How to Discern Truth and Avoid Spiritual Deception *

Not every spiritual claim is true, but Christians do not need to respond with either gullibility or cynicism. In this message, Pastor Chris Teien explains how believers can pursue an authentic relationship with Christ while carefully testing teachings, prophecies, and spiritual experiences by God’s Word.

God calls His people to worship Him in spirit and in truth. As we remain open to the Holy Spirit’s work, examine every claim through Scripture, and hold firmly to what is good, we can avoid deception and continue following Jesus with wisdom and confidence.

(Pastor Chris Teien originally preached this replay message in Belle Plaine, MN, in 2018.)

IN THIS MESSAGE

#1 LIVE AN AUTHENTIC CHRISTIAN LIFE

Authentic faith is more than outward religion or simply going through Christian motions. God desires believers who worship Him sincerely, walk closely with Christ, and honestly seek His will in every area of life. (John 4:23-24; 1 Thessalonians 5:12-24)

#2 TEST EVERY SPIRITUAL CLAIM BY SCRIPTURE

Believers should not automatically accept or reject every teaching, prophecy, or spiritual experience. God calls us to test everything carefully, compare every claim with Scripture, reject what is false, and hold firmly to what is good. (Acts 17:10-12; 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22; 1 John 4:1)

#3 FOLLOW THE HOLY SPIRIT WITH WISDOM AND DISCERNMENT

The Holy Spirit leads, empowers, and equips believers to serve Jesus Christ, but His work will never contradict the Word He inspired. Biblical discernment helps us remain receptive to God’s leading while rejecting counterfeit experiences and teachings that do not glorify Christ. (1 Corinthians 14:1; Galatians 5:22-23; 2 Peter 1:20-21)

Live an authentic Christian life by walking closely with Jesus, testing every spiritual claim through Scripture, and following the Holy Spirit with wisdom. Do not believe everything you hear, but do not become cynical about everything spiritual. Test all things and hold firmly to what is good.

SCRIPTURE

Primary passage: 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22

Supporting passages: John 4:23-24; Acts 17:10-12; 1 Corinthians 14:1; Galatians 5:22-23; 1 John 4:1; 2 Peter 1:20-21

Transcript available at:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2285086/episodes/16335660

18.0218der Living for God with Authenticity and Discernment

I hope this message helps you understand and apply God’s Word. Find sermon transcripts at Well.faith, learn more at ChrisTeien.com, or come visit us at Rockwell Church in Virginia, Minnesota. If this message encouraged you, I’d love to hear from you at wellfaith24@gmail.com.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:16

