You can keep your seat in church while losing the fire that brought you there.
You still know the songs. You still believe the Bible. But somewhere along the way, prayer became a struggle and the calling God placed on your life started gathering dust.
We need to pay attention when our hunger for God begins to disappear.
Pastor Landon Schott confronted that spiritual decline in his sermon, “Spirit of Python,” at Mercy Culture Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
“I came to tell you today, the spirit of python comes for your passion,” he declared.
Drawing from the slave girl with a spirit of divination in Acts 16, Schott described what he calls a python spirit that seeks to suffocate spiritual life through oppression, deception, confusion and discouragement.
“The spirit of python is a demonic spirit of divination that squeezes your spiritual life out of you,” he said.
Schott cautioned against adding opinions to Scripture as he developed the teaching. His central warning was urgent: The enemy wants to drain our love for God until we stop doing what God called us to do.
Here are the 10 warning signs he identified.
1. Frustration Keeps Tightening Its Grip
You step forward in obedience and meet resistance. Then more resistance. Eventually, frustration follows you into prayer and begins shaping how you see everything God has asked you to do.
Schott described that pressure in unmistakable terms:
“You feel like you’re spiritually being opposed, like something is wrapping around you, hindering favor, hindering movement, hindering breakthrough, and it just feels like one coil after another coil after another coil that is keeping you from accomplishing what God’s called you to do.”
We have to guard our hearts when resistance starts turning into resignation. The work God entrusted to us still matters when the road becomes difficult.
2. A Heavy Weight Refuses to Lift
Some burdens follow you from the moment you wake up until you close your eyes at night. Schott described a spiritual heaviness that becomes difficult even to explain.
“You feel like you’re carrying a massive heavy weight. It’s a spiritual pressure. It’s an oppression,” he said. “You can’t properly articulate it. It just feels like this spiritual weight and heaviness is coiling around you and you don’t know why.”
His counsel called Christians back to prayer:
“When you feel spiritual heaviness, pray in the Holy Spirit. I have found that this is one of the primary ways that spirit of heaviness lifts off me.”
Bring the burden into God’s presence. Ask the Holy Spirit for discernment and strength to keep obeying.
3. Your Prayer Life Is Being Squeezed Into Silence
A neglected prayer life has consequences. When we continually put off time with God, we leave the Bible unopened while other voices gain more room in our hearts.
“You know, you’re supposed to, but reading the Bible in prayer is very difficult. It’s almost like you can’t even get your breath to pray,” Schott said.
Later, he described the attack’s intended outcome:
“It’s the reason the spirit exists to squeeze the spiritual life out of you. So you have no breath of God. You have no prayer life. You have no worship life. You have no war cry.”
Open the Bible again. Begin to pray, even when the words come slowly. Our relationship with God requires our attention today.
4. Worship Has Become an Empty Routine
Your lips can finish a song while your heart stays a thousand miles away.
“Your worship has become routine. You are losing your affection in worship,” Schott warned.
That deserves an honest response. Have we become so familiar with worship that we move through it without giving God our attention? Have we tied our praise to how well life is going?
“Zeal is not a love for God by what he does for you. It’s not how good your life is. It’s not about your circumstance. It’s not about how things are turning out,” Schott said later in the sermon.
Jesus remains worthy of our wholehearted love in the middle of the battle. Bring Him your attention and affection again.
Order Daniel Adams’ New Book, “Delivered” on Amazon.com!
5. You Keep Reaching for Yesterday While Neglecting God Today
Thank God for the encounter that changed your life. Then seek Him again.
A testimony from years ago should stir fresh hunger. We get into trouble when we spend our lives remembering how close we once were to God while doing little to pursue Him now.
“And what happens when you’re always looking at yesterday? You’re not looking at his mercies that are new every morning today. You’re not asking the Lord what he’s saying today, what he’s speaking today,” Schott said.
He pressed the point: “If you are living spiritually in the past, you are not taking spiritual ground today.”
The God who met you then is worthy of your pursuit now.
