Can I set this up by laying some things out that are probably obvious to you but will help us get to where we need to be before we read our scripture?
We get saved, and we are happy. Our lives are changed. We have peace and joy. It’s just a great thing — but that’s not all. We aren’t just waiting around for heaven. There is stuff to do. Jesus gives us the Great Commission, which boils down to being a disciple and going to make more disciples. It’s a job description.
Part of that process is called discipleship. Like someone learning a new sport or skill, we take a disciplined approach to growing as Christians and drawing closer to Jesus. We do this by studying Jesus’s life and words in scripture. We look at the disciples, Paul, Timothy, Barnabas, and others as they go through life trying to figure out what it means to be a follower of Jesus in a complex world.
One of the things they have to figure out and work through is how to deal with superstition and what I like to call hyperspiritualism — not just them, but the brand-new Christians they are teaching and helping.
The Problem
While there has always been some form of atheism and agnosticism in human history, we also know that great attention has always been given to the spiritual. Even without divine intervention from God, people have recognized that there is more to this world than just the material. And there have always been ways that people have attempted to explain, use, manipulate, control, and understand the spiritual nature of life.
Early in the church, Paul and others leave the bubble of Judaism — a way of life defined by the one true God, a very distinct way of viewing life. They leave this and come into contact with other religions, cultures, and spiritual views. There is conflict, learning, and growth from the process that we can still use today. We can see how this was handled in Acts and the letters that make up the New Testament.
What we don’t want to happen is an unhealthy mix of biblically sound Christian doctrine and hyperspiritualism — birthed from a blend of new age and Eastern mysticism and old superstition. Those things might slightly overlap in places, but mostly they mix like oil and water. Christianity is very distinct, and it often cuts through the superstition and spiritual ideas of a society. But there is always pressure to mix it up for all sorts of reasons.
If we mix those things, it distorts our life’s purpose. It distracts us. I have known Christians who have been so impacted by superstition and hyperspiritualism that they lost sight of why Jesus came and why we are here. They get caught up in drama and conflict that doesn’t matter, and they get frozen in their relationship with God.
A Personal Word
When my brother died, someone told my mom that if she had more faith, he would have been healed. You don’t think a Bible-believing, loving mother had some crazy faith? You don’t think that deep in her soul she believed God could — and needed to — do something for her baby boy? So clearly, faith wasn’t the issue.
That person who told my mom that had turned faith into something they could manipulate reality with. They cheapened faith to a spiritual currency that you use to get things done. With the type of faith they believed in, you could almost buy a favor or a miracle.
Some people turn a disciplined prayer life into a superstition. It is like the person I know who missed their bedtime prayers, and something negative happened the next day. Bedtime prayer is a great thing when done for the right reasons — but this person tried to turn it into nothing more than a superstition that has to be performed to avoid bad things.
I’m sorry, but that isn’t what prayer is. God is not waiting for you to mess up so He can let bad things happen to you. Nowhere in scripture is that who God is for us.
There is life-changing news in scripture that will enable you to live a transformed life — all of it available without complexity. It is simple. There isn’t a secret knowledge. What great news that is.
You might think those are extreme examples, but I have unfortunately seen versions of that and other things too often. I don’t want that for my life and family, and I certainly don’t want any of you to get distracted by stuff that doesn’t matter. I don’t want this church to produce ineffective Christians. There is power in the gospel. There is power in following Jesus. We cannot let our discipleship get messed up by superstition and hyperspiritualism.
Acts 19:18–19
I want to handle this by reading some portions of scripture over the next few weeks. We will start with a simple one — a practical example of the gospel coming into contact with a different type of spiritualism. The temptation for the people involved is to mix in their tradition and understanding with this new Christianity.
Paul has been preaching the gospel in a new city — a very religious place with long ties to Greek mythology and other cults. In fact, religion was a driving force in the local economy. Paul comes in preaching, and he has some success. The gospel at work in the lives of those who believed produced a radical transformation internally that also impacted external actions.
Also, many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.
Acts 19:18–19 (ESV)
The Greco-Roman world put great stock in magical incantations and spells, often collecting them into books that sold for large sums. It was their way to make sense of and have some sort of control over an uncontrollable world. They were spiritual people who believed you could produce spiritual and practical results with this special knowledge — not much different from people who rely on science and logic to try to control their environment. These converts in Ephesus brought these relics of their pagan past and held a massive book burning. They burned about $6 million in today’s currency.
There is some sense in this scripture that some of those responding like this had already been believers. They were going to church, being taught by Paul and others, and believing in Jesus — but it was hard for them to let go of the control they thought they had through their old spiritual system.
