Uncovering the Religious Spirit in New Ways

by Richard Kinney

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Very recently I have seen a whole other side of the religious spirit. I’d like to share this information with as many others within the Body of Christ as I can. The breakthroughs and healings attached to this have been dynamic. Here is a new look at how the religious spirit enters and hurts many spirit-filled believers outside of any religious context. The religious spirit can be like an unseen evil submarine in our midst.

First, let me introduce myself. I am Richard Kinney and for the past 22 plus years I have, along with my co-worker, Nancy Moelk, been involved in an inner healing ministry with equally strong components of deliverance, prophetic ministry and mentoring. I have been aware of the religious spirit during this time in the classic way of seeing it as a principality that affects people to be against the Holy Spirit, the gifts and any form of dynamic, meaningful Christianity. I have felt in a narrow-minded way that the religious spirit has to manifest primarily in some kind of religious context. I have had several battles with the religious spirit. I have won a few and lost a few. But I found recently, that the way I have been looking at it, has been much too narrow. Please bear with me as I unfold what I have found out recently.

I was working with a man who had been raised by parents that cared very much how he looked to the larger community but didn’t care for him as a unique person to be loved. Their goal was not to care for him, but that he fit the picture that they desired him to project. This left him internally somewhat like a paper doll. For those of you old enough to remember, when you take away its paper clothes, there is blank white cardboard in the center. He was hollow, so to speak, in the middle; and though an energetic and likeable person, he had to move everything indirectly through his feminine side to make his way in the world. Though at the same time, he was not effeminate in any way. He was not able to approach anything directly. He had to charm rather than demand and, in many ways, he had to always take “the long way around”. Being direct in any way was hard for him. I never suspected that he had any trouble with the religious spirit because he did not fit my picture of what that would look like. His theology was good. He was friendly to the spirit-filled life and the prophetic. What happened next was a case of the devil shooting himself in the foot, which happens pretty often.

As I was helping him the religious spirit came after me. It wasn’t a big deal, but the day turned “gray,” so to speak and much of the anointing I had been enjoying for many days seemed to go way down. I went to my co-worker in ministry and talked to her about how I felt, and we realized that a religious spirit in him had jumped on to me. After thinking this over, we realized, that the religious spirit is more about “caring about how things look” than how they really are. It does not care if something is really good but very much wants to hide in “looking good.” Anyone with close relationships such as having a parent or a marriage partner who wants things to look good without any real concern for the other person or their well-being is a breeding ground for the religious spirit. When the happiness of the child or mate doesn’t matter, this can leave the person who is treated like this vulnerable to penetration by the religious spirit even with no religious context at all. It can be living in someone who has good Holy Spirit friendly theology and who is a kind, spirit filled believer.

I prayed for this young man against the religious spirit in his life. There was such a dynamic improvement in his life in being able to face things directly and powerfully, that I decided to check each person that I minister to. And what I found out was extremely eye-opening. Even though I have prayed for all the people that I am writing about here and that they had all been with me for a year or more. And I had prayed for them for inner healing and deliverance already. I found that I had missed very important ways that they had been hurt and still carried the religious spirit because they didn’t act and look like I thought a person with a religious spirit should look.

Let me give you several testimonies each one showing a dimension of hurt that the religious spirit had worked in the life of each individual I am speaking about. They are all different.

The first person I prayed for is a degreed counselor who is very intelligent but had made a string of very serious, poor decisions throughout her life. She had a view of God as far away and uncaring and had a very hard time connecting to His love. She had had a mother who had been hyper-critical, that never let her win. She had a father who was absentee. She had married an Arab man who cared very much about looking good but had almost completely ignored her as a person.

She found herself a single mother with two children after a divorce with her ex-husband being very hard to work with in raising the children. As I asked her to pray to Jesus that he would show her if the religious spirit had ever entered her life and what were some of the results, she started to cry. She saw God bursting into the room where she and her mother were. He was like a giant, with hands as big as cars and angrily sweeping away the bad treatment she had received. This is the first time she really felt God’s care and love for her.

The Lord then showed her the synapses in her brain. She saw that they had been turned by the religious spirit to give her distorted reports so that when she was receiving information to turn left, she saw it as information to turn right. She saw that many bad decisions, her failed marriage one of them, had been caused by this attack by the religious spirit. We prayed directly against the religious spirit and she was set free.

When I meet with a person, and so much of them is right and yet they have a great weakness or inconsistency, to me, it speaks of a certain kind of things not adding up that show me there is an inner healing need or a spiritual problem.