We're going to talk about being authentic, about authentic worship, about living in a way that honors God. Because God wants us to worship, and he wants us to do it truthfully. So John 4 23, the time is coming. He's talking to the Samaritan woman, Jesus is. The time is coming. Indeed, it's here now when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. For God is spirit, so that those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. And we are blessed to be able to have the Bible that explains things to us and gives us God's word for us today. So I wanted to talk about being authentic because God wants us to be authentic, because we're supposed to live in a way that is worshiping God in spirit and in truth. I was reading about millennials, you know, everybody's talking about millennials, and that the things that millennials want most is they want authenticity. So one article says you don't have to be amazing, but you do have to be authentic. Are you authentic in your faith? Are we authentic in our Christian faith? Sometimes we present this faith that people think is kind of weird or they don't understand. Sometimes we come alongside people in tragedies and we offer too many happy verses without authenticity of the school shooting in Florida. Maybe some of those people don't need as many words as they just need people to come alongside of them and weep with them at this time and to then encourage them. Obviously, you wouldn't walk into that situation and say, well, Romans 8.28 says God works all things together for the good of those who love him. No, you wouldn't ever do that when people are grieving in a tragic time like that. But we need to be authentic. And authentic, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is of undisputed origin and not a copy, genuine, made or done in a traditional or original way, or in a way that faithfully resembles an original, based on facts, accurate or reliable, and discerning means having or showing good judgment. I really struggled with what to say because I had this great idea in January when I was constantly getting stuff in my inbox from people sending me their prophecies for the coming year, in which I looked at some of them and I'm like, what chapter and verse do you have to support all these happy thoughts and promises for me in the coming year? And I was thinking about this whole thing about being authentic. And about that time in December, my wife's door lock doesn't go up and down like it should. So I was looking for a good deal on a latch mechanism that goes up and down. I was looking on eBay and I found one that I liked. I was just watching it. I didn't order it. But then I got an email that said that the part that I was looking for was on sale as like really a good deal. So I just like, cool, and I pushed the button and ordered it. And then I realized that the one that I thought that I was ordering, the brand name one from the place that I was watching, that it wasn't that at all. It was something from China. And it was coming on a slow boat and it would get here in a month. So it came in and I looked at it and it kind of looks like the part, but it does not work right. So it is poorly made. So I tried to return it, and it turns out that if you buy a $50 part from China, it costs at least $40 to send it back. They're like, Oh, you can send it back. I'm like, Yeah, I think I'll just keep it as an expensive sterman illustration. But it looks like the real deal, but it is not authentic, it is not the brand name. Anyway, I don't know what to do with it now. Looks cool though. But it's not, it's a fake, it's not the real deal. It is not authentic. And sometimes people around us are not authentic. Sometimes when we are coming before God and His Holy Spirit, we are not authentic. We come to God in prayer and we don't confess the stuff that's really on our heart. We don't share the struggles that we really have. We don't seek spiritual insight in the difficult times. We don't pray for lost people. We just plow through life, think everything's great, do my religious duty. I'm gonna pray, read my Bible. But it's not an authentic walking hand in hand with God. It's not an authentic walking with the Lord. And there's some people, not among us, but some people out there. So there's a popular TV channel that has some really great music, and some of the teaching is good, and some of it is bizarre, and I wonder sometimes if their stories are authentic. Their stories, they're miraculous stories of healings and God's provision and financial blessing and all these things. I look at some of those and I wonder, is that authentic? You can't argue with somebody's experience. If it really happened, it really happened, and you can't put the Holy Spirit in a box and say that the Holy Spirit doesn't do miracles anymore, that he doesn't speak through people into your life, that he doesn't do miracles, that he doesn't heal people. The Holy Spirit can do whatever he wants. This whole idea of God doing things on demand for a particular person or group of people that say if you show up to our event, your healing event, then you will be healed if you have enough faith, all that stuff is, I think, very questionable. But there's been a lot of things in my life where no one has come before me and said, I am a prophet of God, I've got a message for you, and you're going to do this on this time and this date, and this is God's plan for you. Go for it. No one has ever done that in a way that was real, in a way that was genuine or authentic. However, when I was in high school and I was praying for what to do with my life, I had recently received Christ again. And I think I was truly saved at that time because I felt the Holy Spirit helping me to understand, giving me assurance of my faith. So shortly after that, I prayed that God would show me what to do with my life, that He would show me what I'm supposed to do. I was going to graduate when I was 