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Then Micaiah said, "Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by, on His right hand and on His left. And the Lord said, 'Who will persuade Ahab to go up, that he may fall at Ramoth Gilead?' So one spoke in this manner, and another spoke in that manner. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, and said, 'I will persuade him.' The Lord said to him, 'In what way?' So he said, 'I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' And the Lord said, 'You shall persuade him, and also prevail. Go out and do so.' Therefore look! The Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these prophets of yours, and the Lord has declared disaster against you." (I Kings 22:19-23)
Upon first read of this passage of Scripture it seems to run contrary to everything we have ever learned about God, for it seems to be saying that God, Himself, approved of one of the "hosts of heaven" becoming a "lying spirit" in order to accomplish a particular task. How do we explain this?
It is my opinion that "spirit" is neutral just as God is, transcending the "soulish" designations of "good" and "evil." As surprising and foreign a concept as it might sound at first, God is not "good" all the time, but rather He/She is ALL all the time, and can show up in your life in whatever manner is necessary in order to produce what needs to be produced in you. Although closely related, your spirit and your soul are not the same thing. Before our birth, our spirit was with God. Therefore we were neutral as He is and we arrived here on this earthly plane understanding and knowing only love and neutrality.
All our prejudices, hatred, fear, anger, distrust and other forms of conditioning were learned once we became part of the physical realm. Because of this, it is from our soul that we assign labels such as "good" and "bad" to experiences and to people. It is only when we allow ourselves to operate from our soul that we forget the neutrality of our spirit, get caught up in our conditioning, become polarized, live in the literal and refuse to see the truth in all things.
It is also our soulish nature that causes us to feel we must "take sides" or assign certain symbols and/or schools of thought to "other" Gods when we have clearly been told in God's Word that there is only ONE God. God is Spirit - I Am that I Am. I encourage you to remember that you are only temporarily your prejudices, your opinions and your cultural conditioning. You are eternally your spirit, which is bigger than your soul.
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