Welcome to Supernatural Saturday.
If you are new here, we just want to just give you a big hearty welcome.
This is my favorite day of the week.
This is where we gather together and we look to the Lord for what is the current prophetic
reality?
What is God trying to say to us corporately, individually?
I really believe in living a life after the Spirit, and that is where all of my breakthrough
comes from.
That is where all of my success comes from, is following after the Spirit of God.
What is God doing?
It doesn't matter what I want to be doing if my wants and my wishes and my desires are
not lining up to His wants and wishes and desires.
People talk about something called God's will.
What is the will of God?
Well, the will of God, according to the Bible, is for you to have peace and righteousness.
That's God's will.
But the will of God, when people talk about it, what they're talking about is what does
God want?
What does He will?
What does He use His will to control in your life kind of thing, and that's not the way
it works.
You have something called your will, free will, choice.
God has given you the gift of choice, and if you want it to come into alignment with
what's best, because what God wants for you is what's best, right?
If you want it to come into alignment with what's best, it's just as simple as following
Him.
Well, it's not simple, but it's just as, and I'm going to say easy.
There's no real good word to say there because it's not simple or easy, but it's about following
after the Spirit.
It is because the flesh that you live in wants something very different than what God wants
for you.
And remember, what God wants for you is not His plan because He's sovereign and this is
what He decided for your life.
That's what a lot of people think.
Well, you know, if God wills it, it's up to Him, this is what He decided for me.
It's not really what I want, but it's what God decided for me.
So I'm just going to have to be happy with it.
That's not true.
God created every single fiber of your being.
Psalm 139 says He'd knit you together in your mother's womb, meaning that He knows you inside
and out better than you know yourself, better than anyone could ever know you.
And that means He knows what you would want, the real you.
And that's what we do in heart work.
We start to peel back those layers to get down to the real us.
So much of what you think you want, let's talk about it in these terms.
So much of what you think you want has come from your culture, your upbringing, the neighborhoods
that you were raised in, the other people that you're around.
You know that you don't even know yourself.
You think you know yourself.
All of us, including me, we have some knowledge of ourself, but there's a deeper, deeper longing.
There's a deeper desire inside of us, deeper passions inside of us that some of us will
never allow ourselves to feel because of our upbringing, because of our, we've been talking
about this a lot on Supernatural Saturday, but because of our programming.
And so if we follow after the Spirit, guess what happens?
You break out of that programming and it gets a little scary because you start wanting things
that you haven't wanted before.
You start doing things that you've never done before.
And yeah, it's unsettling to a certain degree.
Actually to a large degree, it's unsettling.
If you're truly following after the Spirit, it should scare you a little bit.
And I mean, in a good way, scare you.
You should feel unqualified.
You should feel disconcerted to a certain level.
I mean, yeah, there'll be peace, but there'll also be a challenge, you'll be challenged.
You know what I'm saying?
And I have decided to live my life that way.
In fact, if I ever get real comfortable, if I ever get too status quo, I'm like, I'm not
following the Spirit.
What's going on here?
Let's shake it up a little bit.
Let's do something a little crazy.
Okay?
Because there is a real you that lives inside there.
And we went over all the different reasons why we stay stuck in these counterfeits in
a couple Supernatural Saturdays ago.
So please listen if you haven't, if you're just joining us, if you're in last year's
single light, or maybe you just started tuning into Supernatural Saturday because you didn't
realize it was available or you weren't available, please go back and listen.
Because those were some powerful times.
And I'm going to get into a little bit of that today still, because we need to continue
to challenge our programming.
We have to.
If you're living a boring life, if you're living an unfulfilling life, then you're living
a life that the flesh has built for you, okay, that your experiences have built for you,
but not a life that God has designed for you, okay?
He wants you to have the deepest and purest desires of your heart.
And some of us don't even know what those things are.
We don't.
And so I want to talk a little bit today about discernment.
