Do Not Settle for Formal Religion

I want to share a passage of Scripture with you. In fact, last Sunday we had Pastor Gilberto Sámano with us, remember? He spoke to us about life in the Holy Spirit, and we are continuing with that. He spoke about why the Holy Spirit is important and certain areas in which He is important. And as we say, look, I don’t know—the Lord keeps us on that subject, and other subjects have come up, of course, but I want to continue because I feel from the Lord that we have to seal this church with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit; we have to seal each one of our brothers and sisters. I am speaking to you, and to you, and to you, and to myself about the importance of living in the Spirit, of living a life filled with the Holy Spirit. Brother, sister, I want to tell you that the Christian life is a life filled with the Holy Spirit.

I was telling you—I don’t know if I ever got around to telling you—that I was invited to speak at Gordon College, a school I deeply appreciate, and I love that Christian university. They invited me to speak about the Spirit-filled life because there is a stirring among the people of God; there is a need among the people of God. We are aware that we cannot live without the fullness of the Holy Spirit, without the power of God.

And I want to encourage my brothers and sisters to change course and become increasingly aware of this. I myself have to be continually refreshed by that teaching and that practice. So I ask you in the name of Jesus: this message is for you, for every one of you, and we are going to continue talking about it.

When I was preaching at the Barbara Anne Rossler Church over there in Puerto Rico, I had to summarize what I have been preaching here over these past weeks and months. So I organized these sermons on the baptism of the Holy Spirit differently because I had much less time, and God gave me new material, and I feel it would be good to share it with you so we can continue strengthening this. I want each one of us to ask ourselves: Am I certain that I am filled with the Holy Spirit, that I am baptized in the Holy Spirit, and that I live in intimacy with the Holy Spirit? And if not, let us keep seeking. We are going to be praying for you, laying hands on you, doing everything within our power to enter that dimension of life in the Spirit.

But today I want to speak to you specifically about the difference between merely formal, external religion and the religion of the Spirit. Sterile, formalistic religion and the religion of the Spirit—what characterizes each of those two religions or spiritualities? It is possible to be a very religious, God-fearing person yet live in a sterile, Pharisaical, or simply superficial way and not have that direct communion with the Spirit of God. On the other hand, it is possible to live a vital, refreshing, living life that reflects that relationship with God, with the Spirit of God. What are the differences, what does the Bible tell us about this, and how can we enter that dimension of life?

So pay close attention, because I know this is going to be very useful to you. And I see the truths I am going to discuss reflected in a passage found in John, chapter 4, a very familiar passage. It is the passage where Jesus meets the Samaritan woman. How many of you have heard that passage before or have read it? A lot of people, right? Okay, let me refresh your memory. I am simply going to skip over a few verses, and then we will continue.

Verse 7, John 4, says, “...A woman of Samaria came....”—which is good; we have it there on the screen—“...A woman of Samaria came to draw water”—by the way, before I continue. This morning I was driving to church, and I saw a man standing at the bus station, or standing at a bus stop, on Broadway in Somerville. This man was in his mid-thirties, an African American man—he looked African American—very elegantly dressed in his manly suit, and he had a tremendous brown Bible in his hand. And wow, that was a blessing to me, because I said, how wonderful that this man, so manly and so elegant, is walking around with his Bible in his hand, bearing witness in public. Everyone traveling down Broadway, which is a very busy street, could see that man as he waited, because he was evidently going to church. He was conveying a message through that. It is good for us to bring our Bible to church, isn’t it?

That is why, when I saw it up here, I thought it was good to have that, but it is no substitute for bringing our own Bible. Amen. Bring your Bible to the house of the Lord. A soldier does not go to war without his weapon; our weapon is Scripture. If you are going to church, bring your Bible, because you are going to enter into dialogue in some way. If preaching is done in your church, having the Bible in your hand and bringing it to church is also symbolic. It is like saying, “I am a man, a woman, of the Word, and when I go to the synagogue, I want to carry my Word; I want to take my Bible with me.” That is beautiful because it reflects that intimacy. Keep your Bible with you. The man of God, the woman of God, is a person of Scripture; the Bible cannot be absent from our daily lives. So I encourage you. That one is free; that sermon is free.

John 4:7: “...A woman of Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give Me a drink,’ for His disciples had gone into the city to buy food....”

