When Christianity is shrink wrapped in religious plastic and boxed up like an Amazon package, it’s not very effective. We need to open it up so God’s Spirit can take control. To be spiritually alive is to be responsive to and led by the inner promptings of God’s Spirit — Jesus Christ living and working in you.

Too many Christians are trapped by religious loyalties, traditions, hierarchies, and programs that keep them from being freely Spirit-led. It’s very rare to find a church service that allows people to be free to follow the Spirit. When the institutional church institutionalized Christianity it made Christians dependent on a religious institution instead of on the presence and power of the living Christ.

Being Spirit-led has nothing to do with sermon-hearing. It’s about daily hearing and obeying the risen Jesus. Nothing can compare to the Spirit’s rivers of living water are rushing through my soul.

Some people say that church is a hospital. To me it’s more of a nursing home. A hospital heals and releases people. A nursing home coddles to their frailty and rarely lets them go.

The purpose of a hospital is to get people healthy and released to freely function without institutional help. The purpose of a nursing home is to keep people institutionalized and to maintain the status quo until they die. Which one do you think best describes the contemporary church?

If Christians have ever needed to be led by God’s Spirit it’s now! You can only be led by “Christ in you” if you’re willing to focus intently on Him and follow Him. The Good News of the kingdom of God is that King Jesus is alive, present, and active in this world and invites whosoever will to surrender to His literal Headship and obey His direct authority in day-to-day life.

To focus on self is to be out of focus. Self-love and self-forgiveness are self-focused, but receiving God’s love and forgiveness is Christ-focused. I can forgive myself a million times, but until I have God’s forgiveness, I’m still guilty. (See 1 John 1:9.) HIs forgiveness frees me from religious shrink wrap!