Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Do I Have the Gift of Discernment?

When I pastored one of my churches, there were several people who believed, and told me that they had the gift of discernment. Watching their lives, I can tell you - they had no more discernment than anybody else in the group.

If you are one of these people who take great pride in discernment, I will tell you this:

The most discerning person realizes that he/she makes mistakes and can be fooled or even duped by others from time to time. If you can admit that and take that into any social equation, I will believe that you may have a gift in discernment.

If you are not aware of this, I would not give your gift the time of day. What you have is a human centered gut level feeling. Your belief that you have discernment is the result of a few times that you had a feeling; and it just happened that you were right. We've all had those experiences. Some more than others.

Those experiences which we have all had are subconscious conclusions based on data that we are not picking up consciously. God may at times goad something in you, but be careful about getting proud about it. And be careful about thinking, just because you were right in a case or two, that you are always right, or almost always....

No comments:

Post a Comment