Category Archives: fruit of the Holy Spirit

by | February 2, 2012 · 6:47 pm

How To Discern a Real Born Again Christian

A primary way of recognizing spiritual fruit  among the people in your Christian world is to  get to know them by how they handle offenses and confrontation..

We know we are saved when we love the brethren!

The first fruit to look for is the fruit of love. The Apostle Paul wrote that we know each other in the Lord by how much a professing believer loves the brethren. Love is most demonstrated by truth and not by meaningless platitudes or words of comfort by people pleasing people. Jesus defined love as our faithfulness to keep His commandments. When we do, then we abide in His love. And his first commandment is to love the brethren.

In order to love the brethren, trying the spirits is a means of recognizing a child of God when you see one. This is a particularly challenging command in the church age of Laodicea— an age of rampant spiritual deception where the wheat and the tares are not only growing together in the world but also in the organized church and in various ministries. Counterfeit spiritual births have really muddied the waters where spiritual discernment of the truly saved is concerned.

There is an effective way to try the spirits to determine if a person is NOT saved. Simply ask them in casual conversation to share with you how they became born again. If there is no emphasis or even mention of sin, godly sorrow, repentance, the cleansing power of the cross, forgiveness, then the person simply had an ecstatic, mystical experience that did not emanate from the Holy Ghost’s ministry of conviction of sin. Do not be fooled if you are told about a miracle that took place if the evidence of repentance is not in the testimony of conversion. Recently I heard the testimony of someone who was instantly healed of a substance abuse addiction, with not even a desire for drugs in years, yet addiction is manifested in other areas of her life, ie. to food, gambling, and other obsessive/compulsive behaviors. In a few days, the lack of love for the brethren was clearly apparent.

Besides a Spirit-led repentance, there are other obvious ones who when you ask them to define what they mean when they say “Jesus was raised from the dead,” you will discover that they do not really understand the Lord’s bodily resurrection. Simply put, you can be assured that salvation did not occur for them. As Paul warned the Corinthians, anyone who does not comprehend this fundamental Christian truth, “their faith is vain and they are STILL in their sins.” (I Cor 15:17)

What I have discovered lately is that there are those among the brethren whose testimony seems to be completely in line with the scriptures concerning repentance and resurrection, yet they too are not saved. These imposters are extremely dangerous because like Judas Iscariot, they are completely delusional. Once discerned, they should be treated kindly yet held at a spiritual distance as with a long-handled spoon and of course, prayed for if you are so led. Those experienced at trying the spirits can discern them because the Lord will open your eyes “to really SEE them” for what they are. In such instances, you must be as wise as a serpent and as harmless as a dove. Like my Grammie used to say, “When your hand is in the lion’s mouth, EASE IT OUT!”

The way to discern spiritual counterfeits is rather simple for the Lord said “you will know them by their fruits.” The fruit most obvious as it relates to discerning the saved is that born again people will always have a special love for other Christians, even when we may disagree on spiritual subjects that do not hinder anyone’s salvation. .So if you really want to try the spirits, get brave enough to go to those who claim to be in Christ and tell them of your offense. If their reaction is belligerent, argumentative, with no care or concern that they have hurt your feelings, and you are assured that YOU are one of the elect of God, then there is your answer. That person is NOT saved regardless of how many bible scriptures they can quote. They are in disobedience to the word of God where loving the brethren is concerned.

I see this kind of thing operative on Facebook ALL of the time among people who claim to be “among the brethren.” Each so-called Christian puts out a post, in competition to others. If you are not a part of their clique, then they will not comment on anything that you post, unless they can criticize. For example, I posted an article on Eddie Long’s sexual abuse scandal and I got a bunch of “that’s in poor taste, Pamela”. Then everybody got quiet when one of their own posted the same article. They read everything I post, yet they refuse to comment or even press the “like” button. These are people who really have no love for ALL the brethren.

They are respectors of persons.

Rejection of the brethren is a major strategy of the devil, particularly when another alleged “child of God” is the messenger. I spent 25 years of my spiritual life around counterfeit believers who had no love in them. Yet, because they were so religious, it never really crossed my mind that they were not saved. Remember that we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against devils and demons. Therefore, devils and demons are forced to use people as their messengers. Consequently, the enemy’s natural and spiritual emissaries are usually false brethren.

I have found that once my spiritual discernment has been exercised sufficiently to recognize good from evil, a counterfeit emissary cannot remain around me for very long. There are times when I am contacted by email by people who have either visited my website or read one of my books or articles who sense that we are on the same spiritual track. Yet as soon as a difference comes to the surface, they behave in unfriendly, unseemly and even disturbing ways. No one should have to agree with you on EVERYTHING for them to continue loving you. Christian love is manifested as tolerance and acceptance. Whether you left their home church or not, if they are true Christians, they ought to accept the fact that you love Christ and you are in obedience to Him, even though your path may be different from theirs.

