Gifts of Discernment (part II)

By Odon Bulamba (28 September 2007)

God has given us the light and we are supposed to be the light for others but how do we become the light for others?

I will give you an example when you go to bed and you want to sleep and you feel the sleep is coming now and then someone turns on the light, how would you feel? Annoyed, just because of the light you will be annoyed. Which means that whenever someone is in a wrong direction, if you want to prove to that person I am a 220 V power for light, that person will become angry and it won't sort out the problem.

Start slowly and first of all tell the person quietly, wake up now please and tell him gently, something is wrong in your bed. The person will wake up to find out what is wrong in the bed and they will want to turn the light on. That is the strategy, but you cannot just go to someone and say look and point your finger at that person and tell them he did this and this and that. The person will tell you that they are free and ask you, you the firstborn of Jesus Christ, you may be the second born after Christ, are you born from a holy spirit, who do you think that you are? So we have to understand what we are living

We can read I Corinthians 12: 10, “and to another the spirit of discernment”, this is another type of discernment. This is not the discernment of wrongdoing, this is the spirit of discernment and when we are talking about spirit, it is something that we don't see, it’s something that is hidden somewhere and it’s something which eyes cannot really see or hands cannot touch but we have now to discern what spirit is visiting here, what spirit is in this area.

To discern doesn't require you to study theology, it only requires you to have the Holy Spirit in you because the Holy Spirit will tell you, the Holy Spirit will show you the direction and will let you know this person here is not led by me, this person is led by something else.

Another time there was a man who was a servant of God and then he decided to become the ling of a certain church which means that people in that church don't have to trust in Jesus Christ any more, they don't have to follow Jesus any more but they just have to look at the “king” of that church. He would say, ‘whoever will fix has eyes on me, will get saved. If you have any type of problem, come to me’.

People went to him, people put aside what they had learnt so far, they should discern who was leading the ‘king’, they should maybe pray and ask God what to do something, because we need more clarification.

One-day their leader became sick and as he was sick he didn't know what to do, he became seriously sick and he asked who would like to replace me because I will die very soon. A little child came out and said I would like to play the role because I want to become famous and I want to help because he is dying and the spirit of God doesn't die.

But the death that the boy was talking about was not a physical death it was something spiritual and he understood there was something wrong in the life of that men. How many times in your life have you sat down and asked God, ‘can you please help me to understand what spirit is acting here’.

A good preacher he can stand up and preach perfectly but later on you will hear that the preacher is a magician. For example Marion Brahnam in the 50’s and 60’s was really famous and later it was discovered that he was a magician. People today can talk about Benny Hinn. If you go closer and closer and observe, you will not see anything but if you go closer with discernment, you will discover exactly who the preachers are and this is a gift you can't force. To have discernment is to discover what spirit is in that person.

We have to be careful because we need discernment to know if what we are doing is wrong in front of God. Sometimes we can see somebody doing something and we are sure it’s wrong, but they are correct in God’s eyes.

What do I mean by that? Another man was driving a few days ago and he was really in a rush because he wanted to reach Auckland and somewhere around Huntly his car broke down. “My God I will miss that conference, I will miss what ever I was planning to go to,” but when he reached Auckland, people told him you are really lucky because there was someone here who was prepared to attack you physically because of a declaration that you made a few months ago, so if you were here on time, something wrong would have happened.

While he was on his way his wife told him, ‘please calm down, if your car broke down, doesn't mean the end of the world for you, just accept that and please understand that it is what God wants to happen today.’ But he didn't want that, he was against that. Sometimes God will provoke something in order to support us, in order to defend us.

Once you have that spirit which can tell you about other spirits, you have now to know how to use it because if you use it wrongly, the evil spirits will rein in you. If you had the discernment to know, this spirit is from Satan, the spirit is from sickness, this is the spirit of problems, then now you need to know how to deal with that spirit.

You won't come to me and tell me, ‘you have this evil spirit in you’, because it will be difficult for me to accept that and it will be hard.

Many people who have got the discernment spirit, can be good in counseling, in preaching, in selecting people, in advising about spiritual direction and they can be church elders

If you don't discern something, if you don't understand, please don't kill yourself, don't make it hard for yourself. Many people will cry out to God and say it will be very good for me God if you can let me understand what is going on, I will be so happy God as I can know exactly what Michelle is thinking about or what Michael was dreaming about last night.

But God doesn't allow to give us gifts just to please us so accept to move with other gifts as Paul said in first Corinthians 12, you can have other gifts so use them. Not all of us can have the gift of discernment. Some people have and others don't and that is not the only gift that you should have, it’s good to have it but remember that you have other gifts so please put your gifts in action and don't stick on that and think this is the one that you must have.

Discernment is for the present, if God tells you something about someone, now is the time to use it, don't wait to use it for the future because every time there is a consequence. It is not the gift of prophecy where something will happen in two weeks or in months or even years. When God shows to you something now, it means that he needs it to be fixed now, so please don't wait.

Many people will tell you good things that will make your life easier but you have to understand where they are coming from and what is the source of the information. Yesterday on TV there was a lady who said she has been working in Australia as a psychic for the police. She will say, ‘someone was murdered here and the body was moved here and over there’ and the police will follow the steps and find all the proof and will discover who was the killer.

Paul Henry (the tv presenter interviewing her yesterday) asked her, ‘why don't you just work with the police and they can give you may be $2 million every year and all the cases which are making heads to be really disturbed can be sorted out?’ and she said, ‘it doesn't really work or depend with me, sometimes the spirit will come and tell me and I can be able to talk and sometimes I don't know’.

You have to understand something like that is good for the police but it's not good for God. to discover who stole your things or to discover who has destroyed a family is something really, really good and you'll be happy to hear it, but for God it is different which means that the spirit of discernment should be there to clarify things according to God's will and not according to your feelings or according to the resolve that you are expecting

Some people will go to see witches or magicians and say, ‘help me, support me, tell me about my future,’ and a magician will tell you your future, ‘you will have five dollars tomorrow and after two weeks your mother will die’. Can you change that, I can accept the five dollars but to tell me that my mother would die, I know I can't accept that, it's not a good story.

We also, when God brings that message to us, that message of losing someone that we love, a message of something coming into our family; it can be hard. If you were to hear that the spirit of death is to visit your family in two weeks, you will say, ‘God how come’, and you will believe that it will be better to kneel down in front of God and tell him to please stop it in Jesus name, I don't want that spirit but maybe that is God's plan and maybe he's just telling you in order to prepare your mother, to tell them something is coming and you have to be ready

For example, there is a very famous woman in America who is dying and everybody around the world knows that she is dying soon but nobody has the courage to go and see her and say, ‘death is coming soon, prepare your soul’. She is a Christian and she believes that she knows God but even her pastor it is not able to prepare her life. The church has been praying for her to be healed so if they have the sense that she will die, why will they continue to tell God to heal her instead of maybe telling her, ‘your life is getting worse please get ready’ and then prayer can follow.

If you don't know how to use discernment you will create a disaster in the same way a lamp can explode. Some people will be naturally angry so go to them at the right time and find the right strategy to explain and the more you will go in right direction, the more also you will be able to make the situation to be good but the more you will go in the wrong direction and prove to the person you are more spiritual then them, the more things will become worse.

To discern is really simple it is really easy if you know exactly what you are doing, remove fear, prepare yourself and God will use you.