Discerning of spirits

By Tyrone Garrat

1Cor 12:1-10. This passage of Scripture describes the 9 ‘gifts’ of the Spirit. This is not the ‘fruit’ of the Spirit, but gifts given to Believers in Jesus for the building up of the church.

Another version says, ‘distinguishing between spirits’ which means that when we have the gift of discerning spirits it means we have the ability to distinguish between the two spirits.  So when someone is speaking we will be able to discern whether what they are saying is coming from God or whether it is coming from satan (e.g. when Jesus said to Paul, “Get behind me satan”.

This gift works alongside the gift of knowledge.

There are four types of spirit:

1.       God’s Spirit

2.       Heavenly Spirits

3.       Human spirit

4.       Evil spirits

We all know about the Holy Spirit which is given to all Believers when they are ‘born again’. Heavenly spirits are the angels and the cherubim and seraphim. The human spirit is inside every human being.

Finally evil spirits are all the forces that oppose the will of God, such as fear, doubt, despair, distraction, tiredness, laziness etc.

I read a story about a man who received a prophecy and he was immediately able to see all kinds of demonic forms and he saw people with things like arrows in them which represented such things as hatred and bitterness, envy and jealousy and al kinds of afflictions. If you have the gift of discerning spirits you will see demonic forms.

Once I (Tyrone) was in the supermarket and I became aware of the people around me and as I looked at each one I felt an ability to see into their lives as if they were open books. Even though people had no idea this was happening they were opened to me.

(Hugh) Often sparkly eyes go hand-in-hand with someone who knows Jesus. You can just see by looking at them.

(Colleen) In the book of Exodus, there is the story of Moses who came down from the Mountain and whose face shone because he had been in the presence of God.

(Robbie) It’s like a ‘first love’, when we come to the Lord, which for me lasted the first 6 weeks and then faded. But even now you can sense when God is with you.

I (Tyrone) also read about a man called Frances of Assisi who had such a peace about him that the animals were attracted to him and he even befriended a wolf!

 There are men of God like Smith Wigglesworth (1859-1947), a British evangelist who was part of the  Pentecostal movement, who had such a power about them that when they stepped into a tram for example, they began preaching and the power of God fell on the people and they ended up falling down, weeping and repenting.

Such is the power and holiness of God that even Peter said to Jesus when he realized the truth that he was standing before God, felt shame and asked to Jesus to ‘depart from him for he (Peter) is a sinful man’

Let us be encouraged to continue to seek God and may He give us the grace and humility to stay the course until the end! Amen

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.

Gift of Discernment (part I)

By Odon Bulamba (28 September 2007)

Discernment is a gift used to help the church to understand what God's will is. Jesus told us to put our lamp on the hill for everyone to see. It must have kerosene in side and a wick to carry the kerosene to the flame. When we were children, we watched my mother with the kerosene lamp and she would make sure it was full of oil and the wick was long enough and it was cleaned regularly. The kerosene lamp must only have the right fluid inside. You can not use water or any other liquid, only kerosene.

If you say that you will mix the kerosene with diesel, there will be a big explosion and discernment is the same, when you try to mix up the Word of God with your feelings with what you believe should be true or correct, whoever you will go to talk to or speak to, things will not work properly and it will explode.

To discern means to understand, it also means to clarify. It is a gift from God that helps you to know how you should understand things and how you should transmit them from God to other people. It is the same role that the wick plays in the lamp, to make the connection between the source of energy which is petrol with the light. The source of energy is the church today and we are really similar to petrol because without us, the power of God will not act but that power is very small. He doesn't give us all his portion, he just gives to us a small part and says, “now use this for My glory for the growth of your church”. That small light we were given is what we are calling the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The kerosene lamp that you have will shine only a very small light compared to the big light of an electric bulb. My mother used to take a match and light the lamp and the light from the lamp is likely to continue to be there as long as no one moved the petrol or the wick. Just like petrol can dry out, we people, whenever we try to dry, the power of God won't work any more.

If you are really a son or daughter of God, whenever you put yourself away from God, whenever you remove yourself away from the church like taking the wick away from the entire lamp, then God will not have a place where he should dwell and the Holy Spirit will not have a chance to work anymore. That power will start to die and when it's dying you will start to see obscurity will increase in your life and finally that will be all, there will be no light at all.

In our lives and in our hearts we have the Word of God, we have got our thoughts and our energy and everything that we know, so when the Holy Spirit is going to enlighten us, what part of our bodies, hearts or resources do we use?

