As far as I remember my Dad never had a “little book” and I didn’t either, but he often made mention of one.  If I got myself in trouble when I was a kid and he was straightening me out, he would usually end his instructions to me, and the consequences if I didn’t follow them with, “and you can write that down in your little book.”  It was obvious that some things in life needed to be remembered.

One morning while I was shaving (Dolly’s step-grandpa would say, “scraping my jaw”) I heard her on the piano playing an old song from the past.  The line she was on at the time went something like this, “Satan tried to tell me the Bible was a lie, that Jesus did not care and I would die.”  We live in a physical world tremendously influenced by a spiritual world.  There is a lot of interest today in that spiritual world, and I’ve heard Dr. Lutzer (The Moody Church) comment on how many books he was aware of on the subject.  I have various translations of only one book on the spiritual world and it tells me there are spirits attempting to influence my decisions.  I John 4:1-2 says there are spirits out there besides The Spirit of God, and we should “try the spirits” to determine “whether they are of God.”  The word try means to test or to approve or “to prove with a view to approving.”  The best way to do this is to compare what you think the spirits are saying with what the Bible says.
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I worked with a guy who seemed to make most decisions by consensus.  He would ask a question to several people and digest all the responses and then come up with the answer he liked best.  A lot of people seem to do the same thing in relation to spiritual guidance.  Most people I know claim to be Christians or at least nominally religious.  In John 3:3 Jesus is talking to a very religious man named Nicodemus and Jesus told him that he couldn’t see the Kingdom unless he was “born again.”  I heard the late Dr. Criswell, pastor of FBC Dallas at the time, said he would be surprised if 10% of the 7,000 members of his church were truly born again.  I was at a mainstream Protestant Church for a funeral when one of their deacons, complaining about their trustees, referred to them as “those g–d—– people.”  I won’t be the final arbiter, but I doubt if that deacon was born again.

We go through life with these various spirits trying to influence our decisions.  Sometimes they speak clearly, sometimes subtly, sometimes truthfully, sometimes not.  Sometimes these spirits speak a half-truth.  In Gen. 2:17 The Lord God told Adam about a fruit tree in Eden saying, “the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”  Sometime later the same fruit tree was being discussed and Gen. 3:4 has the serpent telling Eve that if she ate the fruit, “ye shall not surely die.”  Someone was lying, or more accurately, telling a half-truth.  When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they didn’t fall over dead, and they went to sleep that night and woke up the next morning.  In fact, we’re told in Gen. 5:5 that Adam lived to be 930 years old; we’re not told how long Eve lived before she died.

Apparently when The Lord God was having those “cool of the day” walks in the garden with Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:8) they were either not told about the two worlds we live in or they didn’t understand, or they just decided to believe what the serpent said instead of what The Lord God said.  Satan, speaking through the serpent, told them a half-truth.  They did not physically die but they did die spiritually, which is the reason Jesus said we had to be born again (spiritually) if we want to “see the Kingdom,”  or as a Church Age person, go to Heaven.  John 8:44 tells us that the devil has “no truth in him.”  It goes on to say “he is a liar, and the father of it.”

So here we are living our physical life with these spirits trying to influence us as we walk through it.  One of these is The Holy Spirit, or maybe an angelic messenger (although I suspect angels are not used in this role anymore since The Holy Spirit came to Earth), and the other one is Satan or one of his demonic imps.  Be sure you pay attention to I John 4:1-2 and try these spirits.  If the devil is trying to communicate with you he is probably telling you a lie, and you can write that down in your little book.