6. Drama Has Your Attention and God Gets the Leftovers
There is always another controversy to consume. Another argument to enter. Another person to discuss while the work of ministry waits.
Schott warned that this appetite can pull our attention away from the Holy Spirit.
“You are drawn to the gossip of the online world. Your ear is tuned to the spirit of the accuser of the brethren when you do not know the voice of the Holy Spirit,” he said.
“Drama will distract you from true ministry.”
We should take that seriously. Time spent feeding outrage is time we cannot spend praying with someone, sharing the gospel or serving the people God has placed in our lives. Guard what receives your attention.
7. Confusion Is Pulling You Away From Your Calling
Confusion becomes especially dangerous when it starts separating us from the place God planted us and the work He gave us.
“Because when you’re feeling confused, that python spirit may be in operation,” Schott said.
He recounted praying with a fellow pastor during preparations for the Washington, D.C., church launch after sensing confusion settling over him.
“I see confusion trying to settle on you. I see confusion trying to rest on you,” Schott recalled telling him. “So then we started praying together. We started rebuking the enemy and we started declaring the mind of Christ.”
Take the confusion to God. Search His Word and seek mature, biblical counsel before allowing spiritual disorientation to determine your next step.
8. You Know What God Said, but You Are Losing the Will to Obey
There are moments when we need to act on the direction God has already given us. Delay becomes dangerous when we keep waiting for obedience to feel easy.
“God has spoken to you, but you’re losing the desire to obey,” Schott said.
Later, he explained how that pressure threatens a person’s calling:
“The moment you start getting clarity about what God’s called you to do is when Python will come and try to separate you from the call of God on your life.”
Perhaps fear rises every time you prepare to share your testimony. Perhaps the assignment that once stirred your heart now sits beneath a growing pile of excuses. Bring that resistance before God and take the next faithful step.
9. Spiritual Spectacle Is Replacing Biblical Discernment
A dramatic claim can capture your imagination before you ever ask whether it agrees with Scripture.
Schott warned about becoming “drawn and impressed by spiritual claims without testing the source, if they’re even biblical.”
He challenged the fruit of endless spiritual conspiracy content:
“Your conspiracy doesn’t help anybody. It didn’t set anybody free. It didn’t bring anybody to Jesus. It didn’t help anybody spiritually grow.”
When discussing prophecy earlier in the sermon, he gave another test: “When it’s prophecy, it pushes you towards God, not towards a person.”
Keep your Bible open. Examine what you hear. Spiritual language never gives someone permission to lead you beyond the authority of God’s Word.
10. Your Kingdom Has Become More Important Than God’s
Selfish ambition can learn the language of ministry. We can talk about advancing God’s kingdom while organizing our lives around our own recognition and success.
“You become obsessed with you and what benefits you,” Schott said. “Those that deal with the spirit of python have this weird odd obsession. They think they’re building the kingdom, but they’re only building their empire.”
That calls for repentance. Our gifts belong in God’s service. Our plans must remain surrendered to Him. The people He sends us to reach deserve more than whatever time our ambitions leave behind.
Schott returned to Paul and Silas, who prayed and sang after being beaten and thrown into prison. Their bodies bore the wounds of obedience, yet their praise continued. God shook the prison and opened the doors.
“Paul and Silas did not allow the prison to dictate their praise,” Schott said.
We can bring God our worship in the middle of the struggle. We can seek Him while the pressure is still present and obey Him before we see how the story ends.
“You respond to Python by returning to God with zeal,” Schott said. “Zeal is a holy passion. Zeal is when your passion is about God.”
Return to the place of prayer. Give God your full attention. Take up the work He entrusted to you and ask the Holy Spirit to rekindle your love for Jesus.
James Lasher, a seasoned writer and editor at Charisma Media, combines faith and storytelling with a journalism background from Otterbein University and ministry experience in Guatemala and at the LA Dream Center. A Marine Corps and Air Force veteran, he is the author of The Revelation of Jesus: A Common Man’s Commentary and a contributor to Charisma magazine. For interviews and media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
