Sunday Reflection: Leading and Misleading

During his life on earth, my dad wrote many stories and occasionally told them to us as children. One story he told my brother and I was so good that I was convinced it actually happened to my dad as the central character of the story.
 I proceeded to share this story  with my classmates at school. Some of those peers challenged me, saying that my dad did not experience this. Later my dad would tell us that the story was not true. He did not expect us to tell the story to others as truth.  

Not everything we are told is true. 


As Christians, it is our responsibility to figure out what is fiction and what is truth in the messages of people regarding God and His truth. But how? We must line up the words of others, who speak regarding spiritual things, with God's word. He wrote the book! People say wrong things all the time for various reasons, sometimes because they are misinformed and sometimes to serve self. We must compare what people say with what the Holy Bible says then through prayer be guided by the Holy Spirit of God to the know truth. 

"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 is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood."  1 John 4:1-6 (NIV)

Blessings!
Teresa