Let us skip ahead, then. Well, the woman asks Him, “...How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink, since I am a Samaritan woman?....”—because Jews and Samaritans had no dealings with one another—“...Jesus answered and said to her, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, “Give Me a drink,” you would ask Him, and He would give you living water’....”

In other words, the One standing before you is so powerful that instead of Him asking you, you need to ask Him for living water, which is different.

“...And the woman said to Him, ‘Sir, You have nothing with which to draw it’....”—she is still understanding Jesus’ words in a purely literal sense—“...You have nothing with which to draw it, and the well is deep. Where, then, do You get that living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well, from which he, his sons, and his livestock drank?’ Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Whoever drinks of this water...’”—that is, the physical water from the well—“...will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. Rather, the water that I shall give him will become in him or her a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life....’”

The Lord continues to establish this contrast between physical water and the spiritual water He gives.

Then the woman says to Him—the woman was no fool—she says, “...Sir, give me this water, so that I may not thirst or come here to draw it....”—she is still thinking that He has some special medicine, some strange water that will take away her thirst. She still does not spiritually understand what He is telling her—“...Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband and come here.’ The woman answered and said, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You have rightly said, “I have no husband,” for you have had five husbands’”—wow, this woman was a veteran. How many of you know Yaya Gabor, who had I don’t know how many marriages? That will tell you how many years I have been here on earth. Elizabeth Taylor too, certainly.

“...For you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. In this you have spoken truthfully....”

This woman was living a somewhat loose, free, immoral life. “...The woman said to Him, ‘Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet....’”

Thank God she did not try to hide. How many of us, when our issues are pointed out, try to hide our sins, become offended, and get a little prickly? She bowed her head and acknowledged that He was right.

“...I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you say that Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship....”—remember, she is a Samaritan and is speaking about the Jews—“...and you say that Jerusalem is where people ought to worship....”

The Samaritans believed that the true capital of the Jewish religion was in their territory. The Jews said, “No, it is in Jerusalem,” and there was a controversy between the two groups.

“...Then Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain’”—Samaria—“‘nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know, because we worship what we know’”—that is, the Jews—“‘because salvation comes from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth, for the Father is also seeking such worshipers to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and in truth.’ The woman said to Him, ‘I know that the Messiah, who is called the Christ, is coming. When He comes, He will tell us all things.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am He, the One speaking with you’....”

Glory to the Lord. Let us leave it there. By the way, the Lord rarely revealed Himself so clearly to a person. Very rarely was He so open during His ministry as to say, “I am the Messiah, the One speaking with you.” That is a very beautiful passage.

Now allow me to further develop the point I raised at the beginning. What is the difference between a formal, cold, ineffective religion and a vital, powerful, transforming religion filled with life? Which of those two religions would you like to have? How many of you would like to have the first religion—the cold, formal, ineffective one? Raise your hand. I have a good psychiatrist I can recommend to you right away.

How many of you would like to have that vital, powerful, transforming religion? Amen. That is what we need to be seeking. I am going to help you by giving you a little map of the differences between the two.

To understand life in the Spirit, we must first understand its opposite: merely formal, religious life. I am going to summarize the difference in just a couple of words. The difference can be summarized as the contrast between the external and the internal. Formal, cold, ineffective religion is oriented outward, toward external things.

Powerful, transforming, vital religion, meanwhile, is directed inward; it comes from within. This is a simplification, but I believe it applies very broadly.

Another thing: ineffective religion tends to be mechanical, robotic, rigid, clumsy in its movements, teachings, and decisions—mechanical. That is, it is something that simply has no life. The religion of the Spirit, meanwhile, tends to be an organic religion, like the body. It is the difference between a robot and the human body. A robot moves with clumsy motions because it is made by human beings, whereas the human body is completely fluid. It moves; the fingers have joints; the wrist joins the forearm to the hand; and everything fits together perfectly and flows. There is life. There is no separate part; you do not see seams between one piece and another. Rather, everything is perfectly joined and connected in an organic way.

That is what I want to examine here in this passage, because I see all of this here in this passage and in a couple of other passages that I do not know whether I will have time to cover later. So, the religious is oriented outward; the spiritual resides within. The religious is robotic, rigid, square. The spiritual is organic, fluid, rounded.

When the New Testament speaks about life in the Spirit—you know that the apostle Paul often speaks about life in the Spirit—remember that he is speaking primarily to Jews and to people from the Greco-Roman religions who knew only an external, outward-oriented religion. Everything was oriented toward temples, outward things, rituals, and all that sort of thing. And so they needed to be taught that Christianity was something different. Christianity represented a different way for human beings to relate to God.