16, and my people around me are like, What are you going to do with your life? What are you going to do? I'm like, I don't have a clue. And I was praying about it, and I said, Lord, I want to do what you want me to do. And my uncle, who, stepuncle, who worked in a Christian school and was a pastor, we were playing pool, and I didn't say anything to him about this search I was on or anything like that. And he says to me while we're playing pool, hey, have you ever thought about becoming a pastor? And I looked at him and I laughed and I'm like, You're crazy. You don't know me very well at all. I would never qualify for that. No, that's not me. And so as I continued to pray about that, God put that on my heart. So I wasn't pressed into it. My dad's not a pastor. I don't come from a family that always went to church or anything like that, but God put that on my heart. And so that was kind of prophetic in a way. And miracles, as you know, I met my wife when she came and bought my parents' car. Actually, I wasn't there. It was a month later that I called her, felt led to call her asteroids to journey. Three months later, we were married, been married for 30 years. That's a miracle in my life. And you can't write a book and tell people, okay, what you need to do is pray, put a car for sale, see who comes and buys it. Most likely she's going to be it. Even though my son mentioned, hey, maybe you want to sell the car and we'll see who comes over. So there was the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Minneapolis that I would meet with once a month. And he was wise counseled. He was maybe even prophetic. He said things like, Don't drop out of ministry school until you're fully, until you have your degree, because the degree is the thing that opens, is the key to open doors. He said, Don't adopt a lot of children, adopt one or two because it might hinder your ministry if you adopt a lot of children. Don't become a Stonecroft missionary to America that goes, puts you in a place where there's no evangelical church within 45 miles until you serve under a few other pastors as an associate pastor. I couldn't have planned that if I tried, but that's exactly what happened is I was at one church where the pastor was taking over the church from an interim pastor. Second church I went to was great at growing a church, and the third church I was at, the pastor was great at maintaining a church, and then I came and planted River Rock Church. So he had this wisdom to share with me. And he didn't tell me, God saith to me that you will, but instead he came alongside of me, shared those things, and that's exactly what happened. When my wife and I first got into ministry and we were headed down to Iowa for the first ministry, on the way there, my wife says to me, We won't be there very long. And I said, Don't you want to go? And she said, Well, no, I just don't feel like we'll be there very long. I'm like, Okay, interesting. And we were there under two years. So us being there two years or not had nothing to do with what she said, but she had a feeling from the Lord that we wouldn't be there very long. When we were moving to northern Minnesota, Julie said along the way, maybe we were going up there to get our child, the one we wanted to adopt. And it turns out we bought the only house that was available that would qualify for foster care, and we were able to get adopted newborn, and it was all awesome. And so the feeling that she had on her heart that she shared is what happened. So moving to Bell Plain, Julie said, We're gonna be here a long time. It's been 16 years so far. I asked her recently, and she said we're still good. I don't go to Julie and ask her what our future is, but these are real stories that God can come alongside of you and encourage you and bless you and do miraculous things. And sometimes God uses people to encourage you, to move you, to help you. Sometimes we look back and we see that in our experience that God has been right there all the time when we wondered at the time when we were stepping out in faith. So when I came to the conclude, when we came to the conclusion that we should be tithing to our local church, though we couldn't afford it, came up with a faith budget and trusted God for the difference. As soon as we made that commitment to tithe, I got a bonus and a raise in a new position that covered the money that we had committed to give. We were being encouraged through the teaching at the church we were going to, and there are a lot of pastors there. We called almost all of them and asked them about giving, but they encouraged us, they came alongside of us in that way. That was kind of prophetic, their wise wisdom. The idea that people that you don't know can come straight up to you and share things is interesting. And sometimes God can use that. Sometimes God can send somebody to speak right into your life and you will be shocked. There's a story that Denzel Washington, the actor, was at his, I think it was his mom's beauty shop or something like that. And this older woman told Denzel that he would speak to thousands or something like that. So she was kind of being prophetic. And what do you do with that? Do you then run around and say, This person said that my kid is going to be this, or do you wait and watch? I think the big thing with gifts of the Spirit is that the Holy Spirit is working in you and moving through you and helping you to become all that he wants you to be, to accomplish all the things that he wants you to be, and that he can use you along the way to encourage people, to motivate people, to share with people, to lead people to Christ and do all these things. But we need to be authentic in everything we do. We need to be authentic. We don't have a corner on the truth. None of us, as far as I know, are perfect in every way. So we seek the Lord and His will. And if God wants to use us to do something miraculous, that's awesome. I don't claim to