Friday, September 27, 2013

THE GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT: Revelational Gifts: Discerning of Spirits - 2

Source: Google Images
Now as we journey through life, serving the Lord in this physical world, the Holy Spirit equips us with His gifts to accomplish what He desires and one such gift is Discerning of Spirits. Through this gift we can “peer”, as it were, into the spirit realm.

This gift enables us to identify what spirit we are encountering or interacting with as we walk in love towards others and serve the Lord. There are four kinds of spirits that we can identify and distinguish from one another through the operation of this gift. These spirits are:

1.   The Spirit of God
2.   Angelic spirits
3.   Human spirits
4.   Demonic spirits

How Discerning of Spirits operates

The short simple answer is: as the Holy Spirit wills.
As with all the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, there is no one way that this gift operates, the Holy Spirit uses each one of us as uniquely as we are, but the key thing is, this gift is revelational. That means one can only be able to distinguish between spirits accurately by revelation, not by reasoning or by logically deducing events seeking to arrive at a conclusive identification of the spiritual entity behind a situation.

One may study all the different kinds of spirits, learn all the different techniques of discerning spirits and as helpful at that may be, it may hinder one from actually allowing the Holy Spirit to use them in this gift as they will be stuck in the “techniques” and “steps” of discerning they learned, and before long they find themselves walking in the fleshly counterfeit of suspicion or worse the spiritual counterfeit of divination.

Discerning of Spirits is a knowing, a certainty, an assurance of the identity of a spirit in one’s spirit by the power of the Holy Spirit. He may reveal it by an impression in your spirit, a word in your mind, a vision, a smell, a specific sensation in your body etc. Bottom line is, the Holy Spirit knows how to get your attention and how to reveal different things to different people, He knows us all, we would be wasting our time sticking to formulas and methods, let’s just flow with Him, we are to be in fellowship with Him after all, aren't we?

I’m sure many of us have discerned spirits even without being aware we are doing it, how many times have you “sensed” a “presence” that was either “good, sweet, calming, peaceful” as in a worship service or when you were just by yourself meditating on how good Jesus is to you? You just experienced the Spirit of God manifesting Himself and angels ministering to you. This has been my experience countless times and even now as I type this, I’m experiencing an angelic presence around me. From time to time I see three angels riding in my truck with me, I know my Abba Father is taking good care of me! Hallelujah! 

Those times when we “sense” an “evil, malicious, vicious,” presence, we should know we've encountered the host of hell, demons. This is especially common in deliverance ministry. I've personally experienced this many many times. For me it is usually a distinct tingling sensation on a side of my body or a vision of the spirit we are evicting or a putrid smell or a combination of all those things. As we seek to deliver those that the enemy has bound, we will encounter these spirits but greater is He that is in us! As we focus on He who is our victory – Christ – we will be victorious every single time.


Source: Google Images
This gift is not limited just to worship settings or just to deliverance sessions; the Holy Spirit may reveal what spirits are operating around us and if they are demonic masquerading as “angels of light”, we can expose and expel them. The enemy can try to sneak into the church through individuals saying all the right words and acting accordingly and unless this gift is in operation in the assembly and especially in the leadership, casualties are inevitable.

>>> TO BE CONTINUED

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