose spirit is not in line; they act like pagans and like people who have never met Jesus Christ in their lives and everything they are doing is wrong. Sometimes they can say – we have faith we believe that God will do something – but their faith is zero. They can pray for you for a thousand years and nothing will change in your life, instead of blessing you maybe they will bring you a curse.

I’ll give you another example; let’s say that a woman is married to man who has HIV and the woman conceives, the newborn baby will have the same virus; he’s innocent but he will die later. It’s the same thing for us; we are the church of the Lord, when preachers or leaders or exhorters are full of sin we have something which can kill. I will come as a sinner and open the Bible which is Holy, I will touch it and then start to preach and everything which is in my heart that is the spirit of darkness, you will receive; you will receive the Word of God and the spirit of darkness and then you’ll conceive.

When you conceive, the fruit of your production will be dead fruit, they will not have power; it’s not your fault but the fault of the preacher. That’s why God said before going into the temple one must clean himself and make himself pure, and he must make sure he’s a hundred percent pure, if not whenever he’ll go into the temple he will never come out. So everyone must have a conscience, before opening the Word of God or preaching to people make sure you are clean so that you will not put something bad in other people’s souls.

2 Cor 11:13-15 such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ and no wonder for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light, it is not surprising then if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness the end will be what their actions deserve

So we can see here that we have ministers of God, however, Satan also has his ministers, those ministers are called false ministers, and they can be false prophets, false apostles, and false pastors. You can see that those people are acting (for example) as an evangelist but they don’t even know where they got that title from, they just gave it to themselves and said ‘from now on I’m an evangelist. I have to preach the Gospel’ but their actions don’t really give glory to God.

Many evangelists come from overseas to Africa but their purpose is just to do business. They can leave their regions to go into a region where people can easily get gold or diamonds. They say, “o.k. I’ll go and preach there”. Once they get there they will start to preach the Gospel and people will give them some offerings. They will collect maybe gold and diamonds and then go and sell them somewhere in Europe and after that they will go back to Africa again and preach. These people are travelling as evangelists and preaching to people as evangelists, but they are themselves like Satan. They cover themselves but the religious spirit is what is leading them. They can look like Christians but they’re not.

A few years ago a man of God was preaching somewhere and he said that it’s a shame for the church because our actions are worse than the people who don’t even know God. When you see a Christian acting you cannot believe he’s a Christian. People who do not belong to the church do better things than people who are in the church. Inside the church you’ll find prostitution, lying, and all kinds of dark power, while people who are not Christians are living in a normal way with their morals and conscience and will not do things Christians are doing.

In Africa pastors can kill each other. Because I’m a pastor and I see other pastors preaching with the power of God and people can feel that the power of God is there, so I’ll go to see a witch and tell the witch to kill those pastors and if the witch is not able I’ll pay gangsters. So there is a competition, not against Satan but against Jesus Christ our Lord and that’s very bad.

Imagine there are two teams playing rugby and in one team you start to mark the players on your side instead of marking the players on the other team, finally you’ll be the loser. It’s the same way with God, He knows what we are doing and He counts how good or bad our actions are. One day judgement will be there, that’s why Jesus said that “many people will call upon my name but on the last day I will say I don’t know you, get out of the kingdom of God”, especially people who have the religious spirit, people who always say they are acting on behalf of God while God is not even with them, so that day they will really be confused.

Religious Spirit (Part III)

By odon Bulamba (28 February 2003)

It’s a joy for us to meet again tonight, I thank God personally because He’s so good and He continues to provide the gift of life for us. I will ask you all to come and concentrate so that we can pray to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Prayer: Father we thank you because you are among us tonight, we ask for your presence once again to be among us, oh Father Lord, we need your participation in everything that we’ll do here, forgive our sins, touch our hearts, purify us so that we can be pure in front of you, we need the Holy Spirit to lead us in everything that we’ll do, Father we want your hand to cover the time that we’ll be together while we are sharing your Word, oh Lord Jesus we need your participation in everything that’ll we’ll do, Father our Lord we hope that you are among us and will continue to act. We are praying in Jesus name, Amen.

Last time we were talking about the religious spirit, we will carry on with this tonight and maybe finish it. As I said last week the religious spirit is a spirit which leads many Christians who think, they are working for God but they are led by a power, which is the power of darkness. I gave quite a few examples, but I can not go back to them, however, I will remind you that as Christians we are called to open our eyes and to have a memory which is clear so that we can identify easily the religious spirit in our lives.