It's a very, it's one of the, it's one of the gifts, one of the nine gifts of the Spirit.
And I know that last Saturday we talked about the gift of tongues or the gift of your prayer
language because it was Pentecost Sunday, Pentecost Sunday weekend.
The feast of Pentecost was coming the next day and we wanted to really talk about prayer
languages and talk about living a life emboldened by the Holy Spirit.
And so we did.
But today I want to dive into, and this doesn't mean I'm going to do a teaching on all different,
all the nine gifts and I'm going to go one by one, but I think more than ever before,
more than ever before, the time that we live in requires discernment.
Anyone agree?
And this is a very misunderstood gift.
I misunderstood it for years.
I had no idea what it was, but this is a gift that you should pray and ask God for.
Do you know that Paul says that you should pray, you should ask God for these gifts that
you should coven earnestly, covet earnestly to have the gifts of the Spirit.
And so yes, fruit of the Spirit, very important.
We need to, that is what, that is what shows us whether or not we're having intimate relationship
with Holy Spirit when we're bearing that fruit in our lives.
That's what shows us that other people are having intimate relationship with Holy Spirit.
You can only fake the fruit friends for so long before someone sees, oh, hey, that's
not real fruit.
That's not real fruit.
Does anyone have an older person in their family when they were growing up and you went
over their house and there was a nice inviting bowl of fruit on the table.
It looks so pretty.
It looks so perfect.
It looks so shiny.
And the reason why was because it wasn't real.
And you might have even grabbed a piece of that fruit thinking, oh, this apple looks
great.
Kind of grab it, take a bite.
And then you touched it and you realized, oh, this is not real.
And that's what happens when you get in deeper relationship, when you get intimate with people
that have this fake fruit, you start seeing, hey, this fruit, it was shiny.
It looked good on the outside, but it's not real.
That bowl of fruit at your aunt's house, your grandma's house or wherever it was, that was
a trend by the way, back then to have like decorations of bowls of fake fruit.
But you really couldn't tell it wasn't real until you got really up close and personal
with it.
From a distance, it looked real, didn't it?
But it was only when you got up close and personal and started taking a deeper look
and started touching it and stuff that you figured out that it was wax, that it was plastic.
That's just a little tidbit from Holy Spirit this morning, that sometimes fruit, people
look like they have some shiny fruit from a distance, but then when you get around them
in proximity to them, in some deeper intimate conversations with them, you see that it's
wax, it's plastic, it's not real.
So the fruit of the Spirit is so important, so important for us really seeing where someone's
at with their relationship with God.
And then of course, the gifts of the Spirit, and we're going to talk about discerning of
spirits today.
But I want to address something where people are saying, well, you know, you shouldn't
judge people.
That's not, the Bible doesn't say that.
The Bible actually says you should judge people.
You should judge the words that come out of their mouth, that you should judge their fruits
or their actions.
You should judge a tree by its fruit.
It just says, be careful with the measure that you judge because you're going to be
judged by that same measure, doesn't it?
Don't be sitting around pointing fingers and judging other people, realizing that there's
three fingers pointing back at you.
And it also talks about, hey, if you're going to pick a splinter out of your neighbor's
eye, your brother's eye, your sister's eye, if you're going to focus on something that
someone else has wrong with them, it's pretty, it's pretty important that you remove the
log from your own eye.
So it never says don't judge.
It just says, judge not lest you be judged because you won't get judged too, all right?
And so discernment is, is about judgment in a certain, in a certain aspect.
So let's get into it a little bit.
First Corinthians 1210, if you want to look at that, it's the, the list of the nine gifts
of the spirit and it says discerning of spirits on that list, all right?
And that, and remember the Bible wasn't written in English, so there's a Greek word there
and you guys know I can't, I can't pronounce even English words half the time.
So the Greek word is diacris, diacrisis.
You guys figure it out.
You can go, if you're hooked on phonics,
you can go sound it out on the internet and figure it out.