have the gift of healing for every person I touch. I am actually a little wary of people that do because I think they should bat a thousand. Some people are really good at praying, though. I did at one point pray for a guy that had eczema all over his skin and everything, and prayed for him. And then when I saw him the next week, he said, after you prayed, it all went away. So I haven't seen him since to see if he came back or anything. But sometimes God can use you, and sometimes God can use other people in your life. Like last year I was sick, I was having these troubles with like vertigo, and went to the neurologist. He said, You get silent migraines. We don't know why. So I asked every person that I could find to pray for me, and they did, and I don't think I've had a problem for the last year now. So they also said, exercise a lot and drink lots of water, and I do that. But God can use that. That is the authentic Christian life. Where are you in the authentic Christian life? Hopefully, you are growing and sharing your faith and sharing your life in an authentic way. Part of the authentic way says, I don't really know. God is a mystery. There's certain passages I don't totally understand. There's certain things that God did at New Testament times that He doesn't seem like He does today, or at least as much. But God is at work, the Holy Spirit is at work, and I need to serve Him, live for Him, and trust Him, even though I don't understand everything that He does. Authentic worship. So 1 Thessalonians 5 12. Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to give recognition to those who labor among you and lead you in the Lord and admonish you, and to regard them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we exhort you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle, comfort the discouraged, help the weak, be patient with everyone, see to it that no one repays evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good and good for one another and for all. Rejoice always. These are things that Paul is encouraging the church at Thessalonica to do. He had just told them about the return of the coming of the Lord, and now he's closing off this book and encouraging the Christians to live on authentic faith with the people that they were among. So exhorting them to warn those, comfort them, help, be patient. So in a way that we live, an authentic way that we live. And we need to do that in an authentic way, in a caring way. And then he writes, pray constantly, give thanks in everything, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Don't stifle the Holy Spirit, don't despise prophecies, but test all things. Hold on to what is good, stay away from every kind of evil. Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you as faithful, he will do it. This is an authentic way to live our Christian life. An authentic way to come together as believers and to care for each other and to love each other and to be active and empowered by the Holy Spirit in our life. And then in these warnings here, number one was stop stifling the Spirit. Don't stifle the Holy Spirit. Don't quench the Holy Spirit. So there's many ways that you could quench the Holy Spirit. That's by having unconfessed sin in your life, by ignoring the Holy Spirit, by not living according to the word, you can grieve the Holy Spirit, you can lie, you can have unconfessed anger, stealing, cursing, being bitter, being unforgiving, being sexually immoral, grieving the spirit, quenching the spirit. It hinders the godly lifestyle. So we're supposed to stop stifling the spirit. I think it's also wrong sometimes for us to claim that God won't do certain things in our time because God doesn't do that anymore. Like some people, the cessationists, say that God doesn't do miracles anymore. But he does. God can do miracles at any time. Maybe he might not use a particular person to pass by and do a miracle with the people around, but we pray for people. God can do miracles, God does miracles all the time. There are sign gifts in the Bible that we look at and we wonder what we should do with that. For instance, you can't take a spiritual gifts test to see if you speak in tongues. So you don't go to training to learn how to speak in tongues. Either you do or you don't. And if you do, it better it should be authentic. So I think I shared the story before of the Pentecostal preacher's son who said when we were pressured to speak in tongues, we would name body parts balangy, ulna, femur. And that is not authentic at all. People want you to be authentic. The Holy Spirit wants you to be authentic. I think the most awesome use of speaking in tongues, if you're able to speak a language that someone else around you knows, you haven't learned it, but you can share the gospel or speak to them in that language to encourage them, that is awesome. So that's a speaking in tongues is a message for another day. We don't promote it, though the Bible says not to forbid it, so we don't, but we should stop stifling the Holy Spirit. We should stop saying that God can't do that, God won't do that. But on the other hand, we should be authentic and not try to imitate the work of the Spirit or do things that the Holy Spirit isn't doing or walk ahead of the Holy Spirit, that we should walk in step with the Holy Spirit. The evidence of Holy Spirit in your life is the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So Holy Spirit work in your life. As you pray, God might lead you to do things. God might lead you to get skills for ministry. He might call you to ministry. He might lead you to talk to someone about their about your faith. He might help you to accomplish things that you wouldn't be able to do otherwise. The Holy Spirit is active in the believer's life. When you receive Christ, you receive the Holy Spirit. You need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. You need to yield to