It’s not a matter of accusing each other, it’s not a matter of saying Michelle is the one who has that spirit, it’s a matter of checking inside yourself to know if you have that spirit or not. If you find that you have it, you have to ask God to help you.

I’ll give you an example; in the Bible we have a man named Judas Iscariot, he was one of the disciples of Jesus Christ. Judas played a big role in the group of disciples, but Judas did something which everybody declared was not good; Judas betrayed Jesus Christ. People today can think that Judas is not good, but for me personally I can say that if Judas didn’t betray Jesus then today we could not have salvation. It would be impossible for Jesus to be crucified if Judas hadn’t said, “oh, this is the one”. So Judas also played a role which helped the church today to be saved, although he was wrong he still did something, which helped us. We don’t have to judge Judas all the time; we have to leave that judgement to God and one day God will judge.

Last time we were reading from the book of James 4:6; God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. The religious spirit makes people proud; you’ll find a Christian who is really proud not because he’s a Christian but because of material things that he has. Sometimes these types of Christians will show other Christians that he’s a Christian but in front of pagans he’ll act as someone who doesn’t know Jesus.

In different offices here in NZ and other countries; you’ll welcome someone into your office, you won’t really know who that person is but the way that you’ll start to talk to that person you’ll discover who that person is and know if he’s a Christian or not. In NZ I discovered that there are some Christians who are working in their offices and applying the policy of their offices, they can really work and forget about their spiritual life. It’s true we have to respect the law, we have to respect our government, we have to respect our society but on top of that we have to respect the Word of God.

When we are at work and someone comes to our service I’m sure that as Christians we will really think about the problem that that person has, let’s first of all try to find a solution as a Christian, not as other human beings or managers of the company etc. If you think as a Christian then God’s blessing will be upon you, but if you think as a manager it’ll be hard for God to carry on leading you. Human beings established many rules that are used on this earth and in society, but as a Christian we have to know that there are rules that are superior to the rules of human beings.

I had a friend 20 – 25 yrs ago whom his grandfather loved a lot. When his grandfather was at the point where he could die he told my friend that he wanted to give him something before he dies. He said that if you accept whatever I will give to you I will become a Christian, this is my last chance but accept first what I’ll offer you. My friend was a Christian and his grandfather wasn’t, so he found it a good opportunity for his grandfather to accept Jesus Christ into his life, so he said o.k. I’m ready to accept whatever you’ll tell me.

His grandfather said, what I’m going to give you is something that you can only take off when your time for death is there and then you’ll give what I’m going to give you to someone else. The thing that I’ll give you will never allow you to continue to pray or to praise God, you’ll live like a pagan, but if you really love me and recognise that my soul has value in front of God then accept what I’ll offer you.

It was a talisman. That friend of mine thought that because God says we have to accept whatever people give us so that maybe they cannot be deceived spiritually, let me accept this. He said o.k. my grandfather, give it to me and I’ll keep it. In his mind he was thinking that after his death he’ll go to church and they’ll pray for me and then I’ll leave it. Satan also knew that “Oh! This is your plan, so we’ll see”. Anyway he accepted it. His grandfather changed his life and became a Christian at that moment. So a few hours later he died, my friend was now supposed to go back home and tell people that his grandfather had died, but on his way home he had a car accident and died. So, if that friend of mine did not accept the talisman maybe he could still be alive, but because he accepted it and Satan knew he had a plan to destroy that talisman better for him to die while he’s a sinner. The religious spirit pushes people to say that we are so clever we can dodge people and do this and that but down the line we will change our point of view.

Many people can come to you. For example I can come to Jessica, “what’s your problem?” Jessica will tell me, “my problem is this and that”, “what about your husbands problems?” “My husband’s problem is this and that”. Then I will tell her, “don’t worry I will pray for you”. Maybe what I wanted was just to gather information from her and to know it, it was curiosity. It was not a matter of helping her so that her life can be better. I’ve never read in the Bible where Jesus met someone and said what are your problems? Tell me what’s the problem with your mother or your husband? Never. Jesus never did that. Christians who want to pray for others, whenever they go to see people they don’t have that authorisation to interview people, what happened, who did that etc. When you start to interview people so that you can know clearly people’s problems, you are going outside of the Word of God. Sometimes the spirit of religion also works like that.