So a lack of tolerance, flexibility and acceptance is a sign of a religious demon and or a counterfeit birth. True brethren may not approve of your doctrine or even your lifestyle but to them, acceptance and understanding is essential to Christian love. Rejection based upon doctrinal differences is of the devil. So keep this in mind. Since the religious demon assigned to you has an agenda centered on causing YOU to lose your salvation, he will use human vessels to bring you to a point of discouragement by any means necessary. Whatever causes you to feel hopeless and without God in the world, is not the same factors that can be effective against someone else. So this demon will use different strategies but the goal is the same. He will do whatever he is permitted to do by God in an effort to seduce you to hate God. Like Job’s wife, the enemy will find someone in your life to say by their actions and their message, “Curse God and DIE!” The enemy knows that if you curse God, he has YOU in HIS pocket!

To know more about the many facets of the religious spirit, you need “Faces of the Religious Demon.”

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by | November 12, 2011 · 4:13 pm

FRUITS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TEST

The SEW Training Program is about fruitbearing in Christ.

An examination of  whether or not the fruits of the Holy Spirit are being manifested in your life is one of the primary ways to examine whether or not you are truly saved or if you have been deceived into a false conversion.  When you consider a decorative bowlof fruit as a centerpeice on a dining room table, sometimes a plastic apple or orange looks so good from a distance, very often even better than the real thing.  You don’t find out that it is fake until you pick it up.  It is dead andd light weight, without the genuine smells and other qualities of a juicy peice of real fruit.  So too with spiritual fruit. So to examine and test whether or not you are really born again, we need to focus on the Lord’s own words. He said simply “you shall know them by their fruit.As recorded by Matthew in the 13th chapter, Jesus defined how we become born again.

  •  We hear the word.
  •  We understand it.
  •  We receive it into the good ground of our soul and our spirit.
  • We  receive the fruit of the Holy Ghost and
  • We become “fruitful.”

Therefore we need to know what fruit IS so that we can objectively  test whether our fruit is of the Holy Spirit or if it is fake fruit.

Here is where most professing Christians go wrong. We read Galatians 5 and we say to ourselves “Oh, I’m a loving person so I have the fruit of love. I don’t gossip or backbite and I am usually understanding and kind. I am also patient and peaceful, much more since “I accepted Jesus” then before, so I know I am saved. I don’t commit sins of the flesh so I am born again. This is error. People of other religions often do not  fornicate or indulge in the obvious sins of the flesh. Yet, like everyone else without Christ, they are lost sinners, separated from a holy and righteous God/n fact, ALL have sinned by their very nature, whether they actually DO the sinful act or not. As Jesus said, if a married man even looks lustfully at a woman without having sex, he is still an adulterer in the eyes of the Almighty.

What we need to understand is that the fruits of the Holy Spirit are not natural, human qualities. Since the seeds of these fruits are imparted to us at the exact moment of conversion, they are supernatural and they are divine.

 Here is a personal example.

Pam Sheppard, A wise, virtuous woman of God.

When I got saved, I hated white people. I was a racist. There were two little white boys that chased my 8-year-old daughter from the school bus to her door every day. These kids called her “nigger” every day. It was a Monday, March 29th, 1977 at 4pm. I had just gotten born again about 10 minutes before, so I was not standing at the bus stop waiting to protect my daughter as was my custom.  I heard my daughter banging on the door and there were the same two boys right behind her.  I scooped them both up in a hug, smeared my kisses on their cheeks and invited them in to have some milk and cookies. That ended the problem of those 2 little boys trying to hurt my child.  Then there was the time that the woman who stole my first husband from me was pregnant. She was the worst enemy I have ever had in my life, but in  my heart was complete forgiveness and love for her and her unborn child, a supernatural love that was beyond my human nature to even approximate. I went to her baring gifts for the unborn and sincerely asked her how I could help. Everyone who knew the former, unsaved Pam thought that I had lost my mind.  I did not. The love of God, the first fruit of the Spirit was shed abroad by the Holy Ghost into my spirit, empowering me to manifest the fruit of divine love for an enemy.

