Sometimes, when I don’t feel like driving to work, I take the train. Like a real train, with conductors and choo-chooing. It’s expensive and takes a really long time but there’s a second floor above the riffraff and I get my own seat so it’s worth it. My station is at the very end of the line, and it never fails to make me laugh when, as we pull in, someone jumps up with a panicked expression and says, “Wait- is this Fredericksburg???” Because there are two lines, Manassas and Fredericksburg. And even though it’s written on the side of the train and announced at every one of the ten stations on the way, This is the Manassas line train, all too often someone ends up thirty four miles away from their destination, confused, frustrated, and wondering how they could have been so stupid. The signs were there, but they ended up on the wrong line.

My dear friends, don’t believe everything you hear. Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about God comes from God. There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world.

Election season is reaching the inescapable level, so while I was trying to watch my favorite talk show the other day, I was subjected to listening to a segment about how politicians were using religion to further their cause. Most recently, someone notable had claimed that Jesus approved of increasing taxes for the wealthy because, after all, Jesus said in Luke, “For everyone to whom much is given, from him much shall be required.”

 It made me laugh a little bit, and I really can’t say for sure if that was what Jesus meant or not, but it did get me thinking about all the personal opinions that bombard me daily- from politicians, celebrities, journalists, coworkers, friends, and people I don’t even know. Opinions so casually stated that they seem normal and acceptable, but upon deeper scrutiny prove to be diammetrically opposed to the Truth.

• absorbed in an office conversation about someone’s relationship in a lifestyle that I am wholeheartedly against.
• pondering quotes from (don’t get offended) Oprah, that are completely self-centered, a stark contrast to the self-less Gospel I believe in.
• fanatically devoted to a show with zero value. just zero.

Here’s how you test for the genuine Spirit of God. Everyone who confesses openly his faith in Jesus Christ—the Son of God, who came as an actual flesh-and-blood person—comes from God and belongs to God. And everyone who refuses to confess faith in Jesus has nothing in common with God. This is the spirit of antichrist that you heard was coming. Well, here it is, sooner than we thought! -1 John 4:1-3

It can seem overwhelming, knowing what to accept and what to reject, but it’s really not. The key is, we have to be intentional. Don’t believe everything you hear. Test for the genuine. Because everything else has nothing in common with God, who lives in you. Because the end that you have heard is coming is here, sooner than we thought. Because in that end, you don’t want to end up on the wrong line. Because you want to end in the black.