As published in the West End Chronicle - Fall 2006

When I prayed about writing this article I had intended to go into a whole spiel about harvesting and whatnot…but, being the city girl that I am, God had other plans and as is always the case when I want to write one thing and He needs me to write another, I struggled with my column for four days basically writing no more than “Hello Again Everyone!”.  So let me share with you what The Lord has burdened my heart to share.

As I sat brooding about my inability to write about harvesting, I kept getting the word “discernment” in my mind.

 “OK Lord, where do You want me to go with it?” I finally surrendered.

The first thing I did was went to my handy online dictionary to look up the word discern.

Good ‘Ole Merrium-Webster® says that discern means to “detect with senses other than vision”

In the Book of First John we are told; "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world."

For a Christian, I believe that “senses other than vision” means through the Holy Spirit who dwells within.  I recently had an experience on an Internet prayer board that made way for me to put this gift to the test.

A young lady started off by posting a request for prayer regarding the state taking her children away. She claimed that the people who were doing this were evil and being deceived by the devil into believing that she was an unfit mother. 

I posted my prayers for her and it wasn’t long before she came back on the prayer board sharing a new “revelation” God had given her. She went on to explain that she was formerly into the occult; but was now saved by the blood of Jesus and even though she did not go to church or believe in denomination she felt that God was guiding her via the Holy Spirit.

Now, who am I to judge how the Lord feeds His children; and, up to this point, I was merely an observer of her prayer requests and an interceder asking for God’s will in her life.

Within an hour this same person came back to the prayer board and announced God had told her that the I-Ching (an occult practice for predicting the future) was His way of parting wisdom and guidance to her.

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!  I and about twenty other prayer warriors responded to her post and advised her that she was not hearing from God. We went on to explain the danger in the occult and the danger she was flirting with, backed solidly by His word. 

Her next prayer request was for God to bless her with large amounts of money. She was praying for great wealth to buy a Pontiac GTO, a big house and to relocate to Florida.  Within a 48-hour period; her kids were being taken away, then she was being “led by God” to use the occult to hear Him, then she was claiming God told her to pray for wealth for material things.  WHOA!!!!!!!!!    After the I-Ching statement I strongly felt the Holy Spirit burdening my heart, warning me to be careful.

The very next day, this same person apologized for her mishearing the voice in her head about the occult; but now she decided she was called to be a minister of God to teach His children how to pray wealth into their lives. With absolutely NO biblical basis for her teachings she advertised a web site where she posted messages to herself and when anyone tried to confront her, she immediately accused them of being un-Christian and judging her. She then went on to tell everyone on the prayer board that just the night before, she had become an ordained minister.

It took exactly two-weeks for the moderator of the prayer board to remove her; but that didn’t stop her. She came back under a new name and began again; pretending to be herself and her own mother. 

The bad part about this situation was each time she posted one of these crazy requests, new people to the prayer group who were unaware of her very unstable history would immediately stand in agreement with her. They were asking God to bless her ministry, asking God to help her obtain financial blessings, to bless her as an ordained ministry.

It was only upon her posting to some new Christians that I demanded her scriptural basis for the teachings she was promoting. She instantly accused me of judging her it wasn’t long before some of the other prayer warriors fell into the trap and started accusing me of judging her and even told me that they would never attend MY church because if it teaches me to question someone’s prayers then it’s wrong. These are “mature” Christians we’re talking about here. The same ones who know what happens when we pray “amiss”.

Brother Tom has consistently reminded us that the Scripture: “Judge not that you be not judged” actually means: “Don’t make snap judgments without information”.  The Bible is clear that we are, in fact, enabled – and supposed – to make certain judgments regarding the Christian life.

I pulled out the “big gun” found in First John 4:1.  I pointed out to my fellow Christian brothers and sisters that we were told by Peter, Paul and Jesus to test the spirits.  It is our Christian duty to question the teachings of people claiming to hear from God.  God blesses us with the gift of the spirit discernment to recognize when something truly isn’t lining up with His word and even though these teachings are often widely accepted by the world, it doesn’t make them right!

Each and every day we read a new story about another politician involved in a scandal. Some of these elected officials made their way into office by claiming to be Christians, with a promise to lead in a Christ-like way, only to learn that they may have been involved in very unchristian-like activities and behaviors the whole time.  We get angry when someone says something negative about our favorite candidate and go into fierce political debates on why our candidate is better than theirs only to find out that neither one was the man or woman they claimed to be in order to win the vote.  Could this lack of discernment on the part of the Christian part be a reason why our great nation is further from God than ever? Did we fail to listen to that spirit when making our choices?

It is high time we refocus and out matters BACK into the Lord’s hands. We have the power to do that, we’ve always had it. We need to take our blinders off and allow it to guide us like it once did before it is too late.

Many people will claim to be of God and from God but we know that God has blessed His children with the ability to recognize the wolves in sheep’s clothing not just in the church or government, but everywhere else too.  In the end, each and everyone of us is accountable for the decisions we made and personally…I’d like to know that I made mine with the Holy Spirit guiding me.  Wouldn’t you?

I am comforted knowing that God has given me the choice to be a believer, and no human can take that choice from me; but along with that  choice, I was given the gift of discernment to know that the world will condemn me for the choices I make based on that gift. The way I see it, my Savior faced the same dilemma, He could have chosen to go along with the Pharisees and the Sadducees because it was popular because THEY were popular and the majority followed their rules simply because they were who they were; But thank God, Jesus came and gave us the choice to remove the blinders and DISCERN what is from heaven and what is not.  My prayer is that you will unleash that God given gift and let it guide you today and always and little by little, maybe even faster...we can be what we once were --- only better!

Until we meet again...SIMPLY BELIEVE!