I’ll give you another example; it was in 1994 in Tanzania. A pastor went to pray for someone. That person who was sick was healed and then a few years later the pastor started to love the wife of that man who he prayed for. Many years later someone went to visit the wife of the pastor and said “my dear friend, you are at home here, but I think what your husband is doing is not good, so open your eyes”. She said, “How shall I open my eyes?” Her friend told her, “No, no you must be careful because things are worse, be careful”. For that friend who told the pastor’s wife, it was like an advice so that she could be careful and start to take precautions so that something could not happen later, and maybe it was also an accusation, telling her so that she could react.

The spirit which led the friend of the pastor’s wife was not the spirit of God because first of all she did not have wisdom, she could have firstly gone to the pastor and talked to him. Anyway, the pastor’s wife went to where her husband was and found a lady there talking to her husband. She started to attack that lady, she abused her, really it was a fight, people came and asked what was the problem. “We are fighting because my friend told me that my husband is coming here for her”. “Oh! How can an old lady like this one who is mature in the church do this?” It was a bit of a shame, to see the age that she had in the gospel and the actions that she was doing did not make sense with what she did in the church. Sometimes the religious spirit can also push us to do things that don’t really match with our spiritual lives. You can make people to be in coalition, you can make people fight and kill each other, because of our way of speaking. So finally the pastor and his wife had a serious problem, they separated. The other lady and her husband also separated and everything was destroyed because of lack of control.

Let’s read in the book of 2 Timothy 3:7-8 always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth, just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses so also these men oppose, men of deprived minds who as far as the faith is concerned are rejected. But they will not get very far because as in the case of those men their folly will be clear to everyone.

The Bible tells us about these people who used to love the Word of God but they could not live according to it. Three quarters of Christians today can go to church, they can meet and praise God, they can share the Word of God, they can even sometimes sing for God but they are not practicing the Word of God in their lives. After coming out of church they forget the message and live their normal lives in their families.

Someone can tell you, “no, no, no, this is not my normal family life I must live like this, I have to teach my children according to my culture, I have to teach my children according to my way of living.” For example; “I’m from Belgium and as Belgium people we live like this, children must live like that too”. For some people who come from other countries, they can easily tell their children that you don’t have to learn English here, you must learn my mother tongue; it’s common. They will force their culture and force their children to learn their culture so that they cannot it, which is not bad, but we are not good at forcing our children to learn God’s culture. We are not really good at forcing ourselves to learn God’s culture, we can know the truth but we don’t practice it.

Religious Spirit (Part II)

By Odon Bulamba (21 February 2003)

Romans 10:2; I can testify about them that they are zealous for God but their zeal is not based on knowledge.

This is the first characteristic of the religious spirit, those who have this spirit have wonderful courage, love God’s word and have good Christian actions, but when they do something they put aside God’s knowledge.

Example; I am here with my children and one of them steals. When another child tells me that my child is stealing I will accuse that child for accusing my child for stealing. The child you talked to will never tell you again that your child has done wrong.

The spirit that God gave us always talks to us, but we are the first ones to take authority against that Spirit and shut up Spirit of God or shut up the conscience. I want to this, and the Spirit of God and the conscience must stay silent.

With the religious spirit, we are Christians when we meet together to share God’s word, but when we separate some of us will speak to others as if we are not Christian. Example, We wives know that each woman must love her husband, and to accept him as a husband. The Bible says in Ephesians 5 that a wife must submit to her husband as to the Lord, so do you wives submit to your husbands or do you consider him as a toy or friend? Sometimes some women compare their husbands to children.

Many people want to work for God and will even ask other brothers and sister to pray for them, “God I want your hand to touch me,” they have zeal but when it comes to knowledge they are hindered by darkness. Although they have eyes they cannot see, and with this religious spirit it will prevent them from seeing the truth.

When Michael comes to you and says it is written in God’s word my dear friend this and that, you will say, “I know that!” With darkened knowledge we want to take God’s place in explaining this knowledge.

There was a Pastor who fell into a sin, and when he fell into this sin one of his sheep went to see him. This sheep said to the Pastor, “Pastor, I know you are zealous for God and I’m afraid to tell this because you are God’s servant, but the Bible says we must help one another, so I ask you Pastor to change this.” Do you know what the Pastor did? He dropped his Bible and said, “If God exists then let Him be the judge between me and you?” This sheep felt intimidated and started shaking, “forgive me Pastor if I have done wrong but I felt in my heart that I must tell you,” and the Pastor said, “do you know how long I’ve been a Pastor? Don’t you acknowledge my experience? Don’t you know that God anointed me? Be careful because God might punish you like He punished Miriam who spoke against her brother Moses.”

