Chapter 2. 19
Gift of Discernment
Was President Donald J. Trump’s ability
“THE ART OF THE DEAL”
Natural or a Gift from God?
First Word
The description of this gift
rarely reflects what scripture describes.
Most speak of discernment as having
the ability to make good and wise business decisions. President Donald J. Trump’s book was entitled
“THE ART OF
THE DEAL”…
was his ability NATURAL or a “GIFT” from God?
The New Testament had not yet been written and God was re-shaping HIS
ministry when He hit the “Gift Button” and the gifts EXPLODED and LIT UP the Church. Everyone was having strange “Out of the Box”
experiences even thought they had no foundation or understanding of their
spiritual gifting. Understand that GIFTS are a RESPONSIBILITY.
The Gifts manifested in three
versions; God inspired, Satan inspired and
Self-inspired; thus God in His Wisdom as
part of the dispensation of Gifts, un-packed one that would keep all the others
in line; the Gift of “Distinguishing between Spirits,” to
distinguish between fiction and fact; examining practices, actions, events and
doctrines; whether spiritual and Godly or a demonic counterfeit; or just
natural imitators, whether good or evil or just plain self-motivated; to unmask
teachers of false doctrine and carnal hypocrites. WOW
what a heavy responsibility!
Different Bible translations vary in their description; “Discerning of Spirits”, “Discernment of Spirits”, “Distinguishing all Spirits”,
and “Distinguishing
between Spirits”. The
New Living Translation says;
“The ability to know
whether it is really the Spirit of God or another spirit is speaking”.[1]
It was not without its own self-inflicted problems. The
Gift of discerning between spirits can start to unravel bringing on a face of a
self-righteous
spirit, one that is critical, with corrosive pride, one that is judgmental instead
of correctional. Understand that this
gift even monitors the “Gift of Prophecy”[2] which
everyone is encouraged to seek. That’s
why scripture requires TWO WITNESSES or more to establish or validate an issue.[3]
There are many gifts
of the Holy Spirit, but this Study will just look at only one of them; “The Gift of
Discernment” or “DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL SPIRITS”.
Prophecy
Side Bar
Prophecy no longer
exist as “Predictive
Prophecy” as it did in
the first Century of Christianity. There are no new revelations, just new illumination
and enlightenment; there is no new doctrine, just new direction.
The Bible word is “Propheteuo” which means “To magnify God”, “To speak of Divine
things” or even better “To Teach” and has nothing to do with foretelling
the future, but of forth telling and
witnessing to the grace of Jesus Christ and magnifying His name. So when you read in the NT scripture of
people “prophesizing”
they are praising God’s name and teaching His attributes. Paul wanted everyone to prophesy; it is a
better gift to seek and study than speaking in tongues.
John the Baptist was the LAST of the New Testament Prophets; Jesus said he was
the greatest of all the prophets yet he never performed even one miraculous
sign; he just proclaimed the attributes of Jesus Christ and Jehovah God. [4]
Reason
for the Gifts
Why were the gifts given in
the first place? In short they were given for the profit of ALL, for the common good of the body of Christ; the
Members of His Church.[5] They were designed to be INTERACTIVE with the other
unique gifts of others within the body; with the exception of Jesus Christ, no
one person has all the gifts; which is another reason to be a member of a local
church.[6]
Every Christian is responsible for
what they believe whether they have the gift of discernment or not.[7] We are to study and rightly handle His Word,
not believing every spirit, but examining everything carefully, so we will not
be tossed about by ever new wind of doctrine that comes by Human Cunning; by
Craftiness in
Deceitful
Schemes.
As an Human Resource Manager, I would often try to “read between the
lines”, to know the “real motives” for someone’s decision; to understand the
weavings of the sincerity of a request, the interworking’s of a sarcastic
response, the real colors of a flattering comment. God challenges us to be wise as serpents, but
harmless as doves.[8]
Scripture encourages us to seek out the
best gifts.[9]
When I first became aware of the “Gifts of the Spirit”, I immediately wanted to
operate in two of them; the gift of “Healings” and the Gift of the “Discerning of
Spirits”. What I saw in scripture was how the man
Jesus became wearied from healing the people; I thought that there must also be
a “Gift of
Weariness”, to be able to help others when you are already
completely exhausted.
