Class Outline:
Pastor-Teacher
John Farley
Wednesday,
August 24, 2011
Spiritual Gifts Part 157: We see appearances; God sees the heart.
The Doctrine of Spiritual Gifts
Point 3: What is a “Spiritual Gift”?
A spiritual gift is a supernatural ability graciously given by God the Holy Spirit to each believer ( without regard to merit) at the moment of salvation …
…so that the Holy Spirit might manifest Himself in effective service for the benefit of the Royal Family, ending up with God the Father being glorified through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Your spiritual gift becomes operational as you grow spiritually.
Discernment from spiritual growth is part of being equipped to function effectively in your spiritual gift.
What is discernment?
Discernment is the skill in separating divine truth from error and half truth.
Discernment is the ability to consistently and successfully identify thoughts, teachings, teachers, situations and people…
… according to whether they are sent from God or from the kingdom of darkness (the sin nature, the world system, or fallen angels).
There is a wisdom that is earthly, natural, and demonic.
And there is another wisdom that comes down from above.
We must be trained to be able to distinguish between these two absolutely antithetical kinds of wisdom.
There are six characteristics of the wisdom that is earthly (world system), natural (sin nature), demonic (kingdom of darkness).
bitter Jealousy
selfish Ambition
Arrogance
Lies
Disorder
Evil
But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.
The clues are in your OWN heart!
We are to let the Holy Spirit train us to be able to recognize what is going on inside our own soul.
The first discernment skill is to have the Spirit deploy the word of God to consistently and reliably read the situation in our soul.
There is an order to how the word of God trains us to be discerning, and the first order of business is to let the word of God discern our own souls.
When it comes to human beings, we tend to notice appearances, but the Bible tells us that the Lord looks at the heart.
b for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."
We know that, by birth and by nature , every human heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.
