Spiritual Gifts 17 Discernment

[HKHaugan]

‘Everything has to go her way’ ‘He has a controlling spirit’ ‘Something’s wrong here. I can feel it in my bones’ ‘The hair rose up on my neck’ “That was the eeriest thing I’ve ever seen.’ These and many other expressions indicate something real is happening, you just can’t see it. There is a discernment of some dominating force motivating an action, a reaction or a simple observation. Paul nails it when he says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Eph.6:12).”

Therefore radical personal action has to be taken. An internal revolution of mind and heart is demanded. It is a shift in the way we think; how we approach every next moment and the authority we depend on to make that shift. This is what the word repentance means, to turn away from how the world taught us to think and act apart from God. It means shifting away from that world. It means shifting to where Jesus is the authority, the teacher, the guide and the center for the shift. He turns us to the Bible and allows it to reshape how we think. It is the fountain of spiritual insight and direction. The shift is from common world sense to God’s spiritual sense, from what mankind apart from God thinks to the way the Creator of the mind thinks to have our mind work as He originally intended.

Three things happen when we start seeing things spiritually. First, everything is spiritually significant, second, everything is spiritually motivated, and third, everything has spiritual consequences that affect the outcome of everything we see. We move from fear to trust, from hanging back to jumping in, from hesitation to risk.

The Bible opens us to move from what we can see to what we can’t see. We shift the way we observe one another. We begin to see that people’s attitudes and our own are really spiritually driven forces shaping personality and behavior. We are first spiritual beings and our attitudes are the spiritually formed ways we have learned to adapt to the world around us.

What we see is that the conclusions and concepts we have formed apart from God are based on the pains and pleasures we believe allow us breathing room in the relational environment of everyday life. They are what Paul has identified as strongholds (2Cor.10:4-5). Strongholds are the spiritual defenses we have developed apart from God to protect the inner lonely heart and adjust to the world of others. They are the stuff of sin fueled by spirits of fear, pride, greed, lust and a host of others ready to sway your concentration away from God to self.
Attitudes are our strongholds and they are all about me. Think for a moment about all the conclusions you have made about God, people, life around you and the world in general. Apart from God they are all about ‘me’ ‘I’ ‘myself.’ We are victims of our own minds, trapped in their confines and isolated from the larger reality of universal truth which is spiritual reality.

This is why Jesus came, to open the larger reality of God’s mind, spiritual awareness, real spiritual power and the spiritual nature of relationship. He shows us the main block to relationship, to relational living, is sin, the self-centering spiritual darkness that consumes the heart apart from God. He came to overcome and defeat its power. Time after time Jesus drove evil spirits out and away. It took His discernment, His teaching and His miracles to show us sin’s source and its effects. It took Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross to expose and defeat its leader, the devil.

So when He started His spiritual family (we call the church) to be His earthly body after He rose from the dead, He gave those who believe in Him spiritual discernment to distinguish between being right in Him and wrong in sin’s self-absorption. But to some He gave a special measure of faith, a gift of discernment, that piece of grace that enables you to sense the spiritual pressures attacking the Body of Christ. Shared, prayed about and confirmed by the Body, this gift keeps the Body focused on its spiritual vision and direction.

The spiritual gift of discerning spirits is based on this one very comforting and assuring principle---in Christ we are guided, loved, inspired and directed by the One Spirit, the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit of goodness, love, compassion, mercy, kindness and all the other qualities of God. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit who distributes all the gifts. He is the Spirit who brings the consciousness of Jesus in your mind and heart. He is the Spirit who protects and covers each believing heart. He is the Spirit whose power overcomes all evil spirits and forces. So all the gifts of the Spirit are those given and empowered by Him. The devil has an arsenal of evil spirits at his command but neither of them nor all of them together can withstand the power of the One Holy
Spirit.

So, are you one who has been gifted to discern spiritual reality in a unique way? Do you pick up on things that are happening around you? When you go to a movie or a play or a concert or watch TV or are just out dining somewhere, do you sense spiritual events behind what you see or hear? The important thing to do is share with those in the Body you trust to understand your perceptions. Then pray with them to build the gift to help the Body. Be alert when you are in the gathered Body.