But it just means distinguishing, judging,
or deciding between.
That's what the word means.
Distinguishing, judging.
See the word judge is there.
Or deciding between.
And so let's talk about the purpose of this gift
because a lot of people will say, well, I discerned it.
Did you discern it?
Okay, or is your intuition turned into suspicion
because you have a broken heart?
This is the biggest problem with this gift
is that if you don't have a cleared channel,
and this is something that you have to get every day.
Every day, you gotta keep short lists, friends.
You gotta forgive people.
You gotta release things.
You gotta come to God.
You gotta lay things at Jesus' feet
so that your vision and the spirit can be clear,
so that your heart can be clear.
You gotta stop watching the news.
You gotta stop sitting around watching things
and letting other people tell you a bunch of stuff.
In fact, this is what the gift of discernment
is so important for in this day and age
is you have to discern the things that you're hearing
because we live in this media age.
We live in this information age.
You gotta discern whether the stuff that you're hearing
is coming from a good source.
Is it coming from a source that's just trying
to get people to fight like a bully in the schoolyard?
Just trying to get you to hate a different people group,
a different skin color, a different nationality,
a different country?
You know, what's true?
Guys, we can't just wake up and just pick a side
just because that's the side our parents picked.
I wanna pick the side of heaven.
And I'm just gonna tell you right now
when it comes to politics, everybody's corrupt.
You better just know that right now.
Nobody's not corrupt.
I know you like our side versus their side.
No, everybody at the top is corrupt, okay?
Now, through prayer, can we get some things done
in the right direction?
Sure.
Can we pray for our leaders?
Sure, and we should, okay?
But the intrigue, the spiritual intrigue
at those places of influence at the tops
of those mountains, so to speak, is thick, friends.
It's really thick.
And if you think any of those people
have a clear spiritual conscience
in which they can make good decisions
that are truly based on what it is
that would be good for the greater good of people,
you're wrong.
It's not money that's evil.
It's the love of money that's evil.
And there's lots of corruption and love of money
at those top places, and so that's why
you should pray for your leaders.
The people that you elect, you should pray for them.
That's why you should pray for your favorite singer,
your favorite actor or actress.
Every single day, you guys, they are living
in the lion's den.
Every single day, they are living in places
of just spiritual anarchy, every day.
It shouldn't surprise you when you open up the magazine
and you find out that they've left their wife or husband,
they've cheated, they've gotten on drugs.
It shouldn't surprise you when the scandals
come on the news of the politicians that you support
or the things that you find out that they were behind
or that they supported that you were just like, wait, what?
Why would they do that?
Because you guys, the spiritual darkness is thick
in those places.
It's thick.
You listen where you go to work,
the spiritual darkness, but at the places
that control things, at the tops of the spheres
of influence, it's so thick that people can't see
their own hand in front of their face.
And so that's why it's important for us to discern
what's really going on when we hear the news,
what's really going on when the story comes out,
what's really going on when a neighbor stops us
as we're out walking the dog and tries to tell us
some gossip from the neighborhood.
We have to know what's really happening.
Okay, so this Greek word means distinguishing, judging,
or deciding between, and what's the purpose of this gift?
Well, Jesus came and he died and he set us free
from the curse, but we all know that the curse
is still active, right?
Yeah, we're set free from the curse
because we've chosen Jesus.
We've chosen that new birth experience.
He set us free, okay?
To whom the son has set free, to whom the father has set free
to whom the son has set free is free indeed.
The problem is, is that all around us,
there are people that are still participating in that, right?