First
look
Those that possess the gift
of discerning
of spirits have been dispatched
by God to be “Holy
Spirit Inspectors”; with a special insight to be able to recognize,
identify, and expose deceptive and erroneous doctrine. They are the “Spirit’s Watchdog”, the “Watchmen on the
Wall” who diligently study the word and ‘PRACTICE” their gift to protect against perverted
cults, false doctrine, deceptive language and wolves masquerading as lambs
promoting their own self-interest. They
raise flags to identify the cleverer counterfeits, to determine the spurious
from what is genuine; they encourage others to test and judge carefully what
they read, hear and experience.[10]
The God fearing Jews in Berea were
commended for comparing what the disciples were saying with the scripture.[11] No preacher or teacher of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ should resent having their words weighted by the scriptures. Today the Gospel Message is often preached in
the mega-churches with the mix of philosophy, psychology and self-sufficiency
and have become quite popular and often very PROFITABLE.
The Gift of discernment separates the “wheat of truth” that is sown along
with the “chaff
of deceit”. Much of the time
the gift is not about demonic counterfeits, but about the “Work of the Flesh”, it’s about
folks that are serving the Lord through “natural imitation,” in their own power, for
their own benefit, for their own glory.
The first time I saw this
was when I had taken a job selling appliances and the manager told me, he would
team me up with an ex-preacher. My gift of
discernment kicked into high gear
when I talked with him about the Bible; I felt such a heaviness in his
presence and then things really went downhill when I asked about his
ministry. Turns out he was a gang biker
turned MISSIONARY who was
dismissed for anger issues and lack of compassion. We both went by the same name; Christian, one
a Believer and the other a Make-believer; two different ducks floating in the
same pond. This sounds judgmental, but the Book says you will know them by their fruits.[12]
On another occasion, a PREACHER was presented to Human Resources to be the
manager of our Delivery Department. The
very first day an internal alarm went off; my spirit was just sick; there was a
knot in my stomach, I KNEW HE WAS THE WRONG PERSON. That
very day his staff began coming to me wanting to transfer to another
department. I PRAYED
about it a lot and the next day he came in and QUIT; laughing he said he had a better job
offer. The following day he came back
and said he had changed his mind and would take the Management position. I was delighted to tell him “sorry I have already
filled that position.” This was absolutely a God Thing.
Practice
We have all heard doctors and
lawyers use the term “practice” when referencing to their occupation,
that’s because “PRACTICE” is what it takes to be successful.
The
lady Gamecocks of the University of South Carolina celebrated their NCAA
Division I women's basketball national championship and Coach Dawn Staley said
their secret was PRACTICE[13]. It seems it is not enough to read about it,
you MUST put faith into PRACTICE. A faith
without works is a dead faith;[14] Gifts are given as solid food for the MATURE Christian and require PRACTICE.
Examples
of Discernment
Eve told the
Serpent that she could not eat of the
tree of knowledge of good and evil, that she would die. The Serpent told her that she would not die,
but would become like the gods and know good from evil. Satan uses
deceptive language to deceive. [15]
Knowing good from evil sounds like a good thing and being like the gods
should be a good thing too, but that was not what God said.
King Solomon asked God for “the gift of
discernment”; he prayed for an UNDERSTANDING MIND to govern His
people, to be able to DISCERN BETWEEN GOOD
AND EVIL.[16]
Moses threw down his
staff as God commanded and it became a snake, the court magicians threw down
their staffs and they became snakes too.
Good and evil can appear at the same.[17]
A slave girl who was possessed with a demon followed Paul and Silas around saying that
they were servants of the most high God.
What she said was correct, but everybody knew she was also possessed by
a spirit adding to the confusion. The
purpose and motivation was exactly opposite to what she was exclaiming, she was
a demonic instrument. Even Evil spirits can appear as good.[18] Paul commanded the evil spirit to come out of
her.
Jezebel, taught and seduced Christians to practice
sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols, and they did so because she
called herself a “prophetess”.[19]
Elymas the
magician was opposing as they taught the Gospel, seeking
to turn them away from the faith. Paul, with the gift of “Discerning of Spirits” called
him out publically and said, “You son of the devil, full of all deceit &
villainy, you
enemy of all righteousness, stop making crooked the straight paths
of the Lord.[20]
Jesus had just told the Disciples that He would be killed. Peter
took Him aside and rebuked Him saying “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall
never happen to you.” Jesus operating in the gift of “Discerning
between Spirits” called Peter by
the name of Satan
and told him to get behind Him that his mind was on the things of the world not on the things of the spirit.[21]
Ezekiel defines someone with the spirit of
discernment as someone who
habitually obeys God’s laws and statutes and makes
distinction between the Holy and the Profane;
between what is good and what is evil;
what is truth and was is error.
There will come a time when men will call evil good and error truth.[22] It’s in the Book.