What you may be counting as fruit for Jesus Christ may simply be a work or ability of your own soul. Human beings have the power to change our attitudes, behaviors and even our personalities without God being involved in the change. We can stop using drugs by the power of our wills. We can pull ourselves up by our own boot straps.  I know for a fact, because this is what I had done BEFORE I was saved. I turned a streetwoman into an educated, prospering lady. When the Holy Ghost got a hold of me, He said “Pam, you took yourself out of the streets and ghetto life, but the streets and ghetto life are still IN you. You changed yourself from the outside in. I will change you from the inside out. Only I can turn you into a sinless, justified, sanctified virtuous woman. What you did was without ME. Not good enough. For without Jesus Christ, you can do nothing.”

In the SEW Program, we will help you  to prepare the ground of your spirit so that it can become good ground for receiving the fruits of the Holy Spirit. For more info, call 518-477-5759

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by | November 10, 2011 · 8:21 pm

CASTING OUT DEMONS Part 1

CASTING OUT DEMONS: Blessed Are the Meek

Meekness is the open doorway to deliverance from demons.

  God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.  Remember the woman with the daughter vexed with a demon who cried out loud to Jesus?  He called her a dog.  A female dog is in our present day language is “the B word.” She replied with a humble response by saying “even the dogs eat the crumbs from under the master’s table.” Implicit in her response was her faith that Jesus Christ “is the Master,” and that deliverance is for EVERYONE.

So the person seeking deliverance from demons must be meek or he or she  will  be “humbled”by the demonic torment and oppression  put upon them.

Some people who have demons really don’t want the Lord.

“They simply want to be free of the torment. So if demons are cast out, nothing in them will be changed.  There is such a thing as “fake fruit.”  I am sure that you have at one time been fooled by plastic or rubber fruit sitting in a bowl as the center piece on a dining room table.  Sometimes These plastic replicas look even better than the real thing from a distance. However, up close, you can see that there is no life in fake fruit.  This is also true of fake spiritual fruit.  Take for example the fruit of meekness or humility.  Those who are “fake”, may appear to have a lack of self-confidence.  However, at the root of their apparent meekness may be  compulsive modesty.  In such instances, the captive’s pattern is to overlook his  own viewpoint,suggesting that the thoughts and ways of others are more reliable than his own.

False humility of this kind will lead the captive to not feel safe unless a significant other in his life will protect, defend, advise or nurture him.  In such cases, the captive loses the capability to take responsibility for his own life. False meekness also manifests itself when professing  Christians who have low self concept develop techniques and processes whereby the self is placed in the background by losing self-regard. In an attempt to avoid anger at all cost, the captive will repress hostility and will become self-effacing. Some captives will merely adjust their behavior to adapt to the stronger personality, while others will allow their personalities to be changed by stronger people.  People like this are often wrongfully perceived as having the fruit of meekness.

Each stronghold will create a specific fear or doubt as well as an accompanying pride system that will be difficult to break through.  Christians so bound, will often attribute their strongholds to demons, when in actuality, casting out a demon will not bring any lasting relief.  This is because the stronghold is embedded in the captive’s personality and is therefore a stronghold in the soul.  In cases where there has been little to no personality change, it will seem as though deliverance has failed when in reality, the root of the problem was not so much demonic as it was “soulical.”Casting out demons may bring a momentary sense of freedom or joy.  Even so, a substantial, solid deliverance is one where the fruit of  true meekness has been planted and nurtured.

Since meekness is the doorway to blessing, any captive in need of deliverance must become poor in spirit. (Matthew 5) To be poor in spirit is to be emptied of one’s character defects.  Deliverance will empty the captive from demons, but these demons and others will ultimately return if the conditions that provided them a safe haven still remain.  Therefore, my job as a bearer of the word of God is to seek the help of the Holy Spirit to sensitize a conscience that has been hardened by the pride of life.    Meekness is manifested when the captive comes to the realization that his thoughts are not as high as the Lord’s thoughts, nor his ways higher than the Lord’s ways. I do not cast out demons from people whom God has not humbled. I can recognize them.  They wander from one deliverance worker to another.  When they get to ME, they want to instruct me as to what THEY believe their problems are, what demons they have, how the demons should be cast out, etc. etc. etc.  I say “Good bye!”

Continual brokenness before the Lord Jesus Christ will  sustained you with a simple, yet a profound truth and it is this. “Whatever does not originate in your inward parts—in your spirit—will not bring you life.” In this regard, I have learned through personal experience that false or counterfeit spirituality may appear to produce a beneficial result but it cannot grant authentic, lasting,  resurrection life. I have entered into the Lord’s rest because I myself have labored by the revelation of the Holy Ghost. No more vain strivings for success according to man’s standards.  If I speak no more for the remainder of my life, I will remain satisfied. For with the”THE NEW IDOLATRY, I believe that I have declared more than a mouthful.

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