Spiritual Gifts part 161: Pride fills your head with smoke.

Spiritual Gifts Part 161: Pride fills your head with smoke.

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).

Discernment
is the skill of distinguishing between what is from God and what isn’t.

Discernment is being able to determine what is coming from the thinking of Christ and what is coming from doctrines of demons, 1Tim 4:1.

1Ti 4:1
But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons,

Rom 14:23
But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.

Mat 10:16
“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.”

the first demonic doctrine:
 
1. It is a lie
2. It exalts self
3. It opposes God

The lie here is not just the fact that they could never be as God is.
 
It consisted in rejecting God and His purpose for them.
 

Sin is self-centered living and action on the part of a creature who is by creation designed to be wholly centered in God.

So discernment is ultimately a soul thing, a thought thing.
 

 And the source of things is ultimately somebody’s soul:
yours, another person’s , an angel’s, God’s, satan’s.

Sin and evil originated inside the soul of one angel.

2Co 2:11
so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.

His undertakings and ideas are wholly evil because they are all completely opposed to God.

satan is also the living personification of deception, Joh 8:44.

In fact the very first sin was a thought.

The Bible tells us that angelic sin is along the lines of three closely related evils:
 

1. Ambitious pride
2. Anti-God
3. Untruth
 
This captures the essential character of satan.

1 Timothy 3:6 tells us that satan’s primary sin was pride.
 

τυΦόω
aor-pass –part of tuphoo
to envelop with smoke, i.e. (figuratively) to inflate with self-conceit

tupho
[a primary verb];
to make a smoke, i.e. slowly consume without flame

to raise a smoke, to wrap in a mist; used only metaphorically

to puff up with pride, render insolent;
passive, to be puffed up with haughtiness or pride, 1Ti 3:6

to blind with pride or conceit, to render foolish or stupid: 1Ti 6:4

the process of burning slowly, with accompanying smoke and relatively little glow – “to smolder, to flicker”.

to be so arrogant as to be practically demented - 'to be insanely arrogant, to be extremely proud, to be very arrogant.'