TODAY every word from a news
commentator, ever word from a politician and every word in a commercial is chosen, formulated
and calculated for its maximum impact to
deliver the SPIN and conclusions that will guide
the “HERD” to their agenda. Whether some
facts are omitted or others highly selective; whether misleading or not; if you
can just point them to a free cell phone or a benefit,
THE HERD will follow. You must listen to EVERY WORD and weigh its meaning.
The Take
Away
We don’t hear or see much about Demons
today,
but they are still present doing the work of Satan to undermine the body of
Christ. The Serpent asked Eve; “Did God
really say that?” Satan is doing the same
thing today as in the beginning; minimizing the Word of God as written in
scripture.
There are many Muslims who have never even
read the Qur’an;
they were just born into a Muslim family.
This is also true of some
Christians; they were just born into a Christian family and have no idea what the Bible teaches and have ONLY their own BS, their Belief System as a
world view. They just speak what seems
to be right to them; that’s why it is so imperative that we have the operation
of the Gifts of the Spirit.
The body of believers is
complex and interdependent and not all have the same role in the body.[23] The Holy Spirit gives special abilities or
gifts as He wills for each situation. The
spirit knows better than man which gift should be utilized and when. The gifts are given “in Part”, not in whole,
as the situation dictates; gifts are given for a period of time, and may not be
forever, they are as the Spirit wills.
False doctrine can be exposed by comparing it with scripture, but false
spirits can only be exposed and judged by the gift of “Discerning of Spirits”, this
special gift has the unusual ability to separate what is wrong from what is
right, truth from error, and unmask the counterfeit. We are commanded to TEST the spirits.[24] Can we operate with miracle spiritual gifts
today? Yes, as the HOLY
SPIRIT determines. NOTE: Because we see very little of the gifts
displayed, most believe that the gifts ended with the Apostles. However, I do not find anywhere in scripture
indicating that the gifts were recalled; in fact I find that they are forever.[25] These gifts were given so that compassionate
believers could minister to others, but it is “as the Spirit wills”.
The
Gifts of the Spirit will cease when Christ returns.[26]
[1] 1 Corinthians 12:10 - GIFT
- To Distinguish between Spirits
[2] 1 Corinthians 14:1 –
Eagerly desire the gifts, especially Prophecy
[3] 1 Corinthians 14:29 – Prophecy is to be weighted by the scriptures
-- Deuteronomy 19:15 - Two
witnesses establishes an issue
[4] Luke 7:28 – There was not a greater PROPHET
than John the Baptizer -- John
10:41-42 – John performed NO miraculous signs.
[5] 1 Corinthians 12:7 – The gifts are the manifestation of the Holy
Spirit -- 1 Corinthians 12:4-7 – The gifts. Service and activities are given for the common good 1 Corinthians
[6] Romans 12:4-8 – Prophesying, Teaching, Serving, Encouraging, Leading, Mercy,
Giving -- Ephesians 4:11-12 – Apostles,
Prophets, Evangelist, Pastors, Teachers, Service
[7] 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 - GIFT
- To Distinguish between Spirits
[8] Matthew 10:16 - Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves
[9] 1 Corinthians
[10] John 8:44 - Satan is a liar and the father
of lies, there is no truth in him -- 1 John 4:1 – Test the spirits to see whether they are from God or not
[11] Acts 17:11 – The Bereans examined the scripture DAILY
to see if what they said was true
[12] Matthew 7:17 – You will
know them by their fruits
[13] Hebrews 5:11-14 – Gifts are Solid food that are to be constantly
practiced
[14] James 2:17 – Faith
without works is a dead faith
[15] Genesis 3:3-5 – Satan used deceptive language on Eve
[16] 1 Kings 3:9-11 – King Solomon asked for the Gift of Discernment and got
it
[17] Exodus 7:10-11 – Good and Evil can appear in the same way; you must
discern the difference
[18] Acts 16:16-18 – Evil Spirits can appear as Good Spirits. --
[19] Revelation 2:20 – Jezebel called herself a Prophetess; Teaching &
Seducing Christians --
[20] Acts 13:8-10 – Elymas the magician called out as deceitful, a son of
Satan, the enemy, the villain
[21] Matthew 16:21-23 – Jesus with the Gift of Discernment called out Peter
[22] Isaiah 5:20 – Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, darkness
light and light darkness -- Ezekiel
44:23-24 – Discern and Teach the difference between Holy and Common --
[23] 1 Corinthians
[24] 1 John 4:1 – Command;
Test the spirits.
[25] Romans
[26] 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 –
When Jesus returns the gifts will cease.
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