Spiritual Gifts part 309: Why do we need discernment?

Pastor-Teacher
John Farley
Sunday,
September 16, 2012

Spiritual Gifts Part 309:

Why do we need to have discernment?

The Doctrine of Spiritual Gifts

Point 4.
Developing the capacity you need to function effectively in your spiritual gift.

What is discernment?

Spiritual discernment is the heightened ability to read or hear a teaching, to encounter a problem, or to consider a proposed course of action…,

…, and then determine whether the source behind the teaching, problem or action is divine, merely human, or satanic.
 

Discernment is putting space between things that should not be mixed.

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

Spiritual discernment is the ability to separate God’s person, God’s work, God’s will, God’s truth from everything else that wants to encroach upon it. [MacArthur]

Discernment is being able to smell a rat before it bites you! [spiritually speaking, of course]

Why do we need to have discernment?

One reason is because there are those two kinds of wisdom in James 3.

There is a wisdom that comes from below = earthly, natural and demonic.
 
And there is that wisdom that comes from above = the mind of Christ.

We must be renewed, equipped, and trained to be able to distinguish between these two absolutely antithetical kinds of wisdom.

And the naturally minded man cannot discern, cannot distinguish between the two, 1Co 2:1-16 !

 

 


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