When I was in high school, my dad asked a classmate to build a retainer wall around a flower bed in the front of our house. He later inspected the work and saw that the stacked bricks tilted 45 degrees off center. Clearly frustrated, he asked, “Did you use a plumb line?”
The boy shook his head and mumbled, “What’s a plumb line?”
“It’s a string with a weight used to establish a vertical reference point. No one constructs a wall without a plumb line unless you want it to look like the leaning tower of Pisa—just like this wall! Tear it down and start over.”
Plumb lines are critical when building a wall and a life. I thought I had one until my life tilted severely off-center. I had no way to distinguish subtle demonic attacks from my thoughts, intuitions, and emotions. Later, they dropped their masquerades and I faced evil spirits with no defender. They delighted in showing me what they could do. Only when Christ saved me did I find my true plumb line and more—the Savior. The Bible and Holy Spirit became my reference. I trusted God and Scripture, and God built me anew—strong and upright. Rescued and Redeemed is about how I learned to discern what is and is not of God. The process is closely aligned with godly wisdom. A person is wise as he or she walks closely with God. Without a relationship with him and knowledge of Scripture, a person cannot discern good from evil.
“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).