What Is a “Spirit of STUPOR” or “Religious FOG”?

I was giving a sermon at a small Assembly of God church a dozen years ago and the Word was just not getting across to the people, except a few. With all due respect, they sat there with blank faces in what seemed like some sort of religious trance. I’m not putting these people down, but rather humbly detailing what occurred. I previously taught this same teaching at a couple of other fellowships and it was received well, so the problem wasn’t likely the topic or my delivery. So what was the issue? This passage might shed some light:

As it is written: “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they could not hear, to this very day.”

Romans 11:8

Paul was referring to the Israelites who hardened themselves to the truths of the Messiah’s message. Since they rejected God’s grace in Christ he gave them over to a state of stupor so that they couldn’t see or hear spiritual truths. In other words, God allowed them to reap the harvest of their own spiritual stubbornness.

Please don’t misinterpret this, God will show his ways to anyone who humbly turns to him. As James put it: “Come near to God and he will come near to you” (James 4:8). But he will give a spirit of stupor to those who continually harden their hearts to his ways and truths. Why would he do this? Simple: “God resists the proud, but gives his grace to the humble” (James 4:6). God actively resists or opposes the stubborn and arrogant, but gives his favor to the humble; the teachable meek, not the weak.

What is a spirit of stupor? It’s a dazed condition of inertia and lethargy wherein the simplest of spiritual truths are unable to arouse, change or motivate. This is what I saw in that congregation; not all of them, but a lot of them. You can teach/preach the most magnificent truths of God’s Word until you’re blue in the face and it will have little or no effect on the bulk of such people due to their foggy religious stupor.

This appears to have been the problem with the Sardis church in the late 1^st century. Notice what Christ said to these believers:

“I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. ² Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. ³Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.”

Revelation 3:1-3

The assembly in Sardis was dead. They had a reputation for being alive only because of their legalistic airs, which undiscerning people confused as genuine Christianity. The Lord urged them to “Wake up!” Why? They had fallen into a religious stupor.

I experienced a similar condition in an old friend I saw several years ago. I desperately wanted to minister to him the life-changing power of the LORD and his Word, but he kept chain-smoking and drinking beer after beer while blasting secular music. As a confessing Christian, these were things he should have dealt with over 25 years earlier, but here he was still in bondage, still in the baby-stage. I’m not saying this with arrogance, but with honesty and compassion—I truly wanted to help him.

Unfortunately, although he admitted to being an alcoholic and that God was the ultimate answer to life’s problems, he talked as if everyone else was to blame for the pit he was in and nothing I said could penetrate his dazed mindset. It’s a spirit of stupor, although in this case it was a lawless stupor and not a religious one. You see, Legalism and libertinism are two sides of the same bad coin.

I didn’t give up on him at the time. I still prayed for him and tried to reach him. He admitted to feeling “lost” and expressed a desire to change, which is good. This is the most important thing because there’s no hope of change without the realization of the need to change and, of course, the desire to change. Unfortunately, he foolishly chose to continue with his addictions, which led to his premature death in early 2021.

On the other side of the spectrum, some people foolishly choose to continue with their religious fog at the expense of freedom in the LORD, like the Pharisees, the Teachers of the Law and their followers, noted in the Scriptures (Matthew 13:15, John 8:44, John 5:39-40, Galatians 5:1 & Matthew 15:14).

Needless to say, be careful of succumbing to a spirit of stupor, whether a religious stupor or a hedonistic one.

For anyone in such a fog, how do you get out? Since the Lord said it’s the truth that will set us free (John 8:31-32), a good starting point is The Basics of Christianity. Anyone who masters these basics will indeed be set free.

This article was edited from Chapter 5 of…