Not everything has been good though, that I have learned. One thing that I constantly see is professing Christians tearing others down. It is one thing to expose false teachers when we see them. They are dangerous, and need to be exposed. But it needs to be done properly, if it is going to be effective.
The other concerning thing I see is professing Christians who limit the power of God. It kind of ties in with the activity of those professing Christians who are on a hunt to catch the false teachers. Many of those who are exposing false teachers, also are those who seem to limit the potential for God interacting in the lives of His people today.
While we have to expose false teachers as the opportunity presents itself, the Bible does not actually talk very much about this. We find Paul mentioning the names of a few, but the Bible does not put a strong emphasis on doing this. We are to expose the works of darkness, and furthermore, we are to bring light and truth to those in darkness.
One thing we can do, is to spend our time teaching people how to be discerning. But instead, we are trying to do the discernment for them, ourselves. We do this by picking out a person we don't like (Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, Beth Moore, for examples) and we tear them apart on Facebook or Twitter, thinking we are doing a service for others, when in reality, we are practicing sanctified slander. We think it is justifiable to slander people we don't agree with and we call it, 'warning' people about their evil.
The other problem that ties in with this is that many of these people who slander other well-known Christians, is that they (not all though) are also practicing Christian Deists. What I mean by that is simply that these people are the same ones who do not believe God can speak to our hearts today. They accuse Pentecostals and Charismatics of hearing God's voice outside of the Bible. This is just not true though. When God speaks to our hearts, everything He says will be based upon His word.
The spiritual gifts are for today, and they are not adding to Scripture when they are in use properly. But if we believe that God's power is not available today for us, or that God does not work through the gifts anymore today, (even though God always showed His power in the Old Testament and at the beginning of the church age, as well as in eternity), we are going to be powerless Christians and will end up defeated or deceived. Christians can be deceived as well as those who don't know the Lord. If we put God in a box, (a box of our own making and belief system) then when He is at work, we will miss Him because He does not fit into our ideas of who He is. We don't even know how to interpret His word, because that takes the revelation of the Holy Spirit, and that is considered, by many, to be extra Biblical.
The way this works is that God reveals Himself to us through His Holy Spirit. The word of God comes alive in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. God opens up our hearts and minds to the Scriptures by revelation of the Holy Spirit. God quickens our dead souls and makes them come alive by the power of the Holy Spirit. He guides us into all truth by the Holy Spirit. By God's Holy Spirit, we can learn to separate the truth from the lies. We can grow in discernment. This is where the crux of the matter is, I believe.
Bottom line is, at least from what I see, is that we are tending to replace the work of the Holy Spirit, by our own understanding (or what we think we know about) of the Scriptures. We are rendering God powerless and we are not experiencing the relationship with Him that He desires, simply because we are trying to find everything personal (if there is anything) right out of the Scriptures. Everything God is, is written in Scriptures, but you will not find your name in the Bible! The Bible tells about who God is in relation to who man is, and how man can be reconciled back to God, and how people can have a growing relationship with Him. But it is not a step by step instruction book for that with our names in it. That is the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. The Holy Spirit activates God's word in our hearts and makes God real to us. The Holy Spirit makes the word of God alive to us. The Holy Spirit reveals the power of the Cross to us, and helps us to overcome the enemies we have (sin, the world, the devil, evil).
We cannot just learn the word of God and think we have arrived. We put our trust in our theological understanding and knowledge, but the Holy Spirit helps us apply God's word to our hearts. If we don't apply God's word to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, we are useless in the kingdom of God. When the word of God is only knowledge to us, and not applied to our hearts, we will be defeated and deceived! (Of course, if we are deceived, we will not know it because that is the nature of deception)!
"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing."
James 1:22-25 ESV
Just remember; the same power that rose Jesus from the dead lives in us! He can be trusted.
Luke 11:11, 12 ESV
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