Test the Spirits

The Spirit Comes
The Pledge of God's Presence

Believe God's Love

1 John 4:1-6  The Message

Don’t Believe Everything You Hear

4 My dear friends, don’t believe everything you hear. Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about God comes from God. There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world.

^2-3 Here’s how you test for the genuine Spirit of God. Everyone who confesses openly his faith in Jesus Christ—the Son of God, who came as an actual flesh-and-blood person—comes from God and belongs to God. And everyone who refuses to confess faith in Jesus has nothing in common with God. This is the spirit of antichrist that you heard was coming. Well, here it is, sooner than we thought!
^4-6 My dear children, you come from God and belong to God. You have already won a big victory over those false teachers, for the Spirit in you is far stronger than anything in the world. These people belong to the Christ-denying world. They talk the world’s language and the world eats it up. But we come from God and belong to God. Anyone who knows God understands us and listens. The person who has nothing to do with God will, of course, not listen to us. This is another test for telling the Spirit of Truth from the spirit of deception.

 

 

For Reflection

 Oh boy!  This is difficult.  When it comes to religion, some hold so tightly to their beliefs, that to alter that belief would be to deny the validity of that belief.  Fear takes over and some would rather fight over an untenable position, even to death, thinking that they are righteous. 

Faith is not a static thing.  Faith grows and matures, changes as we experience life and the spirit.  The only absolute is God and God's love.

Here, John is speaking about those who claimed that Christ could not have been human in any way but only pretended so.  Such a belief makes the life, death and resurrection a lie.  Thus, Jesus becomes a charlatan who faked his humanity.

Beware of false teachers who fear the challenge of growing into grace and strike out against the spiritual growth of God's people.  Beware of those who rationalize the mystery that is God. Beware of those who would have you turn God into a self-serving image and perversion of the truth.  The ultimate test of authentic Godliness is love.  Those who will not listen to calls for compassion, justice, peace and love cannot be of God.

Pray

that one day all will find the truth that is God.  Pray for those who face difficult faith choices.  Pray that they will choose the authentic God.  Pray for the wisdom to recognize and reject false teaching.