Look, for example, at what Judaism was like so that you can see the contrast with Christianity. In Judaism, people had to go to the temple to meet with God. A person had to take his sacrifices and bring them to the temple once a year, and that was where the presence of God was supposed to dwell, in that Most Holy Place. It was something outward; people had to go to that external place to meet with God.

Second, external rites had to be performed. Lambs had to be killed, candles had to be lit, special places had to be entered, and it consisted of a number of rites—the leaven that had to be sought out in the cupboards—and all of this was ritual. If you look at religions that do not have a vital relationship with God, they depend heavily on rituals, outward appearances, and external things as a way of reminding people that God is in that place. And if they are not surrounded by equipment and things, people feel as though they are not entering into communion with God.

The person who has the vitality of the Holy Spirit, meanwhile, can encounter God anywhere and feel the presence of God anywhere—even in a traffic jam at five in the afternoon on Route 93. The person can feel the presence of God right there.

Third, external Jewish religion depended on human intermediaries. That high priest was needed to lead the people, to enter the Most Holy Place once a year and make an offering for the sins of the people. The priest did everything. The people simply brought their little things and handed them over to the priest so that he could take responsibility for being in the presence.

Remember what the Jews said to Moses when the presence of God was on the mountain and there was thunder and lightning and everything else. They said to Moses, “Don’t tell us to go up there; you go and represent us. We’re going to stay here, and let the lightning strike you, while we remain here calmly and see what happens. Good luck, Moses.”

There was a disconnection between God and the people. The intermediaries were... and how often do you see that in religions that are not like Christianity? There is a whole group of specialists who are the ones who connect people with God. But in the Gospel, you are supposed to have your own direct connection with God. Amen. You do not need me in order to have a dialogue with God, brothers and sisters.

I believe that maturity means that the more mature one becomes in the faith, the more capable one is of obtaining one’s own food. Now, that does not mean that we should not gather together, because there is something special when the people of God gather and we share this precious fellowship. We are not lone rangers either. But you are supposed to have a direct relationship with the Father. Amen.

The Holy Spirit is within you. You can go directly, it says, “...let us approach the throne of grace with confidence by that new and living way that Christ opened through his death...”

That is to say, a living spiritual life does not depend on any man, or on a group of deacons, or on anyone else. You personally feel that confidence and assurance to go before the Father, and you know how to seek what you need. Amen. You know how to seek your healing in the name of Jesus. When a demon wants to cause harm in your family or in your life, you know how to seek God and how to cut its head off in the name of Jesus, because you have a direct relationship with God, you know the Word of God, and you have intimacy with God.

Religious religion, on the other hand, revolves entirely around intermediaries, people, relationships, programs, and all of that, instead of having a cable that connects you directly and continually to the throne of God.

Another thing as well, number four: God was seen as being outside the individual rather than within. I have already pointed that out, but it is very important for me to single it out. In the Gospel, God says that he will dwell within us. The Lord Jesus Christ told his disciples, “Look, it is better for you that I go away, because before I was with you, but now I am going to be in you. The Holy Spirit will be in you.” The Lord says in Revelation, “I stand at the door and knock, and if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with me.” Glory to the Lord.

You know that you can have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with Jesus Christ every day. You can have a banquet with Christ every day because he is within you, and he has said, “I want to have intimacy with you.” Dinner is the most intimate thing one can share with another person, especially when that person is within you. The Christian life is no longer about going to church to meet with God. Forget about that. God is with you; you come to church with God, and you are a temple of the Holy Spirit. God dwells within you.

You know what? Last Sunday this occurred to me: Christian worship is worship in which many little temples come to a large temple to meet together and worship God from within their spiritual temple. Right now there are hundreds of little temples here worshiping the Lord from within their temple, from within what each of you is. The Holy Spirit is dwelling with you, and together we all form one great, mystical, spiritual temple within this physical temple. Glory to the Lord for his unfathomable wisdom.

So God is not outside, but within us. And finally, religious, formal religion is a religion of laws, commandments, and things that must be done outwardly. You must constantly appease that insatiable God, offer sacrifices and other things, make promises, light candles, give money for this or that, and turn the saint upside down so that he will do something. It is this continual business of manipulation and external laws, as with the Pharisees. There were countless things they had to do to make sure God was pleased with them.

