Missing Discernment
Philippians 1:9-10 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
Dear Saints of God, in the above mentioned verse Apostle Paul instructs the church to grow in love, in depth knowledge so that we may be able to discern. The church from the beginning of time has been a victim of confusion and deception due to lack of discernment. We can see it in the garden of Eden to the time where people rejected Jesus in Nazareth. The same situation is prevalent today.
There are many factors that contribute towards this scenario. Discernment is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as spoken in 1 Corinthians 12:10. Sadly there are not many teachers who teach on this subject but also there are not many believers who want to learn about this gift either. The teachings on prophecy, healing and miracles are encouraged and accepted. Nowadays politics is not found in the parliament as much as it is seen on the pulpit. There are people who are using the gift of discernment as a weapon to settle scores and degrade people. When the gifts of the Holy Spirit are used without love, the results are fatal.
There are three kinds of mature believers who sit in churches. One are those who do not question what they hear from the pulpit. The second kind are those who who keep questioning and criticising what they hear, and the last ones are the loyal ones who decide to keep silent inspite of knowing what’s wrong. There are many reasons to this, some of them are more loyal to the leaders than to the Lord, some don’t want to invite trouble etc. But the Bible says to whom much is given much will be asked (Luke 12:48). There are many instances in the Bible where God has spoken through his prophets and apostles and Jesus himself has spoken about the false prophets. When we hear the term false prophet we feel that it is associated with prophecy but it actually means false teachers. In other words the person who is biblically wrapping a false message and deceiving people to follow it. We need discernment to understand such people and their teaching.
As human beings we all make mistakes. But when a person is corrected in love how he or she responds tells us under which spirit they operate. The gifts of the Spirit are to build the Kingdom of God and not a man’s kingdom. One cannot preach humility while he is living in ego city. Its high time the ministers of the gospel practise what they preach and live it out.
The coming days are tough. Do not allow anyone to deceive you to live a compromising life and follow wrong doctrines. No one has authority to add, subtract or twist the word of God. So be filled with the Holy Ghost and tune your ears to the still small voice of God so that the gift of discerment operates in you along with the fruit of love. This will help in the edification of the body of Christ. Have a victorious day- Pastor T.Bakshi.