Ep339: Test the Spirits.  

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

John tells us to test the spirits. He says,
    Don’t believe every spirit.
    Test the spirits to see if they are from God,
      because false prophets are everywhere (1 Jn 4:1). 

Yes, false prophets are everywhere. Right wing and left wing politicians, cultural warriors in church and society, media that promote inclusiveness or traditional values. Who to believe? 

One approach to John’s statement is to adopt a narrow focus. Perhaps he is speaking only about religious prophets who claim to represent God.

I prefer a broader approach. Eight billion of us are alive because God breathed into our bodies of clay. Not all of us are prophets in the narrow sense. But we are all prophets in a wider way, in that our spirits express something of God who sustains us and something of the evil that plagues us. 

John provides a test of spirits when he says,
      This is how you recognize the Spirit of God: 
          Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh 
                           is from God:
          Every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus
                          isn’t from God, but is the spirit of antichrist (1 Jn 4:2-3).  

In John’s black and white view, there are only two qualities of spirit: the Spirit of God, and the spirit of antichrist. As I try to discern the spirit of people I encounter, I find it helpful to ask, Where is God at work in this spirit? Where evil is at work? 

Paul speaks about the spirit of preachers. He says some try to stir up trouble by preaching Christ out of envy, rivalry, and selfish ambition (Phil 1:15, 17). Others preach Christ with good will and love. 

Paul’s advice? Not to test the spirit of preachers or try judging their motives. He asks, “What does it matter? Here’s what is important–that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is being preached” (Phil 1:18). 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, as we walk in your world, we see weeds and wheat growing together in churches, societies, and lives (Mat 13:24-30). Jesus said, Don’t try to pull all the weeds, or you’ll wreck the wheat with your work.

Like the wheat fields, our personal spirits are full of weeds and wheat. As are those who preach the gospel, engage in politics, or blog on the internet. 

Give us grace to see the facts and discern the spirits, to recognize and distrust the spirit of antichrist wherever it grows. To recognize and work with your spirit, wherever he is at work. 

May the wheat in our lives grow, and the weeds be weeded out. Bring quickly the time when you will reveal all the spirits, when you will gather the wheat into your barn, and throw the weeds into the fire. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube 

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

1 John 3 says,
    We know Jesus lives in us
            by the Spirit he gave us (v. 24). 

Is that how you know Jesus lives in you? Because you recognize his presence in your inner life?

A wise lady once said to me, “Do you believe that Jesus lives in you?”  “Yes,” I replied, “I do.” “Then shouldn’t you begin an inward journey to find and meet with him there?” she asked. That kind of blew my mind. I’d never thought of it that way.

In the town where I grew up, a retired U.S. army man umpired softball. Short, broad, and loud, he looked fierce in face mask, chest protector, and shin pads. He sometimes led singing in the church I attended. His favorite hymns? Onward Christian Soldiers, of course. And Sound the Battle Cry. The army was in his blood, and his Christian life was filled with metaphors of war.

In those years, I kept my troubles to myself. But if I had wanted to confide in someone, I wouldn’t have chosen Army Man. Partly because his spirit, his inner life, was so different from mine. And I think his Christian spirit was mixed with his warrior spirit in a way that frightened me. 

Like Army Man, we all have a mixed spirit. Paul tells us to cleanse ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit (2 Cor 7:1). In the battle against evil, we need to start by cleaning up our own spirit. 

Paul tells us to be made new in the spirit of our mind (Eph 4:23). It’s not just incorrect thinking we need to cure, but the deeper attitudes and assumptions that influence our thinking. We need a change in the spirit of our mind. 

Early in my Christian life, I thought the main problem was behavior. I just needed to get my actions right. I soon discovered that behavior management was rather difficult. Perhaps even impossible. 

So I read some Christian books that said behavior comes from the way I think. More and better Bible study, and a better program for meditating should fix my thinking. But it didn’t.

Now Paul tells me I need to clean up my spirit. What tools might help with this project? 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, once I thought the gospel was the good news of behavior management. But my behavior is still unmanaged. 

I thought I could transform my mind by meditating on your word, but my mind is still unreformed. 

And now I discover I need a new spirit. Teach me to know my spirit and your Spirit. Cleanse me from all filthiness of body and spirit. Renew me in my spirit and in the spirit of my mind.