Christianity, however, is not like that. In Christianity there is a personal relationship with God. His Word says that God writes his law within your heart, inside your heart, and dwells there.

So all of this is illustrated here in this passage about Jesus and the Samaritan woman. In the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, we see a contrast with that Old Testament religion. The Samaritan woman is still in the Old Testament. She is a character who is still living in the Old Testament.

Her characters are Jacob and the fathers of Judaism, because the Samaritans were a mixture of Jews and pagans. Their religion was a tremendous hodgepodge, but they acknowledged many of the things from Judaism. So this woman still has her foot planted in external religion, institutional religion, and Christ wants to bring her into what he represents: a new covenant, a new way of seeing God, a new way of relating to God.

And by the way, let me tell you this, brothers and sisters: when I speak of formal religion, of external institutional religion, I am not referring to a denomination. You know that it is possible to be Pentecostal and charismatic and still live in formal, external, religious religion. We Pentecostals and charismatics love to throw stones at evangelicals who are not Pentecostal or charismatic, and we say, “They are religious. They do not have the Holy Spirit. They do not know how to worship,” and this and that.

But look, let me tell you: it is possible to be a charismatic Pentecostal and have no experience of the true power of life in the Spirit. Pentecostal charismatic religion can be just as religious and sterile as religion that does not have the Holy Spirit. I tell you this from experience and from what I have observed.

In the same way, one can often be outside a Pentecostal charismatic denomination and yet be filled with the Holy Spirit and live a life of relationship with God. I see many people in Pentecostal charismatic churches who believe they have it, but they do not, and all of us need to seek more of it. We must continually question ourselves: Am I living that life filled with the Holy Spirit? Am I living that life that overflows with vitality in God?

Look at how this dialogue unfolds. I am already entering the second half of all this, which I want to wrap up in just a moment. Look at how that dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman unfolds and what it reveals.

We see this contrast between the old system and the new system. The Lord begins by using an image that is very familiar to her: water. She has come from her village to draw water from this central well where the entire region obtained its water. So the Lord makes use of that image of water to begin a dialogue with her. Water represents life, does it not? There can be no life without water. Water is the most important element for life to exist, and it is an element that symbolizes vitality, refreshment, healing, life—all these things are symbolized by water.

And the Lord watches this woman while he waits for his disciples to return, because they had gone to buy food at the town supermarket, and it was a long walk. While he is there, I imagine the Lord sitting somewhere nearby and looking around like this. This woman arrives with her can—in this case, it was a water jar—and he watches her as she goes through all the hard work of drawing the water. I imagine she tied the container to a rope and then lowered it, and she had to pull up that heavy vessel full of water. The Lord watches her, and prophetically he knows her life. He knows the drama behind this woman; he knows her whole life story and all her affairs.

And he says, “Look, here is someone I can teach who I am and heal.” The Lord wants to have a relationship with us, no matter what our condition may be. So he approaches her and says, “Woman, give me a drink.” She is surprised because he is a Jew and clearly an educated man, and she says to him, “How can you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink?” She is surprised. Then the Lord says to her, “Look, woman, if you knew who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you water that is different from that water.”

The water in the well was stagnant water; it lay there lifeless, and one would lower a can into it and draw water out. The Lord wanted to give her another kind of water: living water, water that would flow from within. She had to come to that well to draw the water. In the same way, people who are caught up in religion—even evangelical religion—often have to go to church to receive an injection of religion so they can feel close to God. But as soon as they walk out the door, they begin to deflate and dry up again. By Sunday they are barely dragging themselves back so the pastor can fill them with spirituality once more. And that is how they spend their lives: external water. We have to go to the well to look for water.

And Christ says, “Look, I want you to live with the water flowing inside you.” God wants you, my brother or sister, to live in a relationship with Jesus so that he can give you the water you need. Religion can satisfy us only for a little while, as the pastor cranks the handle, parades the little figures around, and puts on the whole production. Then we are entertained, we become hypnotized, and we feel evangelical. But once the show is over, we seem to deflate all over again. There is no power.

And Christ wants his person, the Holy Spirit, to be within us so that, by having a relationship with him, by praying, by continually seeking his face, and by living a vibrant life, that water will continually flow within us. It is not the external water of religion and the church, but the internal water of an intimate life with God. So internal water is what God wants for us, not external water.

