Audio Files

Test the Spirits

(Audio)

These are excerpts from messages given to those in a recovery program. 

Most of the subject matter in these clips applies to all Christians.

TRANSCRIPT

The song here talks about the great awakening. When you have an awakening in your life,

   the purest form of that awakening is going to come from the word of God.

That's the purest form. Because any man that comes, or woman that comes up to speak or teach, can be flawed in what they say. But the word of God is never flawed. And that's, that is the place you're going to find the truth. And that's where the awakening's going to come from. It's not going to come from out of the sky where all of a sudden you go, "Oh wow, I see it now!" You might see something or hear something, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's true it all.  

   When you get something that's outside of the word of God, you test the spirits.

The Bible says "test the spirits to see if they are from God." (1 John 4:1) So you do get those things.  

The second place you get it. The Bible talks about teachers and preachers, right? And so they bring the word to you, but you always need to test that word. Never accept what a teacher or preacher says as being right. When I listen to turn on the TV, listen to some TV preacher, it takes me about three minutes to go, "That guy's way off." I don't mean all of them are, but probably half or better. I mean, they are out there in a different place. They're not standing on the word of God. And so you need to,

   The only way you learn to discern truth is by knowing the word of God,

knowing what the Bible says.  And then when you hear those things, you go, that's not right. The other way we get our awakening is our experiences. Okay? God teaches us a lot through our experiences.  

Things happen in our life and we go, "Whoa. What's this about God?" And we go, "Wow. I learned that what it was like when I wasn't loving to somebody else, or when somebody else wasn't loving to me what that felt like. I need to make sure to be more loving to other people because that didn't feel good." And so see, we learned from that experience. But you bring it back to the word of God where it says, what are the two most important things we do? Love God, love others. And you go, "Wow, it didn't work here. Why didn't it work? Because I was doing my own thing."  

The ministry where this message was given believes that women can teach men, so to be inclusive, "woman" was included.