To be of God, a person cannot be of a bad spirit. These two cannot co-exist in a person at the same time. A person must abide in the principles and commandments of the Lord in order that they be of God. To represent God, meaning to speak for him, requires a higher responsibility. Yet, there are people out there that will claim they are of God or with Jesus or they represent God. They may know the word of God in the Bible and be able to quote scripture and speak from that standpoint. They may appear to be very intelligent, charismatic, appealing, but how can a member of this Church know who they are really dealing with? Some may feel confused as to whether a person is of God or not?
I hope that I can provide some help, some insight to help fellow members deal with the deluge of self-proclaimed Christians. I will begin by relating this by way of a story.
One day a man was brought into the jail cell for being drunk. When locked behind a cell door, he started to ask for things and was denied. He got angry and accused the prison guard of being a “$&*?;” (using foul words), and told the guard that he (the guard) was a homosexual and an “as***” (foul words). The prisoner then claimed to the guard that the guard should ask God if he (the guard) was an “as***” (and used further references to God in a derogatory manner).
Was this man a “man of God”? – Was this man telling the truth?
Here is another story;
A female was lodged for being drunk. During her stay, she asked the prison guard if she can leave. The obvious answer was No. She then started telling the guard that he was evil, and he (the guard) was condemned. She then started quoting scripture from the Bible.
Was this female a woman of God? – Was her quoting the scripture righteous?
These questions I posed are simple and basic questions that address each person’s nature and spiritual state. Each person made claim to be with God and each used God to speak their, …”opinion”… of the guard.
The truth of these kind of people is that they are wicked and evil because they chose to do evil things. With being intoxicated, they violated the laws and spoke in either a contentious and/or a derogatory manner. They were disrespectful, demeaning and used the word of God to denounce another or to put another person down. Most importantly in these examples, the key seen here as an example is the offender used God’s word (scripture) to denounce, attack, deny or reject the prison guard who was acting in proper authority. This is a sure sign that the person who proclaims he/she is with God is really not.
Any person that uses God’s word or speaks in a religious context to contend against any proper authority is a person who is acting evil and is surely not of God.
To explain further, each person in the examples were not in a good place, spiritually speaking, to have any creditability, neither do they carry the “spirit” that would represent them (spiritually speaking means a state of mind and heart, not a physical place). The use of derogatory words or claims do not represent the Spirit of God, they represent the spirit of the devil, who by the way can quote scripture.
A a person must be on a righteous path, direction and/or mission, in order that he/she can be of God. Taking away the circumstance of jail and drunkenness and remain with the foul spirit, we still have a person who is of the spirit of the devil or of wickedness, as that behaviour is wicked. Any person who speaks from that standpoint to anyone is not a man or woman of God. These are obvious examples of people who make claim they follow Jesus Christ or God, while verbally attacking others, lie, deceive, make false statements, falsely accuse, all the while claiming they are with God.
A simple rule of thumb here is that a person who resorts to evil and wicked manners cannot be good and cannot do good. It is impossible. The Bible clearly states that an evil tree cannot bear good fruit.
Now let us look at the same stories, but change the circumstances a bit.
A man is lodged in jail for being drunk in public. He is polite, listened to direction given him in jail. During his stay he tried to preach the word of God to the guard.
Was this man a man of God? – Can this man preach the word or God to anyone?
The answer to both questions is “No”. This man, albeit polite, has set himself into an evil state. His actions were not of a faithful man of God and has spiritually lowered himself. He cannot preach while in the state of a “bad example”.
God or his word cannot be represented by any person that acts in an evil manner. A person must be faithful, act in a manner that is obedient to God at all times and by this he can represent God. In short, he MUST be a good example at all times. This basic rule of thumb can be used to discern the spiritual state of others who profess they are with God or those that denounce others as evil – what example are they showing?
When we see that a person is falsely accusing another, or loosely labelling another as being a homosexual or some other negative label and does the same to others who they never met, is a person under an wicked influence. They accuse others when no such truth exists, while committing evil themselves as a false witness, just because they hate or dislike the other person, is not a person with God and whose word is worthless.
People who show to be a bad example cannot speak truth, cannot represent truth, and are evil by the very nature of their actions. I used the jail prisoner example to show some symbolism that any person who does not repent and work to learn and abide in the ways of God are essentially preparing themselves to be in spiritual prison.
If a person is generally good and fell into sin, doing evil, then during the time of repentance he/she cannot represent God or be of him until he/she has sufficiently changed and a noticable change must occur.
Amen.
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