A Wrong Spirit

Once, as we were on our way to prayer, a slave girl met us who had a spirit of prediction. She made large profit for her owners by fortune-telling. As she followed Paul and us she cried out, "These men, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation, are slaves of the Most High God." She did this for many days.
But Paul was greatly aggravated and turning to the spirit, said, "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!" And it came out right away. Acts 16:16-18

At first it may have been hard to put a finger on what was troubling, but with time Paul became highly aggravated. This was the Holy Spirit within him showing him the girl had an evil spirit. Just because she was telling people the truth about them, did not make her clean. As it was the command for the spirit to leave was just the medicine she needed.

Certain spirits are like that, seemingly nice sounding proclamations yet full of poison. Even Jesus said that there will be some who say to Him, "Lord we cast out demons in Your name and I will say, begone from Me you who practise lawlessness." (Matthew 7:23)

Sometimes I see in me a spirit that is a weasel. It is the bad that the thinking me does not want to do but the selfish me does. Self-pitying, critical, judgmental, nasty, plain nasty. My prayer is that the Spirit uncovers this weasel so that before I open my mouth, I catch it and kill it. Graham Cooke says that we have been born into the new sinless nature of God and we must choose to live there and not gratify the flesh which has been put to death. We must learn to love righteousness.

I can go through life and cover up the weasel and pretend it is not there. By doing this I deceive myself. I am making myself face this weasel and deal with it because I want to have more of my life controlled by the Spirit. 

I wonder how the girl in the story got started? How did darkness overcome her? I think perhaps to be popular, in the spotlight might have been a place of beginning. If we give ourselves to a lust for a feeling, a voice, a spotlight we become consumed by evil.

We are saved from all of this! Let's walk in the light as He is in the light! Amen!

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