My apologies to those who have been asking about my lack of blog postings over the past months.  We each have to make daily choices regarding our time and since February I have chosen to give my time to my primary responsibilities at church. Thank you for your understanding and for your interest in these thoughts.

Recently I had to make a long trip alone by car. I left early in the morning, while it was still quite dark, armed with a freshly charged cell phone and a travel cup of strong coffee. I don’t mind these occasional drives as they provide periods of uninterrupted time to think about a variety of matters. That is a luxury that I rarely get to enjoy—as is the case with most people I suppose.

After a few hours of thinking, listening to a favorite CD and having finished my coffee, I decided to look for some local news on the radio.  My car radio display is a small digital readout; probably the same as most of you have in your vehicle.  I turned on the radio and the display read 915. Knowing that this was probably the frequency I was tuned to, I decided to push the button to see what time it was, but the display still read 915. Slightly confused, I pushed the button a third time, thinking that I must not have really pushed it the previous times.  Again, the display read 915. After a few more seconds of bewilderment, it dawned on my fatigued mind that I was tuned to frequency 91.5 FM, and the time was 9:15 am. At the moment I was questioning the display, the frequency and time were the same—at least numerically. The only difference was a decimal and a colon, both of which were imperceptible to my slightly road weary eyes.

There are many such confusing signals that come to us in life. We can be looking for the answer to questions we have, and many time voices come to us with answers that seem to be just what we were seeking.  Yet how many times have we responded to answers in life with these words:  “That just doesn’t seem right.” Though the display on the dash seems to be flashing the answer we were wanting, something inside makes us question it.

As children of our Heavenly Father, he has given us His Holy Spirit to guide us in just such times.  As our Guide, He is not subject to our fatigue or emotional states. To avoid the traps and confusion that confront us in our daily walk, the Holy Spirit can alert us when what appears to be one thing on the display, is actually something else altogether. I John chapter 4 tells us:

“¹Dear 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. ²This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, ³but 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.”

This is not a warning designed to breed paranoia in us or cause us to live in perpetual questioning of every incident in our daily living.  Usually, our good sense and experience allow us to make reasonably good decisions.  Rather, it is a guide to help us through those times when fatigue, worry or the other stresses of life cloud our perceptions.  It is then that our faithful God, allows His Spirit to alert us when things “don’t feel right.”  Then we can test the spirit.  The test may be as simple as pushing the button a second or third time to find out if you are looking at the frequency or the time. But the test will reveal the truth.  And the difference may be as slight as a colon or a decimal, but that may be all it takes to confirm what you are really seeing.

God’s Word tells us that the spirit of the antichrist is already in the world. Without living in the rather “spooky” times depicted in some movies and books of recent years, it is important to realize that we live in a culture that seeks to substitute the genuine Christ with a substitute. This substitute may appear on the surface to be the same—maybe a little more politically palatable, or less confrontational—but perceived purely through our fallible human senses and minds, the same.  It is critical then that we test such spirits according to the standard in this scripture.  The difference may be as small as that decimal mark, but it can reveal to you, what is actually flashing on your display.

This Sunday, is Pentecost Sunday. Let this be a time where we focus on “walking in the Spirit and being led by the Spirit” as followers of Jesus Christ.  If you want to be certain that you have the Holy Spirit as your guide, be in prayer this week and in service this Sunday morning as Pastor Harrup shares with us about the reality of a Spirit-filled life.