Holy Spirits and Unholy Spirits
"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God." — 1 John 4:1
Two Categories, One Room
Keep the glasses on. Keep looking around the room.
Alongside the holy spirits — wisdom, truth, gentleness, skill — you would begin noticing others of a different character entirely. Scripture calls them unclean or evil spirits. We can simply call them unholy spirits.
The distinction is not arbitrary. It follows a consistent pattern:
Holy spirits tend to be present where people live in holiness and righteousness.
Unholy spirits tend to be present where people live in unholiness and unrighteousness.
If you prefer non-religious language: high vibration where there is light and love; low vibration where there is darkness and destruction. Different words for the same observation.
The Correlation Is the Point
Notice what that pattern implies, because this is the practical hinge of the whole subject.
Presence follows conduct.
Spirits are not distributed randomly. They are not assigned by bad luck or by which house you happened to buy. There is a correlation between how a person lives and what is drawn to them.
This is not a threat. It is the most hopeful sentence in this lesson. Because if presence follows conduct, then conduct that changes changes presence.
You are not helpless in this. You are not a passive location where spiritual things happen to occur. There is a relationship between what you do and what has access to you, and that relationship runs in both directions.
Not a Reason for Suspicion
A necessary caution, because this teaching gets abused.
The correlation does not license you to look at a suffering person and conclude something about their character. Scripture forbids exactly that reasoning. When Jesus was asked whose sin caused a man's blindness, He rejected the premise entirely (John 9:3). Job's friends built an elaborate and confident theology on this logic and God rebuked them for it by name.
Use this principle on yourself. Never on anyone else.
And do not use it to become suspicious of your own every mood. Some sadness is grief. Some tiredness is tiredness. Some illness is illness. The point of learning to see is not to diagnose everything — it is to notice the things that have a pattern to them, and to be willing to ask.
Point to Ponder
Presence follows conduct. That means what you do is not only about you — it is about what gains access to you.
Verse to Remember
"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God." — 1 John 4:1
Question to Consider
Are there places, practices, or relationships in my life whose spiritual atmosphere I have never once considered?
Today's Practice
Do an atmosphere inventory — of yourself, not of others.
Think through your regular environments and activities. Where you go. What you watch. What you read. Who you spend hours with. What you do when nobody knows.
For each, ask two questions:
What kind of person do I become while I am doing this?
Would I describe the atmosphere around this as light or as heavy?
You already know the answers. Most people can name the two or three things in their life that consistently leave them darker afterward, and most people have never permitted themselves to write them down.
Write them down. No decisions today. Just an honest inventory.
Prayer
Father, I have never seriously considered that what I do affects what has access to me. I have treated my private choices as though they were sealed off from everything else in my life.
Show me where I have been living in a way that draws what I do not want. Not to shame me, but so I can change it.
And guard me from using this to judge anyone else. Let me apply it only to myself. Make me a person whose life draws what is holy. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
What you make room for is what moves in.