Number two: external water has only temporary effects. When you drink water, you are thirsty again after a little while, and the Lord says, “Look, I want to give you something that will satisfy you.”

I believe that a person who has had an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit and with a vibrant spiritual life, even when passing, as the Bible says, through valleys of the shadow of death, senses that God is with him or her. There is an intimacy that one feels continually. On the surface of your life, there may be difficult times, because they do exist—why lie about it? There may be difficulties, but deep within your being you somehow know: I am a child of God. God is working in my life. God is with me. God will bring me through. And you continue in your Christian life, knowing that the Lord is with you. And that gives you a peace that keeps you from collapsing, keeps you from giving in to anxiety or chronic depression, and keeps you from wandering around like a sheep without a shepherd, disoriented and neurotic.

The Christian suffers, but the suffering of a Christian who has an experience with Christ is a different kind of suffering. It is not the heartbreaking, destructive, deforming, and debilitating suffering of the person who does not have Christ. That person has a stream of water flowing secretly within, gradually soothing his or her sufferings. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, the Word says, but the Lord will deliver them from them all.

Now, we suffer and endure hardship, but we do not suffer like those who do not have Christ. We have that refreshing water continually flowing within us. It is not a matter of being dry for a while and happy at another time. No, we are like the camel: we have a large reservoir of water there that continually refreshes us in the middle of the desert. That makes a difference, does it not?

Religion fills people only for a moment, after which they live detached, neurotic lives and have to come back to be healed again, have the pastor lay hands on them, and then feel the Spirit of God once more. No, the Christian is continually being healed and ministered to by that water, which keeps us from feeling dry.

Third, drawing water required tremendous effort for this woman. Imagine walking perhaps several kilometers to reach this well, drawing the water, placing it on her head, and returning to her village. What an enormous amount of work—and surely she had to do that several times a week, if not every day. A great deal of effort.

And Christ says, “Look”—he is speaking symbolically in the Spirit—“the water that I want to give you is water that will flow from you.”

You will go, as we do today, into the kitchen and, boom, you turn on the faucet and there is the water. How wonderful it is when you open your refrigerator and can place your little glass under that spout and get cold, fresh, filtered water. Nowadays we take that for granted, but that was not the way it was back then.

So Christ says, “Look, I want to put the water inside your life so that drawing it out will not require so much effort.”

I believe that this is one of the problems with religious life: how much work it takes people to feel the presence of God, and how scarce it is. And many times one has to do so many things in order to feel the presence of the Lord.

Judaism was full of little things that had to be done, and this and that. And religion without Christ, without the power of Christ, is like that. There are even Christian forms of spirituality that are filled with effort and work, and people do not receive from God what they need because they do not know how to communicate with God, and they continually have to....

How many Christians are there, for example, with so many commandments and so many things? That is why I say that there are religious groups concerned with clothing and measurements, and I am not saying that those things are unimportant, but they can also be greatly exaggerated, on one side or the other. But they worry about the length of the neckline, whether someone wears an earring, how high a bun may or may not be, whether we dye our hair, whether we wear beards, and all these things. Work, effort.

Whereas the person who has a vital, personal relationship with Jesus Christ knows that spiritual life does not depend on those things, because we are in a different kind of relationship with a God who now relates to us as a father relates to a child. That does not mean there are no moments of tension between the father and the child. It does not mean that the father has no commandments for his child, but there is a relationship of trust. If the son loses the car keys, he does not stay outside sleeping on the street that night because he is afraid to tell his dad. No, he goes to his dad and says, “Look, I lost the keys.” And perhaps his dad gives him a little sermon, but he finds an answer and everything is settled. There is none of that sterility. There is a naturalness in the Christian life that comes from having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and that is so important in this regard.

Another thing is that spiritual life, a life filled with the Holy Spirit, is very different in this respect: religious life is a life of hostility and controversy, whereas Christian spiritual life is a life of grace and mercy toward others.

