Do you ever face these temptations when you are trying to let the Spirit guide you? Keeping ourselves open to the Spirit is essential to a complete Christian life but it comes with temptations that can gradually derail us. This continues a list of temptations that individuals and churches experience which we began last week.
- Bad principles of discernment. When the Holy Spirit moves people are happy and everyone wants to encourage and trust each other in what they do and say. But this causes problems especially in the area of prophecy, (i.e., speaking words from God.) The temptation is to encourage people that if they are focused on God and asking for words from God then if something comes to them then it is probably from God. I’ve been in more than one gathering where this was clearly taught. But Hebrews 5:14 states “But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” Thus, it takes practice to discern if something is from God. This implies that it is likely that ideas can come from other sources. Historically, the church has taught throughout the centuries that both our own mind and Satan can deceive us. Therefore, we must be determined to apply discernment and to let people know that they are not being attacked when others are discerning their words. Instead, we need to welcome discernment from others and grow by learning from our mistakes. And we must realize that sometimes people have a mixture of the Spirit and falsehood. Bad discernment hurts people and needs to be resisted.
- Sloppy interpretation of scripture. People often feel a joy and freedom when the Spirit moves and this often leads to twisting scripture to mean what the speaker wants to say. Looking for obscure symbolism and other hidden meanings is especially tempting. This is not honoring to God and can eventually lead to bad doctrine and straying believers. We have no need to bend scripture to our desires since scripture already has so much fantastic blessing in it that we can’t really exhaust it.
- Assuming God’s correction. When God speaks more freely to his people it is tempting to believe that God will speak directly to correct any bad doctrine or practice. In other words, we can think that since God is speaking to us about some things surely he would let us know other important things, such as letting us know if we were doing anything wrong. Another version of this is thinking that since God is doing miracles through the speaker then the things he preaches must be correct. But we know that the Corinthian church had members who moved in supernatural gifts yet the fellowship had several false teachings attracting attention. The lesson is to never assume that gifting or words from God mean that God sanctions what is taught.
- Promotion of immature believers. This is similar to the previous issue. The temptation here is to presume that a believer who has supernatural gifting or who people are attracted to is someone who should be given more ministry responsibilities or influence. Yet anyone who has been around renewals for any length of time can tell you stories of immature believers who were promoted but were never really examined and who subsequently fell into sin and dishonored God. I Timothy and Titus both have guidelines for promoting believers that should be followed regardless of someone’s charismatic personality.
- Neglect of fellowship. This may not be an intentional problem, rather the emphasis on the move of the Spirit often leads to less time spent on biblical fellowship. Of course it makes sense to go with the flow of the Spirit and give everyone time to soak in his presence, but soon believers need to reconnect with each other and start sharing each other’s burdens and ministering to each other with their spiritual gifts.Our spiritual life will suffer if it is just about renewal meetings. Remember that we are called to depend on, love, and help one another. We will find more presence of the Spirit if we commit ourselves to this biblical fellowship.
We hope this list of temptations will help you to avoid pitfalls in your own personal life as well as in your church. When we combine openness to the Spirit with wisdom we give God much permission to change our lives.