the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit, hopefully, there's evidence of the Holy Spirit in your life. So number two was stop suppressing prophecy. Don't despise prophecies. Now it's interesting that prophecy in the Old Testament and prophecy in the New Testament is described a little differently. Old Testament, Deuteronomy 18, 18, says, I will raise up to them a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything. Tell them everything I command him. I will hold accountable whoever does not listen to my words that he speaks in my name. But the prophet who presumes to speak a message in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die. You may say to yourself, How can we recognize the message the Lord has not spoken when a prophet speaks in the Lord's name and the message does not come true or is not fulfilled? That is a message the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously, do not be afraid of him. So the test of the Old Testament prophet was, your prophecies are going to come true, and if they don't, we should kill you. Which means there weren't a whole lot of people stepping up to the plate with prophecies unless they truly knew it was of God, to be shared with the people. Now, why was that so important? Because if you have people running around saying they speak for God, telling you to do things and saying, God says you should do this, and then you follow that and it wasn't really God, it can lead you into the wrong place, it can lead you to do the wrong things. It can, if it doesn't come true, you could become disappointed with God. God is true, God is faithful, God speaks according to his word that he's given us in the Bible. And when he speaks, he speaks truthfully, he is reliable. You can count on the things that God says to be true for them to happen. True prophecy happens. So the Old Testament prophecy that was foretold that has already happened is true, and the stuff that is yet to come will be true, is true, will happen, and we trust that will happen. So in the New Testament, it says, 1 Corinthians 14 1, pursue love and desire spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy. 1 Corinthians 14 24 says, But if all are prophesying and some unbelievers or outsiders come in, he is convicted by all and is called out, called to account by all, the secrets of his heart will be revealed, and as a result he will fall face down and worship God, proclaiming, God is really among you. So prophesy in these passages properly means to speak forth or declare the divine will, to interpret the purposes of God, or to make known in any any way the truth of God, which is designed to influence people. Many people under misunderstand the gift of prophecy to be the ability to predict the future. While knowing something about the future may sometimes have been an aspect of the gift of prophecy, it was primarily a gift of proclamation. So it was forth telling more than foretelling. Romans 12, 6. According to the grace given to us, we have different gifts. Prophecy, use it according to the proportion of one's faith. So it's more of a forthelling than a foretelling. So it's not coming up with on this day next year at four o'clock, this thing is gonna happen, thus saith the Lord through me. Instead, more of it's taking scripture that you know, or scripture in the Bible, and applying it to people's lives and encouraging with it and forth telling the word of God, a divine ability to proclaim God's word and to have the idea or the wisdom to know how to share it with people so that they may change, so that they may follow God, so that they may be encouraged. That is biblical prophecy in the New Testament. When all of these spiritual gifts were being talked about in the New Testament, they didn't have the full counsel of God, the Bible, like we have now. So they would come together and the people that had a prophetic word from the Lord would share that, and then people would evaluate to see. If what was being said was true, if they agreed with that or not, to protect themselves from false teachers. So stop suppressing prophecy. So Second Peter, Peter writes, above all, you must realize that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet's own understanding or from human initiative. No, those prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit and they spoke from God. So I was looking online at how to be prophetic, how to prophesy, and some of the things I saw weren't when the Holy Spirit speaks or moves through you, you do this. It wasn't the Holy Spirit was totally moving you. It seemed more like you could have some thoughts of your own and pull that together and then say, Thus saith the Lord. And in the Old Testament, it said you need to be really careful to be putting God's authority on things. So if you say things that aren't truly from God and saying that God has a stamp of approval on it or God told you it and he didn't, that is not authentic. It's not helpful. Matter of fact, it can even be dangerous. And you, as a Christian, need to be discerning and figure out okay, is what I'm seeing or what I'm hearing. Is it true? Is there a scripture to back it up? Alan Parr is a guy that has lots of YouTube videos. So I started watching him recently. We became friends on Facebook and we've been conversing a little bit, but I asked him permission to show this video that showed up in the beginning of the year. Basically, he was saying the same thing that I was seeing with certain people with prophetic messages, and I wanted to share that with you. And I also encourage you that if you find his information helpful, to go to his website, alanparr.com, or find him on YouTube and watch some of the other videos that he shares. But watch this.