PODCAST
Testing The Spirits
May 24th, 2013
1 John 4:1-12
While attending a secular university, Marsha’s faith was shaken by her first exposure to such ideas as the Big Bang Theory and literary criticism of the Bible. Soon, having no regular prayer life or Bible study, her weakened faith led her to an interest in New Age literature.
As long as she saw mention of God and Jesus, she told myself that the books she was reading were not in conflict with Christianity. But deep within she felt discomfort as she saw that these writers were not acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God. Eventually this discomfort led to conviction, and she turned back to Christ with a deeper faith and new appreciation for the necessity of daily prayer time and Bible reading.
How thankful I am that Christ gives us the ability to “recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.” Without this recognition, I could have been enticed to believe a lie and be lost. We must follow John’s admonition to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (v. 4).
Author: Marsha Turner-Shear