This brother started crying and asking for the Pastor to forgive him. The one who came to help the Pastor was put into confusion by intimidation. The Pastor didn’t accept his forgiveness and said he wasn’t part of the church anymore. In the morning the Pastor excommunicated and condemned this man in front of everybody, a curse was on this brother. Imagine, this is the spirit of religion.

This Pastor hadn’t realised the value of one soul before God. When we do things as Christians is our knowledge enlightened or not? When we are outside of our fellowship is it real or not? If not then we must observe ourselves.

James 4:6 says that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble

We still have this grace with us and it is enough, but sometimes we ignore it. Maybe it is because we don’t know what grace is; maybe we don’t have time to meditate on this Word grace although we confess everyday that we live in a time of grace but we don’t know what it is, maybe it is like a baby trying to speak?

Many Christians confess the word grace but don’t know its meaning or origin, they don’t even know why God gave grace to man, and if you don’t know about grace then you won’t know its importance. Once a person receives God’s grace and knows it, they will live a wonderful life, but if you don’t know grace, then you are like a man who looks at gold and thinks it’s just a stone.

The word of God says that God is always against proud people, and when James is talking here he speaks to those who know God. A lot of Christians on this earth are proud one way or another. Maybe they are proud because of their marriage or maybe they are proud because of their children. Sometimes we influence our children to become proud.

In the Christian life we too can despise others thinking they don’t know anything, and sometimes we walk on them. You can accept what Oscar says but not Steve, this is the spirit of religion. Sometimes when the Spirit of God speaks about the truth we as Christians always want to quench this truth, and before God we prove to be proud.

What is the dictionary’s definition of pride? Pride is a small word that is often associated with the world, but this word has brought a lot of evil into the church of God. Pride is a feeling of satisfaction, which you have because you or your people close to you have done something good or possessed something good. First of all pride is a feeling, a bitter feeling, it is not a feeling of joy, it is not a feeling of knowledge but a feeling of bitterness, it is not a feeling controlled by anyone else but the person who is feeling it, and last of all this feeling always works when there are people around.

Some Christians say it is their nature, “I was born that way, and I can’t change”. I don’t think there has been a child who was born proud, I don’t think there has been a child who was born a thief, but many Christians say this is their way or our churches way.

Question. You talked about culture being an influence on us; the example you gave us was when people go onto a Marae. My question is; as Christians, is it bad to follow to the protocols of certain cultures, for example the Maori culture?

1 Corinthians 11:16 says that if anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice nor do the churches of God.

We don’t have other customs, and when we don’t have other customs we become a new family. It is not for nothing that we are called children of God, so we must follow God’s customs. It is not bad to be invited onto a Marae, I can also follow the bereavement ceremony but when you have to follow certain conditions which you don’t know, be careful, you might adore what you don’t know.

I’ll give you an example: There was a famous servant of God who was invited to see the Pope, and because he is regarded as a holy father he had to kneel down and walk on his knees. Before he did this he had to have a piece of fabric cut from his pants, but he didn’t know why, so he asked, “why do we have to do all of this?” The answer was, “Everybody who went to see the Pope had to do it” but he didn’t accept it because he didn’t see the purpose. When we belong to God we have to ask ourselves before doing anything, does this belong to the family of God or not? If it doesn’t belong to God’s family then don’t do it because you might adore what you don’t know.

The Maoris have gods and the Marae is considered a holy place, you have to be very disciplined and quiet, you don’t play at a Marae the way you would play at your house; this is adoration. When you put something on top of yourself or equal to God, automatically you start adoring. If a Maori brother or sister is going through bereavement, what will they say if I ask them why are you going to a Marae? It is our culture and custom. I am already informed that what I am invited to is their culture or custom, so I must think if this custom pleases God or not? Why not teach them about God’s culture? (Reference to Romans 14).

Religious Spirit (Part I)

By Odon Bulamba (21 February 2003)

Our God always works and never sleeps. although our prayers are short He listens to them, although we think He doesn’t answer, He does. God is not far from us.

We are going to talk about the religious spirit to discover who we are, and to know whether or not we do things according to God or our human nature. Sometimes the religious spirit brings confusion into the lives of Christians. When we speak about the religious spirit in the church it is a spirit that enters Christians and is disguised. This spirit gives work for them to do and they think they are working for God’s glory, but they are working for another power that opposes God’s strength.

