Lam 3:21 -25; I recall this (doctrine) to my mind, and it gives me confidence. Because The Lord's mercy never fails; His grace provisions never cease, they are renewed every morning; Great is Your faithfulness... Therefore I have hope in Him. The Lord is good to those who wait silently on Him.
In our study of the doctrine of the winner believer. Heb 12:2; Rev 2:7; Winner believers are the unknown, unsung heroes of history. 2Cor 6:9; who are the targets of God's grace imputations and the reason that God continues to support the human race.
We have been discussing the doctrine of church age spirituality that is based on the indwelling and filling ministries of God the Holy Spirit.
We noted that since God's plan of grace and human works are mutually exclusive when human power and divine power are mixed the result is legalism that becomes the basis of some system of fake spirituality.
The major reason for the decline in the client nation is that too many pastors are failing to teach the principles of true spirituality which leaves believers with nothing but fake spirituality as the basis for their spiritual life. This puts the nation in danger because of the principle of as goes the believer so goes the client nation.
When we stopped last time we were noting fake spirituality by ritual where the performance of ritual is considered to be valid for salvation or spirituality.
We noted that in the Old Testament the only purpose for ritual was to teach doctrine and there never was any benefit from the rote performance of ritual. The benefit came from learning the doctrine that the ritual portrayed and then believing that doctrine.
Jesus condemned the Pharisees for their rote performance of ritual while they were simultaneously rejecting and disobeying God's mandates.
They accused others of disobeying God by failing to comply with ritual washing while they themselves were using ritual as a means of disobeying God's commandments. Matt 15:1-9;
Fake spirituality by ritual often involves the failure of believers to understand or to accept the fact that God has replaced the ritual plan of God for Israel with the protocol plan of God for the Church.
Fake spirituality by ritual is derived from an improper interpretation of the scripture that places emphasis on the performance of ritual by assigning a meritorious connotation to it.
Fake spirituality by ritual is a product of the believer's failure to recognize the unique identity and function that God has given to church age believers that is the result of the baptism, indwelling, filling and mentor ministries of God the Holy Spirit under God's grace policy for the church. John 4:23-24; NET
Another system of fake spirituality by works is program spirituality where local churches and denominations devise a system that emphasizes loyalty to the church through a program that is comprised of a system of human works as a substitute for the spiritual skills.
Program spirituality assumes that the production of good deeds in the form of Christian and/or community service is spirituality instead of the product of spirituality and the function of the believers' spiritual gift. 1Cor 12:28;
The problem with doing good by program is that without spiritual skills, program spirituality results in doing things that are motivated by the strong side of the OSN rather than by the enabling power of the Spirit.
The system of fake spirituality by program alleges that a believer is spiritual based on church attendance, giving, participation in prayer meetings, bringing visitors to church, singing in a choir, teaching Sunday school or any other system of being a do-gooder.
The problem with program spirituality is that activity is substituted for the filling of the Spirit and doctrinal teaching is relegated to a minor role in the local assembly because the emphasis is on getting everyone involved in doing something for the benefit of the church or community.
Fake spirituality by program ignores the protocol plan of God for the church, perpetuates ignorance of Bible doctrine, encourages involvement in satan's cosmic system, and creates the self righteous arrogance of Christian moral degeneracy.
In fake spirituality by program doing "good works" is substituted for spiritual growth and the system caters to believers who have OSN trends of approbation and power lust.
In true spirituality the spiritual skills are developed before the production skills because the divine good production of true spirituality is always the result of the application of the spiritual skills never the means because a right thing must be done in a right way for the right reason to be acceptable to God.
Another system of fake spirituality is spirituality by emotion where emotional response is substituted for or considered and indicator of being filled with the Spirit.
Emotion is defined as an affective state of consciousness as distinguished from a cognitive and volitional state of consciousness. Emotion is usually accompanied by certain physiological changes and overt expression. God designed emotion to be subordinate to the mentality of the soul.
This means that emotion is designed to respond to rational doctrinal thought. Emotion cannot function properly apart from rational doctrinal thought.
Spirituality by emotionalism is fake because emotional response is not a criterion for or indication of the filling of the Spirit.
In some cases spirituality by emotion attempts to duplicate the temporary spiritual gifts of tongues, healing, and miracles that were operational only during the pre-canon period of the Church Age.
In this case emotion is used as the basis for the fake spirituality of "speaking in tongues" or by the overt performance of "miracles" or "healings."