The Danger of Spiritual Circles: Recognizing Patterns That Keep Ministers from Advancing

There are people in the Kingdom who are saved, but instead of moving forward, they are going around in circles. They are not backslidden in the traditional sense. They still attend church. They still preach. They may still lead ministries, host conferences, and engage in religious activity. But they are not advancing. They are circling.

Deuteronomy 2:3 captures the word God gave to Israel after years of wandering: "Ye have compassed this mountain long enough: turn you northward." There comes a point where God looks at the pattern and says, "Enough. You have been here before. You have circled this same issue, this same offense, this same bitterness, this same accusation, and it is time to move."

The children of Israel wandered in the wilderness forty years because of unbelief and rebellion. Numbers 14:33-34 records the consequence: "And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years... after the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities." God forced them to remain in the wilderness until the original unbelievers had fallen. Had God allowed them to go into the promised land prematurely, it would have manifested that they were in control and not God. Many saints today are roaming around in the wilderness, depriving themselves of the riches of the Kingdom of God.

Hebrews 3:17-19 asks the pointed question: "But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness?... So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief." Unbelief. Not ignorance. Not lack of opportunity. Unbelief. They had seen the miracles. They had tasted the manna. They had heard the voice of God. And they still chose the circle over the crossing.

The spiritual circles that trap ministers today are not random. They have created a spiritual route through their own mentality and disposition. What began as a mindset eventually became a cycle. They keep circling the same offenses, the same bitterness, the same conversations, the same accusations, and the same expectations. And they comfort one another in those things.

The cycle looks like this: a group of people spend weeks, months, and years zeroing in on some event or altercation that involved a leader or someone of spiritual status in the church. They never accept the fact that they were carnal, unholy, manipulative, and untrustworthy before and after the event in question. Their whole focus is to bring others out of fellowship, obedience, and focus on godly mandates, and into that microcosm they have elevated as an impasse to getting back to God.

They may even develop a false hope that someone else's ministry or work will eventually fail. That expectation becomes their common bond. But while they are waiting for someone else to fall, they cannot see what is happening to them spiritually. They are losing time. Proverbs 24:17-18 warns: "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: lest the LORD see it, and it displease him."

Busyness becomes a way of redirecting attention away from spiritual location. Instead of asking, "Where am I with God?" the circling minister begins saying, "Look at everything I am doing for God." But you can only reproduce what you are. Luke 6:43-44 is clear: "For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit." If your heart is not right, your ministry activity cannot correct the condition of your heart.

The question that must be asked honestly is this: What are you fighting for? What are you holding onto? What are you unwilling to surrender? The fight, for those who are circling, is often about persuading others that they are indeed spiritual, and getting leaders to accept them as spiritual. Because these saints are carnally minded, they cannot discern God in a movement of the Body.

Hebrews 4:1 issues the sobering warning: "Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it." There is a rest available. There is a promised land waiting. But you will not get there by circling. You will only get there by turning northward, by choosing, once and for all, to move forward in God.