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Even If i Walk Alone

Instructing and encouraging you to live your life as a disciple of Jesus

discernment

Outside Influences

February 24, 2025 by Tim Sherfy

When monitoring the outside influences in your life, it’s easy to concentrate so much on things like entertainment and secular activities that we forget one of the most common avenues Satan uses to trip us up comes from within the church. When I was growing up, the list of preachers with world-wide recognition was short. It began and ended with Billy Graham. There were traveling evangelists that were well known in certain regions and countries, but on a global scale, there wasn’t a long list.

outside influences,God's Word,discernment,wisdom

Today, we have a phenomenon known as the celebrity pastor. These are pastors of large churches who have leveraged social media, the internet, and books to build a platform for themselves. Notice the platform they are building is amplifying their name, and that doesn’t always translate into glorifying God’s name. The result is we now have many preachers who are world famous.

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Filed Under: Daily Life Tagged With: 2 Timothy, Acts, discernment, Exodus, Galatians, God's Word, I John, I Peter, James, John, Matthew, Proverbs, Romans, wisdom

Choose Your Friends Wisely

April 11, 2024 by Tim Sherfy

“Choose your friends wisely” is an adage with profound spiritual implications. Many choose their friends based on shared interests in things in this world, be it sports teams, fashion, food, or entertainment choices. In my experience and observation, very few choose their relationships based on how spiritually nourishing they think they will be.

choose your friends wisely,wisdom,discernment,discipline

This begs the question of why we would want friends who lead us into a deeper appreciation of things of the flesh rather than those who would help us grow closer to God. If our goal is to live wholly devoted to Christ, we’re going to need to surround ourselves with people who will help us along that path.

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Filed Under: Daily Life Tagged With: Colossians, discernment, Discipline, I Corinthians, I Peter, Matthew, Proverbs, Psalms, Romans, wisdom

Read God’s Word

March 24, 2022 by Tim Sherfy

In the last post (see “Test the Spirits”), we discussed being on the lookout for false teachers and teaching, and the need to always test what we hear by holding it up to the standard of God’s Word. I wanted to say a bit more about those things today. Perhaps more than any other point in my lifetime, there is a lot of noise in the community of believers. We certainly live in fascinating times, and many are taking the opportunity to promote their ideas on why things are unfolding as they are.

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They carefully select scriptures (typically a single verse to avoid the context of the passage) to make their case. Some do this for sheer notoriety. Others base entire ministries on it and are taking full advantage of current events to fill the coffers of their ministries. Now more than ever, we must be discerning. We must cut through the noise and read God’s Word.

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Filed Under: Daily Life Tagged With: discernment, Ecclesiates, false teachers, God's Word, Matthew, Scripture, the church

Test the Spirits

March 21, 2022 by Tim Sherfy

1 John 4 begins with a somewhat curious phrase. John encourages the hearers of his letter to “test the spirits”. First, this implies there are many spirits. In our churches today, it is common to hear about the Holy Spirit, but there is often little attention paid to the other spirits in our world. We ignore these other spirits at our peril. Behind every false teaching, you will find a demonic source.

Test the spirits,discernment,false teachers,false teaching,Bible study,scripture,truth,discipleship

Yes, demons are real. They exist and flood the spiritual realm surrounding us. When we go along with false teaching, we are following demons. How’s that for a sobering thought? If we are not careful in examining the teaching we are listening to, there is a very good chance we aren’t being taught God’s truth at all. Instead of growing in our faith, we are opening our minds to demonic influences.

[Read more…] about Test the Spirits

Filed Under: Daily Life Tagged With: 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Acts, Bible study, discernment, Discipleship, Ephesians, false teachers, fasle teaching, I Corinthians, I John, Isaiah, John, Matthew, Scripture, truth

Discernment

October 4, 2021 by Tim Sherfy

Philippians 1:9-11 tells us we should never stop growing in love and discernment. The passage goes on to tell us this is important so we can approve the good things and stay away from the bad. The goal of which is to be blameless when Christ returns. All of us want to be blameless before Christ, and none of us want to be caught unaware when He returns.

discernment,commitment,false teachers,love,knowledge

If you should fear anything in life, fear what Christ’s return will find you doing. Now, if we live our lives wholly devoted to Him, we won’t have to worry about it. If we let compromise come into our lives, who knows what Jesus may find us doing. We only get one shot to do this right.

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Filed Under: Daily Life Tagged With: Acts, commitment, discernment, Fear, Galatians, I John, I Thessalonians, II Timothy, knowledge, Love, Matthew, Philippians

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