When a spiritual person comes around we say, "Oh, praise the Lord!" We shout "Hallelujah!" or we're always talking about our Quiet Time, or the Bible this or that, or "God is awesome."
We are saying things to look spiritual on the outside not realizing that we are spiritually hollow.
Deep Outside; Shallow Inside
If you find that you're acting this way, it's a mark of immaturity. It's a sign that you're trying to please man instead of God. You are trying to look like something on the outside that you're not on the inside.
So much of the Christian life on an immature believer is performance based. In other words, whether he's mature or not he's going to try to look mature to other people. In front of his youth pastor, his Christian parents, or his pastor he's going to say things that look spiritual.
He'll be even belligerently "spiritual" to look like he's very tight with God when he really didn't even have a very good Quiet Time that morning.
Matt. 6:1 says, "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them." The rest of the chapter talks about specific things we do as Christians - giving, praying, fasting - that mature Christians do all the time, but immature Christians just talk about doing.
It is this fake spirituality that gets us into trouble. Everybody thinks that we're really strong when we aren't. We've even convinced ourselves because we say, "Praise the Lord, Hallelujah, Glory to God, Amen" when spiritual people are around.
You are not strong just because you say these words. You're strong when you fill yourself up with the Word of God.
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