CWW Week 28 – Day 4 – Spiritual Rigidity
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Title: The Danger of Spiritual Rigidity: Learning from the Unknown God
Scripture: Acts 17:22–23 (NIV)
“Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: ‘People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.’”
Devotional:
Spiritual rigidity is a quiet danger. It doesn’t always appear in the form of rebellion or sin. Sometimes it wears the mask of religiosity, familiarity, and certainty. It keeps us in safe, well-worn routines. It locks us into limited understanding and builds walls around our expectations of how God can speak, move, and act.
In Acts 17, the apostle Paul addresses a crowd in Athens—highly intellectual, deeply religious people who had created an altar “to an unknown god.” These Athenians were not irreligious. In fact, Paul even acknowledges how “very religious” they were. But despite all their efforts to reach the divine, they had missed the truth. Their religion had become a form without power, a system without revelation.
Paul’s speech is not just for pagans or philosophers. It speaks to all of us who may, in our own ways, be worshipping the “unknown God”—clinging to forms of godliness while missing the fullness of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ.
The Subtlety of Rigidity
Spiritual rigidity often disguises itself as devotion. It convinces us that our traditions, our styles of worship, our denominations, or even our theological assumptions are the whole of the truth. Over time, we can become so entrenched in our “correctness” that we close our hearts to anything unfamiliar, even if it’s from God.
The Athenians had built altars to every god they could name and one to the god they couldn’t. They had spiritual activity without spiritual clarity. Similarly, we can engage in religious behaviours—praying, singing, reading Scripture—yet still live with blind spots, assumptions, and misconceptions about who God truly is.
Spiritual rigidity is not about being firm in faith. It’s about being inflexible in heart. It resists correction. It is afraid of mystery. It assumes it already knows all it needs to know. But the moment we believe we’ve got God figured out, we’ve reduced Him to something less than divine.
A Posture of Curiosity and Humility
Paul does something profound in Acts 17—he doesn’t mock their ignorance; he builds a bridge. He uses their own altar as a starting point to reveal the truth of the gospel. He invites them out of their rigid systems into a living relationship with the God who “does not live in temples built by human hands” (Acts 17:24).
This is the invitation for us as well: to move from ritual to relationship, from presumption to pursuit, from rigidity to receptivity. God cannot be contained by our systems, boxed in by our preferences, or limited by our traditions. He is always speaking, always revealing, always calling us deeper.
But to hear Him, we must remain teachable. We must admit that there is still more to learn, more to see, more to experience. We must be willing to be challenged, even stretched. A heart that is too rigid will crack under pressure, but a heart that is humble will grow under God’s hand.
Living a Flexible Faith
Being spiritually flexible doesn’t mean being spiritually vague or compromising the truth. Rather, it means holding tightly to God but loosely to methods. It means seeking fresh insight from the Holy Spirit, allowing Him to adjust your understanding, even if it means letting go of familiar comforts.
Paul was not afraid to step into unfamiliar territory or speak in new ways to reach people. Likewise, we must be open to where God leads, even when it’s outside our norms. He’s not afraid of our questions, our uncertainties, or our shifting seasons. What He desires is a heart that stays soft, ears that stay open, and a faith that stays alive.
Reflection Questions:
- Are there areas in your life where you’ve become spiritually rigid—clinging to habit or tradition more than to Christ Himself?
- How can you cultivate a posture of humility and curiosity in your relationship with God?
- What might the “unknown god” look like in your life—things you worship unknowingly or misunderstand about God?
Closing Prayer:
Dear Lord, Papa God.
I confess that at times I have settled for routine over relationship, for religion over revelation. Forgive me for the ways I’ve made You small, predictable, or distant. Break down the altars I’ve built to an “unknown god” and reveal Yourself to me in fresh, living ways. Give me a heart that is teachable and eyes that are open to see You moving, even in unexpected places. Help me live a faith that is both anchored in truth and flexible in Your hands.
In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Graham Hood
