TESTING THE SPIRITS
I send greetings in the name of Jesus:
I have heard it said that real love is an action, not a feeling. This action produces a selfless sacrificial kind of giving that becomes the greatest characteristic in God's definition of love which is giving oneself to others. It is this kind of love that causes us to care enough about someone else to lay down our life for them. This is no doubt the mindset that God's Spirit instilled in Jesus as a man by serving others with no thought of receiving anything in return. I have found in my life that it is sometimes easier for us to say that will die for others than it is for us to say I will truly live for them because it involves putting others desires first before our own.
The development of this kind of love takes a special kind of wisdom, and special working of the Holy Spirit within our lives. Receiving this wisdom from God's spirit also requires us to use our discernment in what we sense and feel in the spirit and the in the teachings of others. In many different passages of Scripture from the teachings of Jesus to the teachings of Paul, John, and Peter we find warnings about listening to false teachers. As you have heard me say before we can judge these different spirits from people by discerning the mutual relationship they have been living in Christ just as he lives in us; that relationship shows itself in Christians keep three essential commands: 1. We believe that Jesus is the Christ the son of the living God. 2. We choose to love our brothers and sisters in Christ above our love for the world. 3. To live morally upright lives in the eyes of God. The Holy Spirit's presence is not only spiritual and mystical, but it is also practical.
We can not believe every person who claims to be speaking from God's spirit, but rather we need to test the very spirit as well as the message that may automatically raise a question and our heart. There are many ways that we can test teachers to see if their message is truly from the Lord. One of the first ways is to check to see if their words match what God is telling us in the Bible. There are other tests which include discerning their commitment to the body of believers, or discerning the personal lifestyle, and the fruit of their personal ministry. The book of John tells us that the most important test of all is the test that asks what they believe about Jesus Christ; do they teach that Jesus is fully God, and fully man? Today our world is filled with voices that are claiming to speak for God, and we need to be able to use our discernment and these kinds of tests to see if they are indeed speaking God's truth. Almost every week I speak to someone who is influenced by what they see on television or by a book or an article they have read that stirs their senses to believe in a new twist to God's message of the good news of Jesus Christ. Many of these people seem to believe everything they read or hear, unfortunately, many ideas that are printed and taught today about Christ are not true. We should have faith, but we should not be gullible. It is for that reason that we need to get into a habit of verifying every message that we hear, even if the person who brings it says it's from God. If a message is truly from God, it will be consistent with God's teachings through Jesus Christ. That is one of the reasons that I advocate carrying your Bible with you when you go to worship service so that you can look up and underline or mark in some way the passages of Scripture being discussed. Many times we may not be able to verify a message on the spot, but if we mark the word we are hearing with that scriptural reference we can then go back to revisit and compare what we have heard to the truth of God's word.
There is no doubt the antichrist will be a person who epitomizes all that is evil, and he will be readily received by an evil world, but we are told that the spirit of the antichrist is already here. False teachers are popular with the world because just like the false prophets of the Old Testament there telling people what they want to hear. People in general do not want to hear their sins brought into the light of day, they don't want to listen to demands that they change their behavior. They certainly don't want to hear message that tells them that no matter how good they tried to be they will never enter into the kingdom of heaven until they are transformed by the renewing of their minds and hearts. May you richly bless God through your life in him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
I have heard it said that real love is an action, not a feeling. This action produces a selfless sacrificial kind of giving that becomes the greatest characteristic in God's definition of love which is giving oneself to others. It is this kind of love that causes us to care enough about someone else to lay down our life for them. This is no doubt the mindset that God's Spirit instilled in Jesus as a man by serving others with no thought of receiving anything in return. I have found in my life that it is sometimes easier for us to say that will die for others than it is for us to say I will truly live for them because it involves putting others desires first before our own.
The development of this kind of love takes a special kind of wisdom, and special working of the Holy Spirit within our lives. Receiving this wisdom from God's spirit also requires us to use our discernment in what we sense and feel in the spirit and the in the teachings of others. In many different passages of Scripture from the teachings of Jesus to the teachings of Paul, John, and Peter we find warnings about listening to false teachers. As you have heard me say before we can judge these different spirits from people by discerning the mutual relationship they have been living in Christ just as he lives in us; that relationship shows itself in Christians keep three essential commands: 1. We believe that Jesus is the Christ the son of the living God. 2. We choose to love our brothers and sisters in Christ above our love for the world. 3. To live morally upright lives in the eyes of God. The Holy Spirit's presence is not only spiritual and mystical, but it is also practical.
We can not believe every person who claims to be speaking from God's spirit, but rather we need to test the very spirit as well as the message that may automatically raise a question and our heart. There are many ways that we can test teachers to see if their message is truly from the Lord. One of the first ways is to check to see if their words match what God is telling us in the Bible. There are other tests which include discerning their commitment to the body of believers, or discerning the personal lifestyle, and the fruit of their personal ministry. The book of John tells us that the most important test of all is the test that asks what they believe about Jesus Christ; do they teach that Jesus is fully God, and fully man? Today our world is filled with voices that are claiming to speak for God, and we need to be able to use our discernment and these kinds of tests to see if they are indeed speaking God's truth. Almost every week I speak to someone who is influenced by what they see on television or by a book or an article they have read that stirs their senses to believe in a new twist to God's message of the good news of Jesus Christ. Many of these people seem to believe everything they read or hear, unfortunately, many ideas that are printed and taught today about Christ are not true. We should have faith, but we should not be gullible. It is for that reason that we need to get into a habit of verifying every message that we hear, even if the person who brings it says it's from God. If a message is truly from God, it will be consistent with God's teachings through Jesus Christ. That is one of the reasons that I advocate carrying your Bible with you when you go to worship service so that you can look up and underline or mark in some way the passages of Scripture being discussed. Many times we may not be able to verify a message on the spot, but if we mark the word we are hearing with that scriptural reference we can then go back to revisit and compare what we have heard to the truth of God's word.
There is no doubt the antichrist will be a person who epitomizes all that is evil, and he will be readily received by an evil world, but we are told that the spirit of the antichrist is already here. False teachers are popular with the world because just like the false prophets of the Old Testament there telling people what they want to hear. People in general do not want to hear their sins brought into the light of day, they don't want to listen to demands that they change their behavior. They certainly don't want to hear message that tells them that no matter how good they tried to be they will never enter into the kingdom of heaven until they are transformed by the renewing of their minds and hearts. May you richly bless God through your life in him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
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