The Never Ending Pop Quiz - Discernment for the common man.
The need for discernment is paramount in the life of a christian. Lack of discernment is like leaving the door open for anything to enter. Just because something is said in the name of God does not mean it came from God, yet it seems that far to often many things spoken in the name of God are received with minimal or no testing. The willingness to test prophetic utterances and advice is paramount and it is our responsibility to test the things we hear. The devil is not stupid and his goal is to hurt God in any way he can by ensnaring you in lies to draw you away from God. Peter wrote, “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)
The ability to discern comes from God because discernment is just a derivation of wisdom. The apostle James wrote, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5) The big thing to note here is we must ask for wisdom and inherent in this statement is the implied will to walk in the wisdom God gives. One can have a million dollars deposited in the bank, but if they never actually draw it out and spend it, it won’t do any good. So it is with wisdom, it is important to use what you are given.
Sometimes we can become jaded and reject all things we hear, but we must not distain something that is said. Instead we must objectively put it under the microscope and look at it to see if it lines up with biblical standards. The apostle Paul wrote, “Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophetic utterances. But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.” (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21) The biblical standard starts out with what the Paul wrote, “But one who prophesies speaks to men for edification and exhortation and consolation.” (1 Corinthians 14:3) This gives us a general direction of what a true prophetic utterance from God will sound like. It will edify, exhort, or comfort and if you hear something outside of those constraints, then it is probably suspect. These constraints in of themselves do not constitute a complete range of testing and so therefore we need to look deeper.
The bible was given to us in written form to serve as an anchor and the standard by which all prophetic utterances are measured against. One very simple and straight forward test we can apply is to ask the question, “Does this utterance disagree with anything written in the bible?” If you don’t ask this question, you will expose yourself to taking in lies. Paul wrote to Timothy, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4) So to effectively answer the question if this disagrees with the bible, one must know the scriptures. An excellent example of a people checking things out were the Bereans. In the book of Acts it was spoken of the Bereans, “The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” (Acts 17:10-11) They did not just take Paul’s word, but confirmed what was being said.
Sometimes people hear something spoken to them in prayer or a spirit appears to them and they are given a message. Many times I have heard stories of people who thought they were given a message from God but it turns out to be a destructive message. The problem is not hearing the message, but acting upon it without proper testing. If you don’t test what you hear, then you will become a false prophet. Listen to what the apostle John wrote, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” (1 John 4:1-6)
So what do you do with things you can’t confirm or deny? In other words, what do you do when there is no evidence that will allow you to draw a conclusion? In this case there should be a shelf in your mind where you place such things and leave it there. If the utterance is from God, God will confirm it. You never want to act on something that you don’t know its source because you are gambling that it isn’t from the devil or of mere men. Acting on an unknown is not walking in faith, but stupidity. Faith believes what God says when it is known to be from God. Faith is not blindly walking into a pit because someone told you to do it and faith is not faith for the sake of faith.
Another aspect of discernment is to never substitute your judgement for God’s judgement. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.” (John 5:19) What Jesus is saying is He waits for God to show him what to do and then acts upon what God reveals. This is a perfect example of deferring to God the Father. The opposite of this is to be presumptuous and assume what God wants where your judgement becomes the standard for the will of God.
Exercising discernment comes down to be willing to ask some critical questions before choosing to accept something as truth. Paul exhorted us examine everything carefully. It should be second nature to a invoke a pop quiz for everything you hear before accepting it as truth. The standard is to do this 100% of the time. If you relax your guard, the devil will take advantage of your inattentiveness and slip one under the radar. Paul wrote about our days, “and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” We see this coming to pass this very day and the choice is before you. Do you love lies or do you love truth? If you love truth, then you will test all things so that you may know what is the truth with confidence.