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Recently, I've seen an influx of people in my newsfeed or on my timeline or going Facebook Live claiming to have a prophetic word or prophetic time or prophetic flow, if you will. I've heard all the buzzwords. Not every prophetic word that you hear or see or read is truly a prophetic word. As a matter of fact, let me tell you what's really happening most of the time. Most of the time, this is someone that wants to present the idea that they have such a deep, great, intimate relationship with God. It's so deep that God decided to share something special with them that oftentimes is not found in the Bible, not supported in the Bible. And somehow it's something that God has never shown to anyone else throughout the history of time. And it is some special message that God has to get to the body of Christ. And the only way he could get that message to the body of Christ is to choose this person, this special person to be the special messenger to give this message to the church. And oftentimes, maybe not all the time, this is just somebody who's looking for attention and wants people to be dependent upon them for the next new word from God. They want people to think and have the perspective that they have this great, deep, intimate relationship with God and they labor with God in prayer and fasting, speaking in tongues for hours at a time. And because of that, God has entrusted a special message to the body of Christ. And what I've noticed about a lot of these prophetic words or prophetic times, if you will, is that they're always good, they're always positive. I declare and decree that this is going to be a year of favor, a year of abundance, a year of blessing, a year of increase, a year of breakthrough. And my biggest issue with this is that just a basic cursory reading of the Old Testament will show you that the main role and the main message of the prophets in the Old Testament was not to promise peace and prosperity. As a matter of fact, those were the very prophets that were shunned and oftentimes speaking words that God did not speak, thus qualifying them to be stoned according to the Old Testament. Instead, the prophet's main role in the Old Testament was to expose the sinful practices of the people in that day. So if we are gonna have a prophetic time, prophetic flow, a prophetic word from God, why is it that we are not exposing what's going on in our world? For instance, a prophetic word would be this: hey, if you're married and you continue to flirt with that girl at your job, guess what? I'm prophesying that this is gonna destroy your home, destroy your marriage, and destroy everything that you built. Here's another one. If you are a single person and you're having sex outside of marriage, my prophetic word to you is that the more you do it, the more you're making yourself unfit to be the best spouse you could possibly be for the person that you believe God has for you. You see, my biggest issue with all these people claiming to have a prophetic word from God is that they are very general and basic, and there is no real way to confirm whether this person is a prophet or not. So if they say, you know, well, this is the year of abundance or the year of favor, who are you talking to? And how can you confirm that every single person that's watching your video is gonna experience a year of abundance and a year of favor? Listen, not everybody is going to get promoted. Some people are gonna be laid off this year. Not every single person that is sick is going to recover. Not every single person who has a wayward child is going to see that child return. Not every single person that marriage is on the rocks is going to have a marriage that's gonna be restored. You see, all we're doing oftentimes with these blanket prophetic words is that we're simply setting people up to believe something that God has never promised them. And then whenever it doesn't come to pass, they get disappointed in God. They stray away from the faith because they believe that God did not fulfill something that they believe that God promised to them. The true test of Christian character is not how you're doing whenever you are experiencing increase or abundance. It's whenever things are not going well. We need to be preparing people for those seasons instead of promising them that they're gonna have seasons that they may or may not have. You see, we live in a time whenever people are obsessed with that which is new. As a matter of fact, that very well may be the reason why you clicked on this video because you saw the word prophetic word in the title, and you're thinking, you know what? What new thing does God have to say to me? Here is my fear today is that we are so consumed with looking for the next word, the new word, that we overlook the old word. My friends, if you are looking for a word from God, stop looking for a new word. Instead, open up your Bible and read the old word, and you will quickly find out that the old word is really the new word. So I'm not suggesting today that there is no such thing as a prophet or God cannot speak to us through other people. But what I am suggesting is this the next time you see a prophetic word, a prophetic flow, a prophetic time with someone, if you will, come across your new speech. I'm not saying don't watch it, but what I am saying is this don't just assume that it is a word straight from God, because oftentimes, unfortunately, it is simply someone's personal thoughts. So I know this is a controversial one, but you guys know how we do on this channel. We always tackle the difficult things that are going on in the Christian society. So, question of the day what is your perspective on prophecy? What is your perspective on prophetic word, prophetic flow, things that you're seeing going on in the Christian community? Leave it in the comment section below. If you like this video, hit the like button. Don't forget to share it with your friends. Be sure and subscribe. Check out some of the other videos on this channel. Hey, thank you all so much for watching. I'll see you next time on the beat.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

