We have just begun a new year and with that new year comes a multitude of unknowns. There could be dramatic changes in any area of our life. Rather than ease into the new year with fear, let’s enter this new year with confidence as the Holy Spirit guides us.Now we can allow the Spirit to guide our new year by doing two things: Yielding and Pursuing.“Yielding” is allowing ourself to be open to what He want to teach us and to guide us. Now this is important because the more we yield to the Spirit, the greater freedom we give to Him to develop the character of Christ within us. We must seek quench the spirit (1 Thess. 5:19-22), but instead open the door of our hearts and minds to Him.Now there is a word of caution. We can be deceived. Paul tells us that we must “beware of those who teach false teaching as Satan as comes to us as an “angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:13-15). And Peter advises us that Satan wants to destroy us (1 Peter 5:8). So we are warned that we must not let anyone deceive us (2 Thess. 2:1-3). Further Paul says that Satan comes with “all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception…” (2 Thess. 2:910). So being deceived is a real possibility.To combat this John tell us that we must “not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world( 1 John 4:1). To do this we must see if what is being said is from God. We see the first church was “devoted to the apostles’ teaching” ( Acts 2:42). They relied on what the apostles taught. We do that my comparing the message or teachings by what is actually written in God’s word. The true Spirit will not teach anything contrary to the “apostles’ teaching.”“Pursuing” is the second part of allowing the Spirit to guide us. Look again at those first believers. They were “devoted” to following and obey what the apostles taught them. This is an exercise of the principle of Scripture that “whatever a man sows, that he will also reap (Galatians 6:7-8). If the Holy Spirit is to produce good fruit in our lives, then we have to sow good seed. That “good” seed is what is ...