Let me explain a little further. Look at how many religious conflicts there are in the world right now. In Islam right now there are so many struggles between Shiites and Sunnis; they are continually killing one another. And now let us bring that into Christianity. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, some of the most terrible Christian wars you could imagine took place in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Christian people died, killing one another. Why? Because it was an external religiosity. There was no religion of the Holy Spirit; it was a religion of denominations, beliefs, and doctrines. Unfortunately, when the Protestant Reformation came, it also brought a tremendous religious struggle over doctrines, and people killed one another because of it. Because Christianity should be about doctrine; it should be about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Doctrine comes after the encounter with God; always remember that. And there are many Christian people who believe that doctrine, teaching, and all of that come first, and then the encounter with God. People must be helped to have an encounter with the Holy Spirit, and once they have been healed by the Holy Spirit, they should be taught how to relate to God and to the Holy Spirit. We are continually putting the cart before the horse, and what we are often creating in the churches are people with enormous heads, filled with doctrine, theology, and religious teaching, but with little experience of the presence of God. And that is why they are continually throwing little stones at one another.

This woman says to Jesus, “Lord, we say that this is where God should be worshiped, and you say that it is over there in Jerusalem.” The Lord says to her, “Look, apart from all of that, the day is coming when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. It will not be about one temple, another one over here, a mountain over there, or going somewhere to fulfill a vow. No, the presence of God will be in the spirit within each person.”

You see, when a Christian has that sense of the presence of God, that person has tremendous discernment and extends grace to others. Look at the conflict, for example—and I also want to talk about evangelicals and Christians—in Ireland, thousands upon thousands of Catholics and Protestants have killed one another in terrible armed struggles. Why? Because there is no true discernment of the life of the Spirit. It is religious life; it is a life of doctrine, of people who have not had a direct encounter with the Spirit of God, and that is why they kill one another. The person who has had an experience with the Christ of love and mercy, with the living Christ, will never kill, never oppress, and never exploit another person. I can say that with complete confidence.

Why did they enslave Black people in this country? Why were there so many years of slavery and oppression against human beings? Because it was a cultural religion, a religion in which the Word of God was not preached to people, a religion that was merely religious, redundant as that may sound. Wherever there is an understanding of the person of Jesus and the teachings of Jesus, I cannot see how anyone could ever enslave, oppress, or kill a person, or torture people as the Inquisition did in Spain in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, because there is no understanding of the Word of God; there is no understanding of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we must continually renew our understanding of the Spirit of God so that we do not keep throwing stones at others because they do not do the same things we do, because they do not practice things exactly as we do.

A child of God is a person filled with grace, known for being pleasant, for a kindly smile, for a reconciling character, and for love of others—not for merely going around saying, “You are this, you are that; I am this, I am that.” I can quickly tell when a person has the life of the Spirit because of that kindly attitude, that merciful attitude, that reconciling attitude in their heart. The person who has the Spirit of Christ has that same benevolent spirit and is not continually drawing distinctions. There is an aridity in sterile religion that can be quickly identified, and we must seek that breath of God’s love in our lives. If we do not have the fruit of the Holy Spirit, we are very, very lost.

The spiritual Christian life is a life of reconciliation, love, forgiveness, and mercy, although it also has its aspect of justice and holiness. I do not know whether I am making myself clear. Can you say amen? Are you still there? Or have you all fallen asleep on me already?

I am wrapping up now, brothers and sisters. This is important. What I am trying to do is help you—and myself as well—to identify where I am and the reference points of my life.

Another thing: spiritual religion and external religion, sterile religion—in sterile religion there are constant bondages in a person’s life. External religion has no power to free human beings from their bondages. That is why they continually need to go and be forgiven and are constantly engaged in rituals and things, because they feel dirty and bound.

How many people in evangelical churches are bound? How many of us have all kinds of things that we cannot break free from? We are neurotic and bound; we have bondages of every kind, and we live with them and say, “Well, I am going to die this way because I cannot break this, I cannot break that.”

Brothers and sisters, I believe that in the vital religion of Christ Jesus there is power to break anything that may be binding you, whether it is depression, anxiety, resentment, low self-esteem, wounds from the past, dependence on some drug, alcohol, pornography, or whatever it may be. The Lord Jesus Christ came to break the bonds of death. And if we live bound to these things, then we are wasting the water of life that can break them. Do not submit to anything. As the Apostle Paul says, “I will not submit to anything except Jesus Christ.”

But do not allow anything to enslave you or keep your mind in bondage. Whatever contradicts the peace of God and the purpose of God in your life, point it out, name it, and tell it, “I am going to cut your head off, even if it takes a year or two years, or however long it takes, but that is the direction I am going.” Because the Christian life is a life of continual restoration, continual transformation, and continual renewal. We are being renewed day by day, says the Word of the Lord; as we look face-to-face upon the Lord’s face, we become more and more like Him each day.

