Who's Real Anymore?
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Matthew 7:16 (KJV)
In our world- in every area of life- we find that people are not who we thought they were. There are a lot of fakes, phonies, hypocrites, and liars. The word hypocrite in the New Testament in the original Greek means play actors on a stage. A hypocrite is someone who wears a mask and pretends to be another person.
Liars lie. Deceivers deceive. Fraudulent people create fraud. So, who can we trust? How can we know if someone is who they say they are? Who’s real anymore?
Jesus said in Matthew 24 that in the last days that there would be a lot of false people claiming to be legitimate who really are not. We are definitely in the last days… actually the last of the last days. People can talk a good talk for a while and fool many.
We must learn to discern by the Holy Spirit and know God’s Word in order to distinguish the truth from a lie. If we are in tune with the Holy Spirit, He will let us know when someone or something isn’t genuine. We can sense in our spirits when something isn’t right.
Many times we must watch someone for a while in order to know who they really are. This is why we must not be too ready to go deep in a relationship before giving them time to show who they are. We can cause ourselves great harm if we trust someone with the intimate details of our lives before we really know if they are trustworthy. If we take the time to observe people in a variety of situations, especially stressful ones, we can more easily determine who they really are. You can know someone by their fruit. The type of tree is shown by the fruit it bears. This is also true with people. Watch them and ask yourself what kind of fruit is that person’s life bringing forth? If you consistently see good fruit, then it is probably safe to say the person is generally good. Remember that we are all human and we all mess up, so no one will be perfect, but if you watch long enough, you can determine whether the person is genuine or not. If we listen to the Holy Spirit and observe them, we can identify those who are real and those who are fake.