It would be interesting to hear what some of your experiences are and how God has worked in the lives of others for you and like supernatural things and healing, miracles. We should search the scripture to find out if what's being said and what's being done is authentic. So test all things, hold on to what is good. The word test means to put something to a test in order to approve it. If it's genuine, hold on to it, reject that which is evil. This isn't a new thing. AW Tozer in the A. W. Tozer on the Holy Spirit devotional, I noticed on August 3rd, talks about this. This is a long time ago, too. Many tender-minded Christians fear to sin against love by daring to inquire into anything that comes wearing the cloak of Christianity and breathing the name of Jesus. They dare not examine the credentials of the latest prophet to hit their town lest they be guilty of rejecting something which may be of God. This is supposed to indicate a high degree of spirituality, but in sober fact it indicates no such thing. It may indeed be evidence of the absence of the Holy Spirit. Gullibility is not synonymous with spirituality. Faith is not a mental habit leading to its possessor to open his mouth and swallow everything that has about it the color of the supernatural. Faith keeps its heart open to whatever is of God and rejects everything that is not of God, however wonderful it may be. Try the spirits or test the spirits is a command of the Holy Spirit to the church. In first John 4 1. We may sin as certainly by approving the spurious as by rejecting the genuine. To appraise things with a heart of love, and then to act on their results is an obligation resting upon every Christian in the world. So we need to be discerning. We need to test these things, we need to ask questions sometimes. We need to test and search the scriptures, test all things, hold on to what is good. First on 4 1. Dear friends, don't believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. Skip heid cigarettes, false prophets come in sheep's clothing. Just because someone says Jesus or God doesn't mean you should believe everything they say. Even Satan quoted scripture. Acts 17 10 says, That very night the believer sent Paul and Silas to Berea. And when they arrived there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul's message. They searched the scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth. As a result, many Jews believed, as did many of the prominent Greek women and men. So the Bereans searched the scripture to see if it was true. Sometimes when people tell you things, you gotta ask them, what chapter and verse do I find that in? Where is that in scripture? Now, sometimes when people are being all prophetic and coming up with this stuff, they take Old Testament scripture that is hard to figure out if it even applies to you for today, and they use that to back it up. But the Holy Spirit in you should help you to be discerning. The Holy Spirit in you should help you to know what is true and what is not true. Search for the authentic stuff. Don't get easily led in to the flashy, exciting new stuff, the new messages, and all the hype, because it leads to disappointment. Sometimes it can lead people to spiritual disappointment where they turn their back on God. Sometimes it even leads to spiritual abuse, which is a topic for another day. So be authentic. All scripture is inspired and by God and profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. So we search the scriptures to see what's true. We proclaim the scriptures. We can be prophetic, helping apply scriptures to people's lives. It's the Holy Spirit gives us insight and the opportunity. There's been times in my life where I've been sharing my faith with somebody, and the Holy Spirit was just helping me to say the right thing at the right time or to have the right verse at the right time. And it was like I was watching myself, going, wow, this is amazing. And the person's like, What do you read my mail? And it wasn't that at all. It's just the Holy Spirit working through you. Yield yourself to the Holy Spirit, he can use you to do amazing things. Can you teach that? No, not necessarily. But the Holy Spirit at work, you can teach someone to yield to the Holy Spirit, to show up and trust the Holy Spirit. You can encourage people to memorize verses and learn how to share their faith and stuff. But when the Holy Spirit chooses to work through you, often you'll be amazed at what he does. Jude 1.3, dear friends, although I was eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all. So as we get to the end of scripture, we get the whole Bible and then Revelation, the book of Revelation says, don't add stuff to it. So sometimes people claim to speak for God, and it's like they're adding to the