“Dear friends, don’t believe all people who say that they have the Spirit. Instead, test them. See whether the spirit they have is from God, because there are many false prophets in the world. This is how you can recognize God’s Spirit: Every person who declares that Jesus Christ has come as a human has the Spirit that is from God. But every person who doesn’t declare that Jesus Christ has come as a human has a spirit that isn’t from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist that you have heard is coming. That spirit is already in the world.” 1 John 4:1-3 GW

Yesterday, we started looking at interrelated ways through which we can test spirits to find out whether they are of and/or from God or not from their testimony/speech. At times though, they may not talk long enough for us to test on this basis or the situation may be too dire to linger around to find out! Our Ever-Loving and Merciful Heavenly Father provides yet another way to test them: 

UNEASINESS IN YOUR SPIRIT:

 “And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying: The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour.” Acts 16:16-18. 

This happened on Paul’s missionary trip to Philippi in Macedonia. The intriguing part of this Scripture narrative was that the damsel wasn’t lying; she said the truth about Paul and his companions – they were indeed servants of God! Obviously, her fortune-telling record mustn’t have been too bad either, because it plus her were being used as a source of income. However, her sayings grieved Paul, I believe in response to the Holy Spirit in him being grieved at the foul spirit. 

As the Bible tells us to test spirits, if we find our spirits being grieved – I’d describe it as deep, gut-like feeling of uneasiness, like ‘I can’t point it out but something doesn’t seem right’ or being put off by what may seem like harmless ‘truth’ to the mere senses (especially if we aren’t being biased but maintaining an open heart, teachable spirit that is sensitive to God and seeking to glorify Him in all we do), we may want to restrict being involved with such things and/or people, until it becomes very clear whether such is 100% of God or not. Just because someone foretells something about the future, even if such person has done it in times past and what they said turned out to be true, doesn’t mean that the Spirit of God is behind those utterances. 

Many are carried away when they hear so-called prophets tell them things about themselves that may not otherwise have been known by anyone else. This trick is used to defraud and deceive many, often leading them into a path where the acclaimed ‘prophet’ is effectively made a god, and becomes their object of worship. In one of his letters to the Corinthians, the Holy Ghost through Paul said this about false prophets:

“These people are false apostles. They are deceitful workers who disguise themselves as apostles of Christ. But I am not surprised! Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” 2 Corinthians 10:13-14 NLT

This is not to say that God doesn’t have genuine prophets in this day and age! See, the devil didn’t create anything; God did. However, the devil’s job’ description can be summed up in one word: deception – he’ll counterfeit ANYTHING of God. He hasn’t relented in his efforts to usurp the authority of the Most High God, or deceive the creatures of God’s love – people, into his destined place of eternal torment.

Please don’t get carried away by fantastic displays of the supernatural (things beyond the natural neither should you go seeking for them. In this day and age, they come to you in adverts through various media outlets; please don’t succumb to them. Don’t get carried away by all the speakers on Christian television either; instead, test the spirits and find out if of God or not. Keep your guard up!

God bless you🙂

© Lydia Ndagilaya for PneumaWord

#DailyWordSnippet #WordSnippet #Encouragement #Bible #WordOfGod #JESUS #PneumaWord

Advertisement