Discernment

[Rollo Tamasi]

Yes, I honestly do think the percentage is way up there. And, that is, Why?

Because we ALL do have some ability to sense things going on around us (not a spiritual thing, at all), and with a whopping amount of Christians, this gets seen as having "spiritual discernment".... but many people seem to take it way beyond just that.

When we observe a heavily tattooed person with a skinny body, with obvious physical signs of abuse... both drug and nutritional, and missing teeth, etc., many of us pretty quickly form an opinion........... even when we "righteously" claim we do not.

This "discernment" is really just observational perception, learned from experience. Everyone has a degree of it. But for some reason, Christians often seem to feel they have been gifted with the DISCERNMENT to "see" these things through some SPIRITUAL means.

How do you know when people do not see things through spiritual means?
How do you know when they do?
You have formed your opinion for some reason.

 

[Rollo Tamasi]

Yes, I do, on occasion, have impulses and urgings that I know are from the Holy Spirit. But this is not a special gifting of discernment. And it usually isn't with most people who wish like crazy it was. So much so, that they often delude themselves it is.

How do you know these impulses and urgings are from the Holy Spirit and how do you know they are not the special gifting of discernment?

 

[Willie T]

How do you know these impulses and urgings are from the Holy Spirit and how do you know they are not the special gifting of discernment?

Well, to answer the first, I'll tell you about something which happened (and happens fairly often....IF I pay attention, and receive these very SLIGHT tuggings.)

I was in a group meeting one night at church. Some people came in looking for a homeless guy who had been there. No one knew where he might have wandered off to, so people went driving off in several directions, trying to find him. Our group remained and continued our studies.

During this time, an impression came to me that, "he is in the nursery". It seemed silly, so I ignored it.

An hour, or so, later, all the people came back to the church, and one of them "just happened" to go look in the empty and dark nursery. There he was, curled up, sleeping on the floor.

Now, that was just the Holy Spirit telling me something. And I ignored it. But almost half of our church get things like that all the time. And this is NOT the gift spoken of in the Bible. That gift is clearly expressed, in the original languages, as actually being aware of the almost physical presence of spirits..... "Angels", if you will.

I'm pretty sure there is not one person in our congregation who "sees" supernatural beings. Prophesies, yes... and I think those people are "gifted"....and many of us (myself, included) are engaged in healing (still not really "gifted" though). However we do have some people sometimes visiting in our midst who ARE very obviously "gifted" with the ministry of healing.

 

[Willie T]

How do you know when people do not see things through spiritual means?
How do you know when they do?
You have formed your opinion for some reason.

Usually when Christians claim they "see" things..... most of it comes out as some sort of exposé of what they have determined are people in sin, or of "false teachers". (We LOVE to throw THAT one around)

The Bible abounds with people "seeing" Godly things........ but almost nothing about people "seeing" devils and demons. Yet, those negatives are mostly what Christians claiming this ability see today. People who clearly have a gift in this area almost never mention evil spirits.... that's usually Hollywood.

 

[Rollo Tamasi]

Usually when Christians claim they "see" things..... most of it comes out as some sort of exposé of what they have determined are people in sin, or of "false teachers". (We LOVE to throw THAT one around)

The Bible abounds with people "seeing" Godly things........ but almost nothing about people "seeing" devils and demons. Yet, those negatives are mostly what Christians claiming this ability see today. People who clearly have a gift in this area almost never mention evil spirits.... that's usually Hollywood.

Good answers.
Yet you can't tell for sure with my examples?
So how can we tell for sure where it comes from?

 

[th1b.taylor]

Well, to answer the first, I'll tell you about something which happened (and happens fairly often....IF I pay attention, and receive these very SLIGHT tuggings.)

I was in a group meeting one night at church. Some people came in, looking for a homeless guy who had been there. No one knew where he might have wandered off to, so people went driving off in several directions, trying to find him. Our group remained and continued our studies.

During this time, an impression came to me that, "he is in the nursery". It seemed silly, so I ignored it.

An hour, or so, later, all the people came back to the church, and one of them "just happened" to go look in the empty and dark nursery. There he was, curled up, sleeping on the floor.

Now, that was just the Holy Spirit telling me something. And I ignored it. But almost half of our church get things like that all the time. And this is NOT the gift spoken of in the Bible. That gift is clearly expressed, in the original languages, as actually being aware of the almost physical presence of spirits..... "Angels", if you will.

I'm pretty sure there is not one person in our congregation who "sees" supernatural beings. Prophesies, yes... and I think those people are "gifted"....and many of us (myself, included) are engaged in healing (still not really "gifted" though). However we do have some people sometimes visiting in our midst who ARE very obviously "gifted" with the ministry of healing.