Bible. And that isn't, I mean, God can give the specific direction, the Holy Spirit can give specific specific directions about a situation, but there's no adding to God's scripture in that way. Second Peter 2:1. There were indeed false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, and will bring swift destruction on themselves. So we have to be on the lookout for the people that aren't authentic, authentic for false teachers. So Matthew 24, 24, false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive of possible even God's chosen ones. Second Thessalonians 2 8. Then the man of lawlessness will be revealed, but the Lord Jesus will kill him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by the splendor of his coming. This man will come to do the work of Satan with counterfeit power and signs and miracles. So just because you see miracles isn't a sign of it's of God. It can be it can be counterfeit miracles. We want to seek out the authentic Matthew twelve, thirty-eight to forty-two. One day, some teachers of religious law and Pharisees came to Jesus and said, Teacher, we want you to show us a miraculous sign to prove your authority. But Jesus replied, Only an evil, adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign, but the only sign El will give them is the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. You can read the rest of it. But Jesus died, was resurrected. We can't seek after signs and wonders all the time to prove faith. We through the Holy Spirit we should be assured of our faith. I'm not saying that God doesn't do these things, I'm saying that you need to be discerning and be authentic. So testing. Skip Heitzick in his discipleship guide talks about four ways that we can test these things, and then I'll be done. In testing things, we should have the same attitude as our legal system, innocent until proven guilty. We are called to test everything. We can't just love everyone. Love is tied to the truth. Here are four tests that you can apply to anything you read or hear that purports to be in the name of God. Number one, theological test. It should never contradict Scripture. Galatians 1 6. I'm amazed that you're so quickly turning away from him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. And even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, a curse be on him. Galatians 1 6. So testing. Number two, an emphasis test. What is the emphasis of the message? Does it exalt Jesus? Does it point to Jesus? Is it in the spirit of Jesus? Number three, moral test. What does the life of that person testify to you? What is the result of the teaching in the lives of those who are listening? Does it make them more like Jesus or less? An accuracy test. If they say something is going to happen and it doesn't, it wasn't from God. So I'm out of time. I looked at all the things that I could say and was overwhelmed. I almost felt like a kid that would go through the neighborhood and play ding-dong ditch and ring the doorbell in everybody's house and then run away before the door was opened. Because we could talk about so many things being authentic: miracles, tongues, healing, all those things. We believe that God can heal. And if you need prayer for healing, the elders of the church would love to pray for you. God can heal. So the miraculous sign gifts, many people, the apostles had them back in the days of the New Testament church, but we don't see many people now that are 100% spot on in their ability to come up to people and pray for them and for them to be healed, for people or to have do miraculous signs and things like that. So God can, but does God? So the two things that I wanted to share, that I feel like I haven't done a good job at, but whatever, is that one, you need to be authentic in everything that you do, the thing that you do through the Lord and the way you worship the Lord needs to be true, needs to be real, needs to be proclaimed in a real, relevant, relational way. And two, you need to seek out people that are authentic. And when people come to you with weird stuff, be discerning, question it. Just don't fall for it, just don't run with it and say, Wow, that was pretty amazing. I think I'll throw my lot in with them. But instead, to pray about it, ask the Holy Spirit to help you discern and to live an authentic life. Lord Jesus, I thank you for this opportunity to say this stuff. I pray you'd use it for good. I pray that you would help us to live authentic before you. Your spirit knows everything. There isn't anything in us that we can hide that you know us. Lord, help us to live in an authentic way. Help us to grow in you. Lord, we pray that you would help us to have great faith and boldness to proclaim you and to live for you. Lord, we ask us in Jesus' name. Amen.