The earth is still under that broken curse, so to speak,
and the opposing forces or the spirits of darkness
are still holding it.
hard at work. And so the number one purpose of this gift is for believers to be protected from
deception. You guys, the whole purpose of the gifts of the Spirit is so that we can live in a
dark world until the second coming of Christ. Right? What does it do? Well, how does it help
protect us as believers from deception? A lot of ways. It's going to help you to recognize
things that are not true, not just in the church, but yes, in the church as well. False teachers,
counterfeit anointings, wolves in sheep's clothing. I will never forget. I will tell
you this story. I worked at a mega church, one of those big, big, big churches, not a big box church,
okay? But kind of. And this church was really known for miracles, signs and wonders and healings
and just, you know, free for all with the Holy Spirit. And that's what people came. They came
to see that show. And I had already gotten my mug and t-shirt from my small church where my pastor
had gone to prison and where things had not been what they seemed. And I will tell you that God
gave me a crash course in discernment at that smaller church where I'm the type of person who
will always think well of you. That is my personality. My personality sees the good in
people. I think well of people. I see people as they truly are, like deep inside, like that is a
gift. But when that gift gets overextended by trauma, it becomes a weakness. Friends, all of
your gifts, if they're overextended by trauma and brokenness, they will become weaknesses for you
instead of strengths. And so it's difficult for me to think bad things about people. Very difficult.
You know, even if those things are true, it's very difficult for me. And so one day I found
myself thinking some things about my pastor at that small church. And I loved my pastor,
and he had done so many good and kind things for me as kind of a stray child off the streets.
You guys know my story. And when I came into that church, came into proximity to that church,
I was 19. But when I met Jesus, I was 22. And I actually started attending that church,
and they were very kind to me. They did a lot of good and wonderful things for my life.
But about five years into my serving there, because I went right into serve mode when I
met Jesus at 22, went right into, as long as the doors were open, I was in the church helping,
doing anything and everything that I could to promote the ministry of that church.
And about five years in, God started speaking to me about corruption in the pastor's heart.
He started showing me things, and I started discerning things. And I didn't know that I
was discerning things. I thought that I was just thinking bad things about my pastor.
And that caused a lot of shame for me. Jackie, why would you think such a thing about him?
He's such a great person. What's wrong with you? Why are you judging him? Or why are you,
you know, why are you seeing things that are not there? Oh, that's a terrible thought.
Satan, get behind me. I rebuke you. You know, rebuking the devil, friends, but it wasn't,
it wasn't the devil. It was Holy Spirit. God was showing me that my pastor had a love for money,
and my pastor had a orphan spirit, and that he needed approval in the form of image,
in the form of status symbols, like fancy cars and fancy clothes. And you guys, I wasn't listening
to discernment. I kept serving. I kept plowing forward blindly, and eventually my pastor went
to prison. He went to prison for all the things that I just mentioned. Stealing the money,
deceiving people, forgery, money laundering. I wasn't listening to the spirit of discernment.
I wasn't listening to the gift of discernment that God had given me.
And then I started saying, okay, Lord, I want to know more about this. So fast forward, I marry
David, and I end up at this big mega church. And you guys have already been to the rodeo,
so now I don't trust anybody, right? But I'm working there because for some reason,
everywhere I go, people are like, we want you on our team. Come on, let's hire you.
You can't just be a regular cog in the wheel. We're going to make you a leader. And so I became
behind the scenes at this church. And there was one particular member of the famous preachers at
this church, there was one particular member that I had run-ins daily behind the scenes. I mean,
I didn't really have run-ins with them, but I saw them have run-ins with other people,
let's put it that way. I kept to myself a lot, because remember, I've already been through a
lot. I've already been through hell with
gasoline underwear on. So I'm going to stay out of the line of fire. Okay.
And so I'm behind the scenes and I see this person interacting with others and
guess what? They're just really mean. They're really mean.
They're very condescending. They're very arrogant.
They say really mean things to people. They snap at people.
They swear at people. They curse at people. They, you know, just,
it's bad. I can hear them in the other office,
just ranting and raving about something. And I'm just like,
this person is just not a good person.
But when it came time for church y'all,
all right, out in the mega sanctuary that seats 5,000 people,
this person would come out and I promise you, okay,
I promise you this is the God's truth. This person would come out. In fact,
all the preachers will come out in a line together, like with an entourage,
everyone else will already be in their seats, worshiping the Lord.
