I am seeing a lot of posts on my timeline with people saying things like:

“I am spiritual but not religious.”

“I don’t have to go to church, I assemble.”

“I’m a part of a fellowship; I don’t have to be in a church building.”

“My relationship is what’s important, not religion.”

None of these statements are WRONG… I could prolly find you scriptures to uphold allofum. You know what’s the issue, though?

Heart posture.

I need you to understand that God HONORS authority. He set it in place: husbands, wives, and kids; supervisors and workers; fivefold and the body. Does this mean that one person is more important than another? No. However, we are practicing willing submission to another. The practice of willful submission causes you to learn what it means walk in the fruit of the spirit. See, many people like to TALK about the fruit of the spirit in theory and in these vacuums. We like to discuss them in terms of strangers, these one-off moments of “See! I operated in the fruit of patience that time!”

Nah fam. Let me put you up on game.

The true demonstration of the fruit in your life—that fruit that Jesus said would REMAIN—is that 1 John 4/1 Corinthians 13/ Colossians 3 kind of love, where you are around the same people, day in and day out. You deal in their personalities, strengths, weakness. You know their highs and lows. You eat, sleep, work, and play with them. You argue with them, laugh with them, cry with them, and dance with them. Intimacy is your portion whether you intend for it to be or not. And it is here, in these spaces of intimate and often irritating contact, that the trying of your faith occurs. It’s easy to love a stranger. How many times in prayer do you call the name of the people who make your eyeballs itch? How able are you to humble yourself, crucify you flesh when your boss is unusually rude? When your spouse is emotionally immature? When your kids are rebellious early? When your parents aren’t as loving and accepting as you want them to be? When your siblings don’t see eye to eye? When you don’t agree with your pastor? When you don’t feel like being bothered with your friends?

It’s easy to cry “relationship over religion” when you don’t want to submit to Christ’s Lordship. AND HIS LORDSHIP demands submission to the rules HE put in place in His word. To use His word to eschew submission to leadership is open rebellion to the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ.

And this? This is witchcraft. To manipulate the word of God to suit your own will? Witchcraft. To refuse to submission one to another as Christ commands under the guise of “relationship?” Witchcraft. To forsake assembly for false “fellowship”, elders for your “own way”, and contempt towards the authority that God has ordained under the guise of “traditions of men”? Witchcraft.

Let me explain something to you, children of God. If anybody more than me scrutinizes the body of Christ and its leadership more than I in this hour? Please give them my contact so we can intercede together before the throne. But what I do NOT do—what God has never given ANY of us permission to do—is to contend with what HE has allowed—GOD SETS AUTHORITY. Not man. And you don’t get to decide to wash your hands of authority because it suits YOU. You sounding a LOT like the one whom Christ saw fall like lightening: full of pride and will.

It is GOD’S WORD that executes judgment upon the heathen. He has written judgment for each and every person in authority who has overstepped and led His sheep astray. In fact you’re seeing it made manifest today. What many of you have called Holy? God has called profane. God has pruned back branches so that those abiding in Christ can fully grow and bring forth fruit.

So now. Do not be continually deceived. Remember your first love and return to the old landmark. Don’t move the boundaries to satisfy the sensations of your flesh. If you be for God, repent and be restored to what is just in HIS sight—not your own. This I declare to you today in Jesus name.

Because the hour comes when the Master of this house appears. Will you be found faithful, waiting at the gate called Straight? Or caught sleeping with the scornful and the mocker, caught unawares and without oil in your lamp? Let those who have ears, hear what the Spirit of the Lord is saying to the churches.