Soon afterwards, I was working with another woman in her sixties who really didn’t totally add up. She was lovely and the head of some important ministries in a major city. Her parents wanted her to be a concert pianist and wanted her to appear to the world as a perfect little girl. They did not really care for the inner person at all. The religious spirit had entered her in childhood and though she had great theology she found herself unable to enjoy the marriage bed and felt that her passions were frozen. I told her that I had seen that the religious spirit sometimes causes a type of freezing in some major aspect of the person: their ability to bond, their ability for a healthy sexuality or to be able to feel loved and enjoyed by others. I told her that sometimes the religious spirit is like this product “Freeze-zone”. It is like liquid nitrogen that freezes warts. She laughed and said, “Richard, I just bought three bottles of that stuff last week!” I asked her to ask Jesus to show her if the religious spirit was in her at this time. She started to cry and feel great pain and she felt a coldness leave her body. She has been delivered from her problem.

Each person that I am writing about as I said before had been prayed for by me many times and received deliverance that helped them, but I had missed the intrusion of the religious spirit. Almost every person that I talked to about the religious spirit, even though I spoke in a calm and non-accusing voice, began to cry or feel pain or even great pain, just by me bringing up the possibility that the religious spirit might have hurt them.

Another woman, a fifty-year-old single mom was reminded as we prayed of three times it looked like she would finally get a home of her own for herself and her child. Each time, what looked like a sure thing, had fallen through. I remember at the time that I had remarked on what a good attitude she had as she said, “Oh, well. God must have done this for my good.” I was very impressed by her good attitude. But I was wrong. As she prayed, God showed her that the religious spirit that had entered her as a child as she was raised by an extremely critical mother who cared very much about appearances and almost nothing for her as a person, had caused each one of these deals to fail. We prayed for her; she was in the foyer of a large office building when we talked. She cried openly in this busy place and she felt a great weight leave her. In one months-time after this, she got a job offer that came with housing and food for her and her daughter that after a six-month training period would yield her three times her present salary.

Another person, age 72, had had a horrible life that had been plagued by many physical problems. She had been sexually abused as a child and her mother and father very much wanted her to look good but did not care for her a person and they certainly didn’t want the truth to come out. At the time of our one-hour ministry appointment, she had just come out of two weeks in the hospital. She had had a knee replacement. It was very painful, and it looked as if the body was rejecting the new metal knee. Also, scar tissue was building up in the knee. If too much scar tissue built up, the surgery would have to be done over again. She had to be sent to a nursing center where she could receive physical therapy four times a day. This was very painful, and she was unable to take pain medication because of conflicts with her other medications. She had gotten bronchitis so bad, that after a long consult with her doctor, they decided to use a super-antibiotic, sort of a court of last resort because her bronchitis was so bad. She also, at the same time, had to be assigned a speech therapist because her larynx was seizing up and she had to do special exercises to keep it open. Lastly, at night, her oxygen levels were dropping so low, that she woke up as if suffocating and this caused her to sleep very little.

Remember, I had prayed for this lovely spirit filled believer many times and had done deliverance on her over the years with good effects, but I had missed the religious spirit. As I brought this up, she was plunged into deep pain. She said, “Richard, this pain is so bad that I can’t go thouon”. Believe me, this woman is no cupcake. She has faced a lot of physical pain in her life. This was very serious pain indeed. We asked the Lord to help her with the pain and it quieted down. She asked Him to show her if the religious spirit had hurt her life. He showed her it had hurt her physical health in a terrible way. She felt a great release and the next day, all of her symptoms of all four issues listed above started to reverse for the better. I talked to her one week after the prayer. The scar tissue had receded to the point that she had been discharged from PT in the nursing home and was able to return home. She saw the doctor who had been working on her with her bronchitis. The doctor normally grumpy and non-communicative was delighted with her recovery and released her. Her oxygen levels had normalized, and she sleeps peacefully each night. As I spoke to her, she was interrupted by a call from her speech therapist who discharged her from further care. Wow! This came in one week from a one-hour prayer session, directly against the religious spirit.

Have you known people who seem dead? Who don’t want to live or enjoy life? Who seem to resent it if others are happy? I have two men like this. As an aside, I am convinced, that the fascination with zombie movies and zombie TV series come from many people being dead inside. The religious spirit is responsible for many of these problems.

