Deuteronomy 12:2-4 – You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way.
For those, especially, who may be newer Christians and may have had one way of doing things, God is now calling you to a completely new way of doing things that isn’t halfway like what you used to do. You can’t do something called syncretism, which is taking Jesus and trying to add other religions to Him and to Christianity. But this happens often; especially when Christianity goes into a new culture.
If you want to study this in detail, go to Acts 19. The Apostle Paul shows up to a town called Ephesus where there was a revival. The people went out and burned all their magic and sorcery and renounced their false gods publicly. They said they were going to worship Jesus Christ alone, not worshipping their old gods or worshipping God in ways other than how He wants to be worshipped.
To give you some very practical examples, I’ve met people who were Muslim convert to Christianity and ask if they can still go to the mosque; no, you go to the church. The Holy Spirit did not fall on the mosque. You go where God is.
Others convert from Islam to Christianity and previously prayed to a god as Allah. They ask if they can call God by this same name. The answer? No! His name is Jesus. We call God by the name that He gives us. In the same way, a parent names a child, the child doesn’t name the parent. God tells us His name, so we don’t need to change it.
I’ve met people who were raised in feminism or wokeism, which is all just demonism, and they’ll say, “We don’t like the concept of God as Father, so we prefer to pray to God as mother.” The answer? No! In Luke 11, Jesus says “When you pray, say: Our Father…” He tells us 165 times in the Bible that God is Father. If we don’t like it, we need to change because God does not need to change, we do. Even if you had a bad and abusive dad and that is a trigger word, you need to be renewed and transformed by the perfect Father in Heaven.
I happen to live and preach in Arizona and many people travel to Sedona. I’m not going to lie, I drove into town and felt like everyone needed to be drug tested. There are many people who come from there and are saved out of the new age and new spirituality and want to keep their crystals. No! Take a hammer, smash them, and put them in the trash. We don’t worship rocks; Jesus Christ is the rock of your salvation. You’ve got the wrong rock.
This happens all the time and we wonder why we don’t feel God’s presence. Maybe it’s because you’ve brought the presence of evil into your home. This even happens with silly things – you go out to visit a tribal reservation and you get a dreamcatcher. That’s a demon catcher; you don’t want to catch demons…if there are demons, let them go. Burn your dreamcatcher. Some of you need to go home and smash crystals, burn books, or hit delete on pornographic videos.
Why would we try to bring the Holy Spirit and unholy spirits together into our lives and homes?
You can’t take another religion or spirituality and just add Jesus to it. Jesus plus anything ruins everything. It’s only Jesus, it’s solely Jesus, it’s constantly Jesus, it’s continuously Jesus. We don’t look out to other religions and spiritualities for how to worship God; we look up to God and how He worships and live in that way. This is the precedent and prototype of praise.
What have you tried to add to Christianity or Jesus that you need to repent of, realizing that you only need Jesus?
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