Test The Spirits (Daily Devotional)

Greetings and welcome to Living Supernaturally. Thank you so much once again for giving us this opportunity to spend time in God’s presence and His word as well. This week, we’ve been talking about God’s will. Today, we will look at test the spirits. 1 John chapter 4, verse 1, ‘Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.’ This week, we have reflected on submitting to God that we can discern how to live by His will. Here, John helps us remember that we need to test all the words, voices and messages we hear to see whether they are from God. John warned against believing every spirit, that is we are to never assume that every spiritual experience or demonstration of spiritual power is from God. We test spiritual experiences and phenomena to see if in fact they are from God. False spirits and their false teachings can cause us to stray away from fully depending on God but we do not stand alone. As we face challenges of preserving in faith alongside the word of God and the Holy Spirit, we have pastors, leaders, teachers and friends who can help us test the spirits. As believers, we have been given communities of faith to help and encourage us and to be ready in turn to receive our help as well. Although the early church had a strong life, a large measure of purity, John still knew the danger of false prophets and their messages that was real to the early church. Christians are to be discerning hearers and readers of all messages. The reason for this admonition to test the spirit or to test all things is that there were many false prophets or wolves in sheep’s clothing that tried to take believers astray. False teachings leave people in a false hope of salvation and in a way takes them from the true message. The test is to compare what is being taught is clear with the bible. The bible alone is the word of God. It alone is inspired and inerrant. Therefore, the way to test the spirits is to see whether what is being taught is in line with the word of God. What fruit does the spirit produce? Is it in accordance to the scripture? Does the spirit glorify God? Do the spirits build up the body of Christ? Is there insight from the Holy Spirit? These are questions we can ask ourselves. We thank God for the word of God that we can rely on. Let’s pray, Father, we thank you for your word and what we have learnt today. You have exhorted us to test every spirit. We pray that even as we hear and learn, that we will learn also to discern what is right and wrong and to test every spirit. We thank you for enabling us to do this. Grant us your wisdom, in Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.

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Daily devotions to strengthen your faith each day. Daily Devotional for Spirit filled living. Each daily devotion is about five minutes in duration. These daily devotionals are centered around a weekly theme. So there are seven daily devotions that focus on the theme and bring you insight, understanding and revelation from the Bible. Each week’s theme is listed as a series. So you can listen to the current week’s devotions or go to any previous theme/series that speaks to your present need (https://apcwo.org/resources/daily-devotions ). Also available free sermons (https://apcwo.org/sermons), and free Christian books (https://apcwo.org/books) to nourish and strengthen your faith.