You Believe, But I Know!

“You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? . . . For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.” – James 2:19-20, 26.

Sometimes I get to sounding like a broken record, and especially those who know me, for I have a tendency of touching on some of the same things over and over, but something I learned when I went to Tech School for my degree in the secular work force, is that repetition is the best form of teaching. You teach something, move forward on to something else, then go back and repeat what you taught up to that point, reminding your listeners of the important points. It is similar to taking two steps forward and one step back each time. You don’t move forward real fast, but you sure “drill” the point home!

So it is no surprise and it is still amazing to me what I see the Holy Spirit wanting to say to those that claim to be Christians. Jesus forewarned us in the Gospel of Matthew that many in the last days would come not only claiming to be the Christ or Messiah, but that many would also come in His name, and that we were to be on guard against those that come falsely. We have seen in previous studies that the Apostle John has told us to “test the spirits” to see whether they come from God.

This has been something that we have been not only lax to do, but sometimes rather hesitant because of the teaching that we have received. We have a tendency to believe that if I make a determination about the truth of something or someone, I am judging and therefore non-Christ like. I believe we have been duped by the enemy into believing half-truths because of our lack of studying on behalf of the gospels.