When you observe these religious Christians you will discover they are not Christians. This spirit is not from today or yesterday but it started a long time ago. This spirit stops the work of God in Christian life, and it tells Christians they are perfect. Many Christians don’t like to hear about this spirit because it threatens them, but dear brothers and sisters we are going to talk about this spirit to make ourselves ready for heaven and prepare ourselves to be workers for God.

There is nothing worse in Christian life than to hear a message knowing that the preacher knows your problem, I will never do this. It is like taking the Bible and preaching about Colleen’s life. Why not preach the Word of God? Why not glorify God instead of talking about Colleen’s life? When we talk about the religious spirit put aside the thought that the Word of God preached was for Peter or Angela or someone else I know, but I will say it again we are here to be enlightened about our own life on earth.

What is Religion? Religion is human tradition and human belief. Do we have the word religion in the Bible? When we talk about the Pharisees you will find the word religion, when you talk about the Sadducees you will find the word religion. But when it is about Christians who were brought up in spirit and truth, this word religion disappears completely. If I called Angela a Pharisee, will she be happy? No, because they were hypocrites, proud and arrogant. The Pharisees knew the law very well and studied it seriously, but hypocrisy and arrogance was with them also. Even though the law they studied didn’t allow for hypocrisy and arrogance, they were hypocritical and arrogant without knowing it. The Pharisee culture made them like this.

Not long ago a Maori man went to the United States, and as you know Maori greet one another by the pressing of the two noses. However, when it came to greeting an American man he tried to greet him but the American kept his distance. Then the Maori man knew he was outside of his country. How did the American man interpret this form of greeting?

In Arab countries it is normal for men and women to kiss each other 4 or 5 times when greeting one another. But when this Maori man wanted to greet his American friend, the American said, “No, we will be called names.” This culture placed in another country becomes something that doesn’t honour man, and it is the same with the religious spirit.

The religious spirit, is a spirit that grows in the little characters we have in the Christian life. We say, “if I do that it’s o.k”. It’s like a child, for example a child might run and tell me that he is a good boy, “I’m not like Zoe, I’m so good that there is nobody like me.” As a parent I will say, “it’s good, but is it good for that child to believe that, won’t it lead him to accuse someone else even if they haven’t done anything wrong”. If the child does something good I will appreciate it, but if I appreciate another child while the first one is there how, will the first child feel if he believes that he is always the best. He will not like it and might even hate the second child. Because the first child was not the one given honour or praise he will take some distances from his friend, this friendship will turn into hatred. This is just a simple example to help you to understand that Christians live in such an environment.

I knew a few people in my life that used to say, “why can’t I preach like Oscar, when he preaches people always tell him that the message was a blessing for them”. These people think, ‘why does the success go to Oscar, yesterday when I preached nobody appreciated me’. Maybe because of jealousy that person will come to my place and say, “did you listen to Oscar’s message?” Then we will criticize Oscar’s message and start now to count all his mistakes. However, if Oscar hears this later he might go away and say I’m not going to carry on praying with you because there is hatred and conflict. That’s why we can see that churches have split today.

To have this religious spirit is very easy, you just have to follow your thoughts and your thoughts will lead you to this spirit. Those who are truly called Christians don’t walk according to their culture or thoughts, they walk according to the Holy Spirit, they are led and taught by the Holy Spirit, and not by their culture or their teachers at school.

When you learn the Word of God by school or culture, and not by the Holy Spirit, you risk adding to the Word of God. Example: In the time of old in my tribe women were not allowed to eat chicken, if she did she was stoned or put to death. Although many of these women became Christians, this culture is still alive in them because they keep on telling their daughters not to eat chicken.

It’s like a Maori who dies in New Zealand, people gather together on a Marae, and whether you like it or not you must take off your shoes, why? Maybe your socks have holes, maybe your feet stink, so why ask people to take off their shoes? People make conditions but don’t know why they make them. If I ask Michelle why they take their shoes off on a Marae, she will say it is culture. If we are not precise in the little things God won’t appreciate us in the big things. The question we must ask ourselves is why do I do that? If it is a cultural thing and belongs to a tribe, does that tribe belong to God?

To go to a Marae is not bad, but if you don’t know what you are doing, refer yourself to the Bible. As Jesus said to the Pharisees, they have eyes but cannot see. Since we have the Word we must not be like a blind man leading another blind man because even a small hole can be a consequence, both of them will fall.