Good morning brother,
I am just like yourself in respect to the Holy spirit. Unlike David, the Spirit is ever present and I know this because of His correctional tugging but my spiritual eyes are, also, not opened. My baby girl, my granddaughter has seen a Spirit Being but I have not, not to this point. When their automobile died in the middle of the highway, the drunk, that Sunday morning, destroyed their car by smashing into it at better than 70 miles per hour and when the responding officer asked her why she was not injured when her mom was injured so badly. In response she informed the officer in the same manner that she later informed us, "The angel appeared to her, just before the collision and he held on to her until the wreck was over and he then left."

She has never enjoyed that gift of discernment again but now grown and married, is much like the rest of us Christian nuts, she feels the presence through the Spirit's corrective tugging (teaching) and answered prayers. She, like I, my wife and my daughter long to see the angles but we all realize they are here but, we are to live by faith, not by sight.

 

[th1b.taylor]

Usually when Christians claim they "see" things..... most of it comes out as some sort of exposé of what they have determined are people in sin, or of "false teachers". (We LOVE to throw THAT one around)

The Bible abounds with people "seeing" Godly things........ but almost nothing about people "seeing" devils and demons. Yet, those negatives are mostly what Christians claiming this ability see today. People who clearly have a gift in this area almost never mention evil spirits.... that's usually Hollywood.

Willie,
You appear to be very well grounded.

 

[Rollo Tamasi]

Good morning brother,
I am just like yourself in respect to the Holy spirit. Unlike David, the Spirit is ever present and I know this because of His correctional tugging but my spiritual eyes are, also, not opened. My baby girl, my granddaughter has seen a Spirit Being but I have not, not to this point. When their automobile died in the middle of the highway, the drunk, that Sunday morning, destroyed their car by smashing into it at better than 70 miles per hour and when the responding officer asked her why she was not injured when her mom was injured so badly. In response she informed the officer in the same manner that she later informed us, "The angel appeared to her, just before the collision and he held on to her until the wreck was over and he then left."

She has never enjoyed that gift of discernment again but now grown and married, is much like the rest of us Christian nuts, she feels the presence through the Spirit's corrective tugging (teaching) and answered prayers. She, like I, my wife and my daughter long to see the angles but we all realize they are here but, we are to live by faith, not by sight.

Nice story, but it sounds like a vision.
Maybe I'm blind, but where is the discernment?

 

[Willie T]

Good answers.
Yet you can't tell for sure with my examples?
So how can we tell for sure where it comes from?

Well, I really can only talk about MY examples. And usually, like the nursery impression. they are just flitting thoughts that I normally probably wouldn't have entertained in a million years.

Now, there WAS a time when I would almost say I at least had some special awareness on a regular basis.

As I think you know, before I retired, I dealt with criminals. Mostly Sex Offenders and Child Molesters. At one time, years ago, I could almost always look at a Parent/Child relationship, and seemingly know, without a shadow of a doubt, if there was abuse there. Sadly, it began to get to me, and weighed heavily on me. I got angry with God about almost being swallowed by all that perversion around me, and I swore that I wanted no more of this ability to see so much sadness.

It immediately ended around 1990, and has never returned since.

I can't really say if that was some sort of "gifting", or not. But I do know that I can no longer tap into it.

 

[Willie T]

Good morning brother,
I am just like yourself in respect to the Holy spirit. Unlike David, the Spirit is ever present and I know this because of His correctional tugging but my spiritual eyes are, also, not opened. My baby girl, my granddaughter has seen a Spirit Being but I have not, not to this point. When their automobile died in the middle of the highway, the drunk, that Sunday morning, destroyed their car by smashing into it at better than 70 miles per hour and when the responding officer asked her why she was not injured when her mom was injured so badly. In response she informed the officer in the same manner that she later informed us, "The angel appeared to her, just before the collision and he held on to her until the wreck was over and he then left."

She has never enjoyed that gift of discernment again but now grown and married, is much like the rest of us Christian nuts, she feels the presence through the Spirit's corrective tugging (teaching) and answered prayers. She, like I, my wife and my daughter long to see the angles but we all realize they are here but, we are to live by faith, not by sight.

I have heard way too many stories of children (especially very young ones) seeing into the Spiritual Realm, not to firmly believe that both children and (surprisingly) animals are much more aware of that existence than almost any of us.

 

[th1b.taylor]

Nice story, but it sounds like a vision.
Maybe I'm blind, but where is the discernment?

It is important to remember the classes Willie explained. One of the classes is expressed in scripture when the servant of either Elijah or Elisha saw the Angles Army protecting them. If Ashley had a vision, that does not explain the lack of seat belt injuries, nor does it explain why my daughter suffer injuries from both the steering wheel as well as from the dash and yet Ashly had zero damage to her body from anything as the car was compressed to half it's original length. And she not only saw the angel, he held on to her, visions do not restrain folks nor do they keep the car from buckling in one area. My daughter was removed, only, with the Jaws Of Life and Ashly's door just opened and she stepped out.