Teach me to know that you live in me by the Spirit you have given me (1 John 3:24). 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube 

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mat 5:48). 

That’s a disturbing standard. Be perfect like God? How does that work? 

John sets a similar standard when he says,
    Whoever lives in Jesus doesn’t sin.
        If you sin, you have not seen him or known him (1 John 3:6).

Some translators and interpreters try to soften these unrealistic expectations. For example, my Bible translates John as saying:
    No one who lives in Jesus keeps on sinning.
      No one who continues to sin has seen him or known him (1 John 3:6, NIV).

They change the flavor of the passage from a simple black-and-white statement. “Whoever lives in Jesus doesn’t sin” to the more waffling expression, “No one who lives in Jesus keeps on sinning”. This creates room for slackers like me to sin a bit, as long as I don’t intend to keep on sinning. So much for being perfect like God is perfect! 

There is some justification in the Greek for lightening the load like that. But here, I propose a different solution. 

Thomas Green, one of my favorite Christian authors, quotes a poet who was asked what his poem meant. He replied, “It means exactly what it says. If it meant something different, I’d have used different words.” 

Let’s give John and Jesus credit for saying exactly what they meant, even when we don’t get it. Part of what they say is that we are sinners, incapable of achieving God’s perfection. But they also also communicate compassion and salvation for sinners.

John says, “If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).

I can no more reconcile sin and perfection than I can organize them in a system where everything is consistent and explainable. 

But can I receive these statements? Can I hold them in my heart, where I nurture sin and imperfection and a longing to be righteous? Yes, I can, without wavering, without cringing, without trying to explain or explain away the difficulties. 

And I come humbly, questioningly, confidently into God’s presence. 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, the longer we walk with Jesus
  the more his light reveals our darkness,
  the more his purity reveals our sinfulness,
  the more his wisdom reveals our foolishness.

O father, give us grace to continue this journey. In our stumbling way, may we not abandon the goal of perfection, but bring our sins and imperfections into your light. Burn away the sin and give us each day new gifts of your righteousness until we become like Christ. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube 

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

John predicts our place in the future saying,
      We are children of God,
      and it is not yet apparent what we will be,
          but we know when Jesus appears
                we will be like him,
                      for we will see him as he is (1 John 3:2). 

I have three comments on this amazing promise about our future makeover.  

First, we don’t know what Jesus looked like 2,000 years ago, or what he looks like today, or what he will look like when we see him at the end of the age. 

We do know that after his resurrection he had an almost-normal body: he walked, and talked, and barbecued fish on the seashore, and ate it. But other things he did weren’t so normal–like beaming himself away from his friends at Emmaus, and beaming himself into a house where the disciples had locked the doors. 

Forty days after his resurrection, Jesus said goodbye to the earth and sailed up to heaven and hasn’t been seen since. Unless you count the bright light that blinded Paul a sighting of Jesus. 

So I wonder: is Jesus still living in an almost-normal human body? Is his part of the Trinity confined forever to a house of flesh? 

My second comment is that Paul cautions against imagining what a resurrection body might look like. He emphasizes how different my new body will be, saying:
    The body that is sown is perishable,
          it is raised imperishable;
    it is sown in dishonor,
          it is raised in glory;
    it is sown in weakness,
          it is raised in power;
    it is sown a natural body,
          it is raised a spiritual body (1 Cor 15:42-44).       

Looking at my classic 1954 vintage body to predict what my resurrection body will be like, is like predicting an oak tree by looking at an acorn. A small brown nut, rotting on the ground, becomes a magnificent tree. What begins as squirrel food becomes an elevated playground for birds and insects. 

As the Apostle’s Creed says, I believe in the resurrection of the body.  When this body is consumed by maggots or cremated with fire, Jesus will be preparing a new life and a new body for me. 

John says Jesus is the pattern of our newness. We will be like Jesus when we see him as he is. I add, we will see him with new eyes, not with these cataract-distorted eyes that send imperfect images to a dying brain.  

My third comment is to agree with John’s statement, “Whoever has this hope purifies himself, just as Jesus is pure” (1 John 3:3). In our bodies of dust, we do daily deeds of prayer and worship and good works that prepare us for a new body and a new vision of Christ and a new life in his kingdom. Welcome to the future. 

