“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.” 1 John 4:1-3
When you go into the voting booth, how do you really know who to vote for? When you finally get to go back into a restaurant after eating in your home the past pandemis year, where will be a safe place to go? When you hear two different sides to an explanation of a scripture reading in a sermon, which do you believe? And, why?
In these verses from first John, he spends a lot of time in his letter telling us how we can ‘know’ different things. It seems that there is one thing he wants us to know so we can tell the difference between spirits, people, or groups that are really from God; and those that are not.
John urges us to "test the spirits" and we can start by asking whether they confess "that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh." In those days, way back in the day of John, just as today, a lot of people have talked nonsense about Jesus. For the Haitian children in the attached photo, the vodou priest forcefully stresses that Jesus Christ died on the cross and was buried, but that his bones are still in that desert tomb. The Bible gives them the truth as the Holy Spirit opens their eyes, ears and heart to that truth and the chains of bondage to vodou are shattered.
I can see four Ouanaminthe smiles in the attached photo and my mind registers a dollar. God can use my dollar to feed them a lunch at the school where the Holy Spirit is nourishing them and drawing them nearer to Jesus and helping them to be more able physically to share that message along their life journey. How do you know that God will use your dollar to grow these young children to be HIS missionaries? Trinity HOPE is feeding 42,500 of them every day and will continue to do so as HE directs us to do that. Aim High!
Heavenly Father, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.
May God be with you…Jay