 

[th1b.taylor]

I have heard way too many stories of children (especially very young ones) seeing into the Spiritual Realm, not to firmly believe that both children and (surprisingly) animals are much more aware of that existence than almost any of us.

Totally agree. My beginning service was teaching Primaries, first, second and third grades. I learned far more because of those young ones than I ever taught them and I can say that in spite of have a personal connection with one of my former students and having encountered one of them since I left that field and both are still in the service of the LORD and right or wrong, both credit my teaching for their grounding.

 

[Edward]

Well, to answer the first, I'll tell you about something which happened (and happens fairly often....IF I pay attention, and receive these very SLIGHT tuggings.)

I was in a group meeting one night at church. Some people came in looking for a homeless guy who had been there. No one knew where he might have wandered off to, so people went driving off in several directions, trying to find him. Our group remained and continued our studies.

During this time, an impression came to me that, "he is in the nursery". It seemed silly, so I ignored it.

An hour, or so, later, all the people came back to the church, and one of them "just happened" to go look in the empty and dark nursery. There he was, curled up, sleeping on the floor.

Now, that was just the Holy Spirit telling me something. And I ignored it. But almost half of our church get things like that all the time. And this is NOT the gift spoken of in the Bible. That gift is clearly expressed, in the original languages, as actually being aware of the almost physical presence of spirits..... "Angels", if you will.

I'm pretty sure there is not one person in our congregation who "sees" supernatural beings. Prophesies, yes... and I think those people are "gifted"....and many of us (myself, included) are engaged in healing (still not really "gifted" though). However we do have some people sometimes visiting in our midst who ARE very obviously "gifted" with the ministry of healing.

Passed it off as just your imagination eh, brother?! That's how it goes and we've been taught that our imagination is to be ignored. Jonathon Welton did a video about this. (Youtube-School of the Seer Conferance parts 1-4) He said children may be able to see spiritual beings easier than adults because they haven't been taught to ignore them yet. "Mommy, there's a monster in my closet!"
Go to sleep, it's just your imagination...Jon said when his kid did this, he went into their room and asked the child to describe it, which she did in detail. Then he told the child that Jesus has given us authority over them, remember? Let's pray and tell it to go away in Jesus name...So they did. This is the approach that should be taken. Imagination is not something to be dismissed as unreal, it could be our spiritual senses acting for us and we have to be sensitive to them. Imagination is the spiritual realm. Everything which began, first began in the imagination.

The chair you sit on was only imagination before invented. They went to the spiritual realm, received the picture of the chair, came back and designed it into a reality. I guess I'm in the 10% too, I can't see spirits and don't claim to be able to do this or to have spiritual discernment. I do pray for it though, a lot.

Knowing if it is God speaking to you can be tricky. We have three voices in our heads. God, us, and the enemy. Bruce Allen did a video on how to learn this discernment to be able to tell who is speaking to you in your head. Think of a question during the day. At night before bed pray, and ask God the question (be ready with pen and paper). Write down everything which comes to mind. Then ask again, is that all father? and write down anything else that you may think of. Then go to bed. In the morning, look through the list. Scratch off anything that does not agree with scripture. Do this for two weeks before bed. Then you'll be able to tell who speaking to you. Good thread.

 

[Danus]

...........I'm not sure we are all on the same page as to what the gift of "Discernment of spirits" is.

I read the OP, and don't think I found any real error, but it seems this thread is disintegrating into mystical ideas of spiritual ghost and the ability to see beings.....???

To me, every born-again believer has a certain amount of discernment, which increases as the believer matures in the Spirit. There are certain individuals, however, who have the God-given ability to distinguish between the truth of the Scriptures and erroneous and deceptive doctrines propagated by demons. Although we are all exhorted to be spiritually discerning Acts 17:11, 1 John 4:1 some in the body of Christ have been given the unique ability to “spot” the forgeries in doctrine that have plagued the church since the first century. But this does not involve a mystical, extra-biblical revelation or a voice from God. Rather, the spiritually discerning among us are so familiar with the Word of God that they instantly recognize what is contrary to it. They do not receive special messages from God; they use the Word of God to “test the spirits” to see which line up with God and which are in opposition to Him. The spiritually discerning are those who “rightly divide” 2 Timothy 2:15 the Word of God in a thoughtful and diligent manner.

Are we not on the same page with this understanding? Are we talking about the same thing? Help me out here.

 

[Willie T]

...........I'm not sure we are all on the same page as to what the gift of "Discernment of spirits" is.