Finally, they realized their old spiritual views were incompatible with the gospel. There is a rejection of superstition and a newfound faith in a savior named Jesus. The power was not in a system of words and phrases but in faith that Jesus is Lord of your life.
Application
Before you say this isn’t like anything we deal with — hear me out. This is almost like turning Jesus into Santa. Prayer becomes just a way to produce something we want. Or you could view it as spiritual pharmacology: take this and do that to create healing, a good business deal, or something else. We make systems with God that we think will produce favorable results.
Yet the primary purpose of the gospel is to deal with sin and not give you some sort of control. Jesus showed up to set you free, give you eternal life, and help others get what you have in Jesus. But we still have the spiritual urge to think Jesus is our trick to controlling the world around us.
Listen — ask the disciples if storms still happen with Jesus. They do, quite clearly. But you survive the storm with Jesus. You don’t control the factors of life with Jesus; you survive in spite of them, with Jesus.
Not to mention, Paul and all but one of the disciples ended up dying as martyrs. If anyone had the key to miracles or control, it was these people — and yet they died in very unpleasant ways. They were not distracted by superstition or hyperspiritualism. They were dedicated to following Jesus and doing the job.
There are times when the gospel redeems a part of culture — in the arts, in science, in many things. But sometimes the gospel doesn’t redeem; sometimes it delivers. It gets you out of things that have no place in your life. In this scripture, the people are delivered from a broken understanding of spiritual reality and idolatry. Their incantations are not redeemed; they are destroyed.
We need that same deliverance in our lives sometimes, too. We let things creep in that don’t belong.
Matthew 6:7–8
By the way, we even get a flash of this from Jesus as He teaches us to pray. I have to imagine most cultures have prayer — it is like a foundational piece of existence, so there are so many ideas, processes, and traditions wrapped up in it. Even the Jewish people seemed to have needed a little help getting it right. Jesus strips away some nonsense to teach us how to pray and how to talk to Him.
And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Matthew 6:7–8 (ESV)
People want to think they can manipulate and control spiritually, and they create patterns that give them the appearance of that — but the reality is that our only control is found in trust within the relationship. Many religions rely on the complexity and the formula of prayer to get their god’s attention. It was a special skill you had to learn. Jesus says that is not how this works.
Back in the Old Testament, the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel with Elijah tried their hardest to manipulate an answer from their god. They prayed, chanted, danced, cut themselves, and did all kinds of things for hours. Basically, they were screaming, “Baal, pay attention to us.”
No answer. Why? Because they were praying to no one — and as Elijah shows us, God doesn’t need all that. Elijah had about four sentences in his prayer, and God showed up.
What matters in our prayers to God is that God is real, and as Jesus tells us, He is our Father. The relationship is the key, not a formula. Because God is our Father, He is already listening. Because He is our Father, He already cares. He is paying attention. We don’t have to pray louder or longer for God to help us or act on our behalf.
So if a prayer is not answered, it might not have anything to do with having more faith. It doesn’t mean God isn’t paying attention or that we have to try harder. It may not be the right time. Maybe it’s a “no” because God needs something else to happen that will advance the kingdom. Maybe God’s will is placed in front of our desire because that is more important — and it is a part of what we pray for.
“Lord, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Jesus in the garden had a desire that was not answered. If His desire was not answered, then what makes us think all of our requests will be? It has nothing to do with faith or lack of faith, and everything to do with submission and trust in God’s plan.
Our desperation for control — or our attempts to get a response from God — enables the enemy to sneak things into our discipleship that do not belong. It will create anxiety and disappointment. God knows this, and that is why He warns us about it.
Conclusion
Our discipleship has to guard against creating superstition out of our relationship with God. Prayer is not a wish list — it’s relationship. It’s communication. It’s a privilege. Faith is not a currency to be spent to force God to do something for your life. Faith is an expression of trust in a God who is real, in a God who loves you, and in a God to whom you submit your life so that His will be done over your own.
Do we pray for miracles? Do we believe that God can do amazing things for our lives? Do we believe that God hears us? Do we believe that God cares for us? Yes, absolutely. He is able to do amazing things. I have seen Him do amazing things.
But that’s not the centerpiece of what our relationship with God is all about. When we make it the most important part, it becomes a problem. Our desire for control in an uncontrollable world means we are constantly seeking ways to make processes and systems to help us — practically and spiritually — including in our relationship with Christ.
Guard yourselves from this temptation.
Zachary Peters 
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