Let’s pray. 

O Jesus, John’s promise resonates in our hearts. We want to see you and to be like you. 

Meanwhile, as Paul says,
    Outwardly we waste away,
      but inwardly we are renewed every day (2 Cor 4:16). 

O Jesus, renew our hope. Teach us to be faithful in this flesh-bound body, so that when at last we see you face to face, we may receive new life in a new body.

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

I like the stories John tells about Jesus. But when John launches into philosophy as he does in 1 John, or into descriptions of a dystopian future as he does in Revelation, he often loses me.

Listen to him in 1 John 2:3:
We know that we have come to know him
if we keep his commandments. 

How’s that again? How do we know that we know Jesus? 

The problem of how we know is one of the most complex questions in philosophy. How do we know that we know anything? But John, the fisherman-turned-evangelist, tosses off a simple answer, a simple test: Do we keep Jesus’ commands? If we do, we know that we know him.  

John doesn’t share Paul’s angst over bad behavior. Paul said, “The good I want to do, I don’t do; and the evil I abhor–that’s what I do” (Rom 7:19). John, in contrast, prescribes simple obedience: just keep Jesus’ commands. That proves we know him.

In my experience, John’s simple, black and white perspective gets lost in the convoluted grays of my life. Am I keeping Jesus’ commands? Well . . . I keep some of them, some of the time. I love my neighbors–occasionally–but more often, I just ignore them. 

I support the church and Christian causes. But do I give generously enough? 

I pray, but am I honest and fervent enough? As singer-songwriter Paul Simon said, “The awkwardness was, I don’t know whether my honestly was really honest enough” (Paul Simon, “Paul Simon Contemplates Faith, Death, and the Existence of God”, June 20, 2023, Interview with Tom Power on Q,  YouTube, 11:15-12:05. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi6NFPhsGyM&t=2s&ab). 

But as honest as I am able, my life direction is to listen to Jesus and do what he says. Perhaps that’s enough for John. 

Let’s pray. 

O Jesus, do I really know you? John says the answer is not in introspection and self-examination. The answer is evident in my behavior. 

O Jesus, help me to live like the stories John tells of you. To sit like Mary at your feet. In Martha’s kitchen, to hear you question my values. To confess with Peter, “Where else can I go? You have the words of eternal life.” 

Help me be like Thomas, who put his hand into your wounded side, and believed that the impossible was real

Help me by good works to know that I know you. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

I find the New Testament book of 1 John both comforting and discomforting. 

It says “God is love”—a comforting thought. 

And it says “God is light”—a disturbing thought. I’m not sure I want this searchlight focused on me. 

Let’s start where John starts. 
   That which was from the beginning,
      which we have heard,
      which we have seen with our eyes.  . .
      and our hands have touched,
  this we proclaim about the word of life (1 John 1:1-2).

John’s religion was based on his experience. He heard and saw and touched Jesus. He wants to draw us into his experience with Christ. We can’t touch and hear and see Jesus, but we can share John’s experience of Christ who lives in us by his Spirit. 

In chapter 1, John describes this experience as truth, light, cleansing, fellowship, and joy. Quite a list. 

Here’s my summary of what John is saying.
    God is good, you are bad.
    God is light, you live in darkness.
    If you acknowledge your badness and darkness,
          God forgives and invites you into his goodness and light.

    So don’t be a poser, pretending you’re better than you are.
    Instead be a confesser.
        Shine the searchlight on yourself,
        tell the truth about your sins.
  Then you can step into a Christian community, a fellowship of truth and joy.  

It’s a wonderful vision of Christianity. 

As John says, 
    If we walk in the light
      as God is in the light,
    we have fellowship with one another,
      and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:9). 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, too often I find myself slogging through the spiritual life, wondering where I missed John’s glorious vision of light, truth, joy, and fellowship.

Shine your light on me, exchanging darkness for light. Help me trade my self-serving worldview for your truth. Help me abandon my isolation for the fellowship of your family. 

Make my way like the dawn that gets brighter and brighter, until the full light of day (Prov 4:18).  

Amen. 

I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.  

YouTube channel: Pray with Me – YouTube