“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God…..” 1 John 4:1a NKJV.

“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God…..” 1 John 4:1a KJV.

It was once said, that you can only judge things from your own level. Since so many are seemingly offended by the word “judge,” let’s use the word interpret.

We cannot truly talk about it, except by our own experience. You can’t tell someone how to build a bridge, if you’ve never built one yourself, or even been a part of the process. If we had grown in the Spirit as we were intended to, we would know more about the Spirit. If we have no deeper walk in the Spirit, we don’t understand someone who does.

The Spirit doesn’t teach only what you want to know.

I’m afraid that some of us have been misled. Maybe it wasn’t intentionally; perhaps even out of ignorance. The teacher or the preacher who spoke some things to us, didn’t know any better.

If we state a certain belief today or declare something to be true or correct, we may likely be asked, where did you get your information from? What is your source?

We are going to have to face some very tough issues in this final hour. For example, we must admit that some things we were told were in the Bible, were not there. One of the hardest things to face is to see it was commandments of men.

There are spirits behind much of what is happening in the world today. There always were. Could it be that some of us were very glad to discern the good spirits, but preferred to avoid the bad ones?

However, that would mean that we are discerning only what we want to know and see. The discernment that comes from the Holy Ghost does not work like that. There is no desire here to hurt anyone.

You see, one is not so quick to offend others, if you have suffered hurt and have genuinely grown from it. If we’ve been hurt enough, been through enough, we don’t want to wish it on others.

May we kindly say, there’s no such thing as the gift of discernment.

The gift of the Spirit that many talk about, is “discerning of spirits.” I wish to stop for a moment and ask ourselves a valid question. If we were about to walk into some kind of peril and close to us happens to be a person the Spirit might use to warn us, would we want that person to tell us?

This, is where we often meet resistance. It will do no good to ignore the fact that some can’t stand it, if you have some gift they do not have. They will undermine you, if possible.

The Spirit, has numerous ways of speaking to God’s people. Why would we choose to disregard any of those manifestations; the way He communicates with us?

Does anyone see what we might have missed by not developing more in-depth communication skills? What wonder, delights and what secrets might He have shared with us?

It is all for the edifying of the body of Christ. Here we run into another road block. We do not want to be torn down; we only want to hear things that are uplifting and soothing. If we seek to follow after the Spirit, we might find that some of our mess, needed tearing down.

There are angelic spirits, sent from God. There are spirits that are sent by the dark one. What many of us have given less importance to, is the human spirit. There is a reason that the writers were made to talk first about the works of the flesh; what men and women can do.

Then they showed a sharp contrast, in what the fruit of the Spirit is. And how those spirits actually act, that have the real thing. It was said that the early folk with the Spirit were not ignorant of Satan’s devices. He uses other spirits in kind and he uses people also. But it’s not all flesh and blood; just who and what is behind that person.

We’ve been talking about trying spirits for a long time now. May it be asked, how often have we done that.

We need to stop coveting other people’s gifts. Within the Holy Ghost we were given enough tools, to know whether something is good, or bad. Human spirit, and angelic spirit.

We don’t like it that God spread the gifts of the Spirit throughout the church. When we stop or hinder word of wisdom, word of knowledge and prophecy, much less tongues and their interpretation, we are stopping what God set in the church.

We need to know the spirits; all of them. The Holy Ghost, discerns.

“To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues…,” 1 Corinthians 12:10.

 

~ Robert Blackburn

---

Robert Blackburn

 

 

Back to Top