I read the OP, and don't think I found any real error, but it seems this thread is disintegrating into mystical ideas of spiritual ghost and the ability to see beings.....???

To me, every born-again believer has a certain amount of discernment, which increases as the believer matures in the Spirit. There are certain individuals, however, who have the God-given ability to distinguish between the truth of the Scriptures and erroneous and deceptive doctrines propagated by demons. Although we are all exhorted to be spiritually discerning Acts 17:11, 1 John 4:1 some in the body of Christ have been given the unique ability to “spot” the forgeries in doctrine that have plagued the church since the first century. But this does not involve a mystical, extra-biblical revelation or a voice from God. Rather, the spiritually discerning among us are so familiar with the Word of God that they instantly recognize what is contrary to it. They do not receive special messages from God; they use the Word of God to “test the spirits” to see which line up with God and which are in opposition to Him. The spiritually discerning are those who “rightly divide” 2 Timothy 2:15 the Word of God in a thoughtful and diligent manner.

Are we not on the same page with this understanding? Are we talking about the same thing? Help me out here.

To begin with, is there such a thing as a believer who is not born again? Truthfully, when someone uses that term, I begin to wonder what else they are easing into the Word. To me, it rings the same bell as naming someone, a "real" Christian... or NOT a "real" Christian.

 

[Danus]

That depends on what you mean by believer. Even the devil believes in God. Born again means to be converted, changed from man-centered to God-centered by the Holly Spirit. In any case, so that we don't go down a rabbit hole chasing other things, are we talking about the same thing when it comes to discernment of spirits? I posted that.

 

[Willie T]

That depends on what you mean by believer. Even the devil believes in God. Born again means to be converted, changed from man-centered to God-centered by the Holly Spirit. In any case, so that we don't go down a rabbit hole chasing other things, are we talking about the same thing when it comes to discernment of spirits? I posted that.

That is why I worded my first sentence the way I did.
If we have different ideas on the very first thing you said ("born-again"), and if the differences continue right into a couple of other things you may have posted, how in the world are we to just gloss over them, and jump to discussing a third or fourth concept that has a direct tie to the initial idea?

This is something I have noticed happens a lot here. We often throw out three or four "givens", and then begin to build upon what we see as a sound (I HATE that word) foundation.

It would like me saying, "Since God hates us because we sin......." and then running with a new-found idea we think everyone needs to know.

All that to say, "I think it should be obvious that hardly any of us are thinking the same thing about what discernment is." For instance, you said that when a person becomes a believer (pardon... "born-again" believer) they automatically have discernment. And I say there's no way that is even rational.

 

[Edward]

That depends on what you mean by believer. Even the devil believes in God. Born again means to be converted, changed from man-centered to God-centered by the Holly Spirit. In any case, so that we don't go down a rabbit hole chasing other things, are we talking about the same thing when it comes to discernment of spirits? I posted that.

That is a good question brother, one that I've pondered myself. "Believer"...So I did a word study on it, and it is more than holding it as a truth in your heart (which the devil does because he knows), but it is more, it means having faith in or trusting the other. To me, this implies more than holding it in your heart, but walking it out. Trusting Him daily, moment by moment.

Your other question is a fair one. Is discernment being able to see spiritual beings, or merely being able to discern right from wrong, truth from lies...Personally, I think it is either or both depending upon the level of anointing or maturity. I have a fair amount of being able to rightly divide truth from lie, but have never been able to see spirits. To be able to do this would scare some people, and they have posted that they would not want to be able to see them...and I have to wonder why, because if you can see them, then they sure can't sneak up on you! Besides, we have all authority over them through Jesus. This would change a lot of peoples walk, if they could see these spirits with their eyes. If you had a backstabbing so-called "friend" in front of you and he was feeding you a pack of lies about where your money went or whatever...but you could see the demon on his back...this would change your outlook on the situation. You wouldn't get mad at the friend, for you would see the truth of the situation and would approach it differently. You would pray for him, or command that the spirit leave in Jesus name rather than get mad at your friend.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. People seem to have a hard time remembering this, or believing it.

 

[Danus]

For instance, you said that when a person becomes a believer (pardon... "born-again" believer) they automatically have discernment. And I say there's no way that is even rational.

Let me clarify what I said with the magic of copy past; "every born-again believer has a certain amount of discernment, which increases as the believer matures in the Spirit."

Do you not think that is true or rational?

 

[Willie T]

Let me clarify what I said with the magic of copy past; "every born-again believer has a certain amount of discernment, which increases as the believer matures in the Spirit."

Do you not think that is true or rational?

Well, are you indicating that through being "born-again" (which I DO believe in) you feel a person, at that time, obtains this "certain amount of discernment?"