I prayed in the way I have detailed to you with both of these men. This was the first time I had prayed directly against the religious spirit. Both of them became much livelier and began enjoying life. One of the men was in his late twenties. I knew his dad and he asked me what I had done to his son.

Another woman in her 40’s who had been raised by a cold and distant grandmother recognized three symptoms of the religious spirit in her life. First, she was unable to appreciate and enjoy herself. Secondly, she felt angry and disappointed with others for not being able to meet her needs for affirmation. Thirdly, she had blamed God for how badly she felt about herself and how badly others seemed to regard her! The religious spirit had tricked her into all three of these destructive perceptions!

To sum up, the religious spirit does not have to look like what we thought in the past. It doesn’t need a church or a religious context to manifest in or to enter a person. It can cause the following problems in spirit-filled believers who have good theology.

• A propensity towards bad decisions
• Seeing things in a distorted, negative way.
• Coldness or apathy in major areas of the soul such as the ability to feel emotion, to love, sexuality or to have a good opinion of oneself.
• Physical problems and ill health, especially in the bones.
• A “deadness” toward life and a joyless way of living.
• Unable to bond or be direct.
• Inability to appreciate and affirm oneself.
• Prone to seeing others in a negative light due to their inability to meets one’s needs.
• Holding judgments against God and blaming Him for what is wrong with their lives.
• Wanting to hide in life.

I am not blaming all of life’s problems on the religious spirit. But I believe it is a much larger problem than we have heretofore thought. I found some intrusion of the religious spirit in myself one day. I told my ministry partner that I was thirsting to do more of this kind of this anti-religious spirit ministry, and I was sad that I only had one appointment that day. She said, maybe you need it for yourself. I prayed and found what seemed to be a soft-ball sized chunk of the religious spirit in myself. And I felt much lighter and freer after I prayed.

I will be seventy soon. I don’t fit the profile of someone with a religious spirit. I have received and done a lot of inner healing and deliverance. And, yet, I found this problem that was solved with a simple prayer in myself.

Some Tips on How to Pray Against the Religious Spirit

Here is the method that I use to help the believer find the religious spirit and its effects in themselves.

1. It is important that you explain to him before even starting that it is possible to have this problem regardless of their theology or their attitude towards the Holy Spirit. They may be and probably will be perfectly lovely brothers and sisters who have had parents or mates or organizations who cared more about how things looked than about their welfare.
2. Ask the one being ministered to to ask Jesus to lead them to any place in themselves where they have been penetrated by the religious spirit and show them what damage may have been caused by the religious spirit.
3. Let them have some time to feel and see clearly what has happened to them and then pray deliberately against the religious spirit. Jesus will lead them to the spot and show them where they were penetrated by the religious spirit and what the consequences were.
4. I don’t tell them where to look even if I know them well. I don’t try to explain the consequences of what has happened without the Lord showing them first.
5. Ask Jesus and the Angel of the Lord to help you do these deliverances. It may be wise to ask God to only answer your prayers if they are pleasing to Him and not being made in presumption.

I want to make clear to you that we are not fighting or praying directly against a full principality. We are praying against a smaller, human-sized demon that works with and represents the religious spirit.

Some other areas I want to mention to you briefly. One of the areas we need to look at is when we act with coldness towards God. This may be a manifestation of the religious spirit. One of the biggest intrusions of the religious spirit comes out in how people treat God. Many are largely more interested in looking good and righteous from the outside. They are not really interested in how God feels, or in Him as a Person. Even the concept that God has feelings can be far from us at times.

Unfortunately, in today’s politics, particularly in the left, much is what is said and done is very much empowered and driven by the religious spirit. The left wants to look kind and good and considerate, but they are not. They call others fascists and racists but they are the biggest fascists and racists of all. The left is constantly trying to separate us based on color and identity. Consider how the left makes such a big fuss about how much they care for women while at the same time wanting to use a late term abortion to kill a female child. We can and should pray against the work of the religious spirit at work in our national politics. It also shows up in the right’s seeming inability and helplessness to move in an effective way against some very obvious wrongs. And in the way that the right has had trouble getting anything done even when they had a majority in the House and the Senate even with a very dynamic president. Regardless of your politics, wouldn’t it be better if we together prayed the religious spirit out of the press, the courts and all of our politics.

I hope this has been helpful to you. You don’t have to pray the way I do and anyone who finds a more effective way or ways, please let me know. Also, I am happy for anyone to use all or part of this information I put here without further permission. I’d love for this word to get out.

by Richard Kinney