Religious Attitudes

If we are to defeat a religious attitude we need a starting point of saying to God on a regular basis, 'God, make me what you want me to be' and stopping praying, 'I want this ... I want that...'. One of the very worst things is finding yourself in a situation that God has not anointed you to be in, with no grace on you to achieve and not struggle. We don't understand why God does what he does or what people are going through on the inside, they may seem happy on the outside and have everything that you want but that doesn't mean that they are happy on the inside. They may not have anointing on their life. Happy people know what the anointing on their life is and don't try to live outside of the grace on their life. In Luke 15, the younger brother's sin is obvious. However the elder son's sin was less obvious, he was lost, just as lost as his brother was but in a totally different way. There are two different kinds of lost; lost in sin and lost in self-righteousness (not God's righteousness). The younger brother was lost in sin, the elder, lost in his own righteousness. The minute we begin to judge someone critically or look down on them is when we really need to adjust our attitude. The attitude of the elder brother was dangerous and deceptive, and it alienated him from his father and brother. He had a religious attitude which told him that he was above others because he was doing more right than they were. Many of us are guilty of this though we may not realise it just yet. The Bible tells us to pray for these people, have mercy, sympathy and be concerned for their spiritual wellbeing. A religious attitude not only alienates us from those around us but from God too, and because of this we are unable to come into his presence like he wants us to. Anyone who has a religious attitude will not admit it. They probably know that their attitude is out of order but will not admit it as that is admitting a sin, a weakness and that is not part of having a religious attitude.

It's yet to be seen what God can do through any one man that is willing to give him all the glory, because once glory appears and we start to take it for ourselves, God stops using us. We need to pray to God for humility and help to assist us to change our religious attitude. A self-righteous attitude causes us to mistreat other people, be impatient about their flaws yet we refuse to see and admit our own faults. There is nothing godly about being harsh and hard on those who don't match up to your standards. The things that we can do, and do well are all by the grace of God who equips us with the tools we need to do what we need to do. We are only righteous through God (Luke 18:9) and the knowledge of this gift should humble us greatly. The Pharisee in the temple in Luke 18:10 was behaving in such an ostentatious self-righteous way in front of the non-religious person. The Pharisee was out to impress, but who was he trying to impress? He prayed to God, "God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of men." His attitude towards sinners, in God's eyes, is worse than the actual sins that the sinners had committed. We should never, ever look at sinners in a critical way and say 'I would never do that', because we never know how we would be and what we would do if God left us for a while. It was the big sinners that God came to save, but very often they are the very people that the Church is reluctant to welcome. Members get comfortable and don't like anything to spoil the cosy situation they have got going on, and they don't want to inconvenience themselves. God is really displeased when he sees situations like this. The fact is that we all need to inconvenience ourselves in order to grow and situations like this provide the perfect arena for growth.

We have got life so wrong if we base our worth on how important others see us and pride ourselves on our religious attitude. The Apostle Paul said that he had had it all in his life but it was all worth absolutely nothing compared to knowing God and the power of the resurrection that raises us from the dead. The more time we spend building a relationship with Jesus, the smaller our religious attitude will become.