Knowing Voices that are NOT from the Spirit

1. We must grow in the Word and in hearing from the Spirit in order to be effective at evading deception from the enemy.

2. The things we hear/think that are not the Spirit:

• You can have thoughts that are your own want/conviction to do something good, but that doesn’t mean it’s the Spirit speaking to you directly (Acts 17:16).

• You can have thoughts that are from your own emotions/feelings/heart, and they can easily lead you astray (Jeremiah 14:14-15, 17:9, 18:11-12, 23:16-17,26-27). Be careful!

• You can have thoughts that are from evil spirits (demons) (John 13:2, Acts 5:3, James 3:14-15, 1 Timothy 4:1). Every spirit that exists can speak to you in a way that you can hear. Don’t think that a thought is automatically from God just because it sounds spiritual!

  • You can have thoughts that are from the Spirit and thoughts that are from evil spirits (or the carnal mind) at the same time (Micah 2:11). You can easily confuse what God is saying if you don’t learn to discern the difference!

  • Evil spirits can pretend to be the voice of God and cause people to hear/prophesy falsely, even though they think they’re hearing from God (1 Kings 22:20-23).

3. What you can easily know for certain is not from the Spirit:

• False hearing/false prophecy will cause a person to avert their focus away from Christ—the head—and it will avoid urging a person to repent from their sins (Jeremiah 23:26-27, Colossians 2:18-19, Lamentations 2:14).

• Manners of false prophecy/false hearing encourage people to emphasize and/or try to obtaindreams/visions from God (Jeremiah 29:8).

• False prophecy/false hearing will contradict, misinterpret, or deemphasize the written Word (2 Peter 3:16, Matthew 4:5-7, 2 Timothy 4:3-4).