So, as long as you are growing and progressing, as long as the devil’s bonds are loosening in your life and there is progress and growth, you can say, “I am where I should be.” Because transformation often does not happen overnight, but we must move toward it.

Many Christians spend their entire lives spinning their wheels in the same mudhole without progressing a single inch. A child of God must continually move forward if that person is living the life of the Spirit.

How do I see that here? This woman was bound; her religion could not free her from her immoral life: five men she had lived with before, and now the sixth, who was not even her husband. A woman in bondage. Some say that this was why she came at that time of day, so that she could be alone, because the other women perhaps wanted nothing to do with her. The Lord always had mercy on such people, and that is why He says to her, “Look, I have water that will cleanse you, heal you, and break those bonds.”

The Bible says that the anointing destroys the yoke; that is what the Word of the Lord says. That water rots away the rope that is binding you and brings deliverance into your life. Seek deliverance in your life, no matter what area of your life it may involve. If Christ is with you, you can break every bondage in all these things. The Apostle Paul says that we are more than victorious. Amen.

Brothers and sisters, may this serve to instruct both you and me. Let us not be satisfied with saying, “Oh, I attend a Pentecostal church.” Is the Holy Spirit within you? That is really the question. Is the Holy Spirit leaping within you? Is there life in the Spirit? Is there joy? Is there discernment of God’s will in your life? Are there good relationships between you and others? Is there a constant sense that God is with me and that I have a relationship with Him? Is there a sense of independence from people, the church, and pastors because you know that you have a personal relationship with Christ and that wherever you may be, He is there to meet your needs and solve your problems? That is the life of the Spirit to which I want to call you this morning. Amen.

Receive it in the name of Jesus. Say, “Lord, I want that for my life. I want to live in the life of the Spirit, Lord.” And may this church always be a church where the presence of the Holy Spirit can be felt, where many people who are on fire in the Spirit are gathered. May this not be a church ruled by the program, a church ruled by formality. We must break that, brothers and sisters, in the name of the Lord, and we must let the Spirit breathe in our lives.

You see, we have to stop... I understand that more and more, and I ask the Lord to help me become freer and freer in the Spirit. Yesterday I officiated at a wedding north of Boston. The people were very well educated and very proper, and it was a very formal church; when we were about to begin, I felt tense. And you know how weddings sometimes are, how people are a little tense, wondering whether everything will go well, and God moved me to do something I had never done before in my life.

Imagine such a very formal setting, and I said, “Can I hear a praise the Lord?” For a moment, the people just stood there like this. That was before the ceremony began, because I felt the Spirit prompting me to break the tension that was there, and then the people sort of woke up and said, “Praise the Lord.” And they woke up a little.

Then I said, “Look, a wedding is a time to rejoice and celebrate.” Sometimes we have to break through the coldness. You know that when you put a bottle of something in the freezer, after a little while a thin layer forms on top as everything begins to freeze, but that layer prevents any upward movement, and that sometimes happens with religion.

If you are not careful with religion, people come to church Sunday after Sunday, and it is all formality and the program, always the same. We sit in the same place, worship in the same way, sing the same choruses, make the same movements—everything is always the same. And we have to change the program, brothers and sisters. We have to come to church and make a little disorder from time to time. Amen. And we must let the Lord move as He wishes in our lives and say to Him, “Lord, help us live a life that is more in the Spirit.” Amen.

Stand up. We are going to make a little disorder this morning, amen. Praise and glorify the Lord. Come up here to the front for a moment; we are going to worship the Lord. Two or three of you, come here. Come this way, get out of your pew, make a little disorder, move around a little, come here to the front, give thanks, and say, “Lord, I want to be a man, a woman of the Spirit.” Say something good to the Spirit; invite the Lord to move within your life right now.

Come this way and worship the Lord. Take a moment to pray and give Him.... Come all the way to the front. Come on—if you are coming, come all the way up here to the front. Amen. And give glory to the Lord for a moment. Even if it is only symbolically, we are going to break the order of the service. Say something to someone, greet someone, come over here, come... fill this place.

Brothers and sisters, that is what we must do. This is the spirituality God desires. It is a living spirituality, in the name of Jesus. Break the religious spirit in the name of Christ this morning. Hallelujah!