Spiritual Gifts part 156: Discernment starts with your own soul.

Pastor-Teacher

John Farley

Sunday,

August 21, 2011

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.

Wisdom and discernment are needed to function properly no matter what your spiritual gift is.

Don’t be concerned with operating in your spiritual gift until you have a heart full of doctrine that has matured into wisdom by regular use.

Discernment from spiritual growth is part of being equipped to function effectively in your spiritual gift.

Why discernment is needed for the spiritual gift of:

Pastor-teacher
Evangelist
Administration
Giving
Mercy

Helps
Exhortation
Service
Teacher
Faith

What is discernment?

Discernment is the skill in separating divine truth from error and half truth.

Biblical discernment is demonstrated in the correct application of sound doctrine to one’s circumstances.

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

Jam 3:17 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.

When it comes to discernment, there is really only one way to know the real source of things, and that is by examining the fruit.