Fairly often I get asked how to know you’re actually hearing God, instead of being deceived by the enemy. Almost always the “Satan appears as an angel of light” verse from 2 Corinthians 11 is quoted as their proof you can never know the difference between God’s voice and the devil’s.
Of course you can. The enemy may be able to appear as an angel of light, but he completely sucks at faking love, joy, and peace. That’s because he has none.
His warped copy of love is an exhausting conditional approval. Joy is twisted into pleasure at the failure of those who disagree with you. And his shadow version of peace is just to validate your bitterness and judgements. Patience? Fugeddaboutit.
Much of the enemy’s goal in deceiving is to get you to believe fear is wisdom. Fear of failure, fear of loss, fear of being deceived—all the decisions you make in fear produce more fear. So what do you do? How do you hear God’s voice and ignore the enemy’s? Simple. Keep your heart open to love. God’s love displaces all fear (1 John 4:18).
Regardless of your circumstances, let God teach you to live in and give away the genuine fruits of His Spirit, starting with love. Each one of the fruits will produce a closeness to Jesus. They will make you whole, confident, and excited about what God may do with the situation in front of you. They will give you a holy compassion and empowering grace for everyone around you. And they’ll certainly keep you from falling for deception and settling for cheap counterfeits.
“The fruit of His Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self–control. Against such as these the law—and the fear of failing it—has no power” (Galatians 5:22–23, paraphrase).
Equip Your Spirit 