I will give you an example, someone was told that within two weeks your mother will meet with a person who will offer your mother three small boxes and those three small boxes are full treasure so your mother will become rich. That young man was so excited about that message he went first of all to tell all his friends, “I had a revelation today and something is coming”. His friends were like, “really, are you sure?” He said, “you will see it within a few days” and then within a few days they saw a man coming and offering his mother three small boxes.

When the mother received those boxes the man told everybody, “Did you see? Now that's what I told yesterday” and that brought up the bad intention of his friends to attack his mother and kill her to take the boxes because they knew it was a treasure.

So discernment is not the spirit of prophecy, discernment is something that we have to discover and take the message to someone we are told to.

When we discover a wrong preaching we shouldn’t tell others but go directly to the preacher and say, ‘according to my understanding, I believe this preaching is not too bad, but somewhere here doesn't fit’. For example in the Catholic church you cannot preach the Bible or the Gospel if you are not wearing the robe, if you go just like the way that Tyrone is there, they will not accept Tyrone as a priest because you must be in the robed. Why that? Why can't they accept people to preach the way that they are?

But if you have the spirit of discernment you can advise but make sure your advice won't be an attack. Make sure your advice won't be a battle or a fight but it will be something simple. Now you will be that wick that will make the transition between the petrol and fire and after that everybody will look around you and see the light is new but if people don't see the light in you, definitely they will see a darkness.

When it's time to go to bed our mother used to take that lamp and she used to remove the glass and blow the light out. Just a small blow would kill that fire and everything changed to darkness meaning that sometimes if you are not really keen to look after that small gift of yours, power will come from somewhere and blow it out and you will lose it

Discernment is very good for the church, it's very good for yourself and it's very good for the entire community because you can make the difference between wrong and right. You will know whether the messages are from God or from somewhere else and you will know if this encouragement is a true one or a fake one and it's not an assumption either.

Sometimes you can see someone coming to you and talking to you in a way that looks fake but that is the right way, that is the correct way and some other times someone can come to you in church who look serious but are telling a false story, so if you just look at the appearance, a person can be mislead you.

So discernment now will help you to understand what is correct and what is not correct. Let's say you go to church on Sunday and the preacher is preaching that Adam and Eve had five children. Is that true or false? Tell me the answer; Adam had four girls and three boys, is this true or false? If it isn't written and you haven't read that, just say, ‘I have never read that’, because there are some other Bibles that have more books than yours and maybe there is manuscripts there that say more.

Don't make it a discussion when it's a matter of discernment, don't tell someone they are completely wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and I can't believe it. Better to say, ‘from my Bible that isn't written like that, I have never come across that, how can we know what is the truth, how can we support each other to help each other to know if we're on the right track?’

When we are discerning that someone is wrong, it's not now your opportunity to go and attack them. Discernment works with wisdom and if you want discernment to be something great we have to take the example of Solomon when those two ladies gave birth and accidentally one of them rolled over on top of her son and killed the baby and in the morning time she discovered that her baby was dead and swapped her baby with another one and the other mother knew somehow that this was not her baby and she believed the one that was the alive was hers.

Judges were unable to bring justice, lawyers could not defend the case, people who had wisdom could not sort it out and no one could intervene, so they had to go to the king. How many levels did they pass to reach the level to see a king which means that this was a serious case. It was serious because the involved life. The King discerned this one is wrong and that one is right but how should I put it so that they won't be offended. How should I intervene? So he said, ‘give me a sword and we will share this body, you will take one part and the other will take the other part’ and of course the mother of the boy cried and said, ‘please don't do it, don't kill him, better to keep him alive and given to her’. The other one said, ‘divide the baby in two it will be good’.

It was clear, black on white that the baby wasn't hers, so the King sorted out the problem. We are also kings and we are also princes of this world and if there is an issue that we have to deal with, God will give to us the discernment so we will be able to clarify things to challenge the situation. This challenge won't be for our glory, to show the world that we are supernatural, but the challenge will be to support and to help and to assist, to make things clear for others.

Very often wives will tell husbands, ‘see now, I told you, I told you, you didn't listen’. Although you discerned that if your husband were to do something it would be a mistake, you don't have to tell him in front of everybody. Just encourage your husband and tell him that is fine, I know it's a problem, you didn't understand it, anyway let's find another way and let's move on.

Some ladies and some men will become angry whenever they discern something. For example, sister Colleen has lost a wallet and she discovers that I stole it and she discerns that I am the one who stole it; how will Colleen feel knowing that someone like Odon stole my wallet, this is unbelievable, I can't believe this and she will ask God, is this really true God and you will say yes, he is the one, he has that under his shoes or somewhere there.

Colleen will wonder, shall I really continue to believe that he is a brother in God.