And if you were a staff member,
you had to sit like in the second row of the sanctuary.
So you're really close to the front.
This person would come out with that line of people and they would just put their
hand out to the people that they were passing in the pews and people would fall
out. Have you ever seen anyone slain in the spirit?
You ever seen the power of God fall on someone to where they just fall down?
All right. Well, I have,
and this would happen regularly with this person, right?
They would go over and lay hands on people. People would fall out.
People would get healed. All kinds of crazy stuff would happen like that.
And you guys, that really upset me
because behind the scenes, I knew what this person was really like, right?
And so I said to the Lord, I was like, that's gotta be fake.
That's not real. That's not real. This has gotta be fake.
This is like some sort of circus sideshow.
This is not real. There's no way that it can be. And he said, and he said to me,
he's like, well, go test it out.
So the next Sunday I changed my seat and I made sure that I would be in
kind of the line of fire, right?
And when this person came in and they walked by me,
I felt the power of God so strong on me,
on me and what it has to do more with a person's faith than the other person.
I just want you to understand that if you're like, Hey,
why do people go to these crusades?
And why do they get healed when this person's obviously a false teacher or
prophet, because the person has a gift. Okay.
First of all, and God's gifts are not with repentance.
Meaning when God gives them, he does not take them back.
Do people use them for their own gain? Yes. Do people use them, you know,
in their flesh? Yes.
But the bottom line is is that the person who's coming to receive a healing,
to receive a breakthrough, to see, receive a word,
that person's faith trumps everything else.
By your faith, let it be done unto you. Anyway,
I recognized that there was some spiritual power happening there.
And so then I was really upset and I went to the Lord and I said, God,
why would you give this person a gift? Why is this person have a gift?
And that's when the Lord explained to me that you don't know people by their
gifts. You know them by their fruit.
And that is where the saying comes from friends that I teach you in the
heartwork to be fruit inspectors and not gift inspectors,
to be fruit inspectors. It comes from that story.
That's where it comes from.
So discernment is really important to keep us from deception friends,
not just in church environments with teachers and anointings or wolves and
sheep's clothing, but also in your dating life for sure.
We'll get into that here in a minute because what discernment does is it helps
you to identify what is the true source of this supernatural activity?
What's the true source of it?
Because not every miracle or prophecy or manifestation is coming from God.
Okay? So this gift is able to reveal to you, whether it's Holy Spirit,
whether it's demonic, God forbid, or it's just the flesh.
And if you look at Acts, I'm going to give you a scripture reference.
You guys can go check it out on your own time. Acts chapter 16.
If you're not familiar with the book of Acts,
it really is about the birth of the church is about what does it look like for
Jesus's followers to, you know,
do the ministry of Christ on the earth after Jesus has resurrected and
ascended. And that's what we're still living in, you guys.
In fact, you know, we're, we're doing it.
We're doing a lot of work in Austin, Texas,
building something called wheelhouse that is really going to be based on the
ministry of the book of Acts. Okay. So book of Acts 16,
and then just look at verses 16 through 18. It's a perfect example right there.
Paul is discerning the spirit.
it behind this girl that's been following them around, flattering them.
And so if you read that scripture, you'll see that the thing that was happening seemed
good.
Okay.
This girl was following them around, Paul and his entourage of ministers, and she was
like declaring that the Lord had sent them and the wonderful works of the Lord.
The problem is, is that they were incognito.
And so this girl doing that was actually drawing attention to them.
And it was actually causing, you know, what always happened to Paul, and that was everywhere
he goes, he gets in trouble and gets arrested, right?
So even though on the outside, it seemed good what she was doing, he was discerning that
that was a spirit behind what she was doing that was sent to, you know, buffet him, basically,
if you read about Paul's thorn in the flesh.
All right.
So to identify the true source of supernatural activity, that is, that is what this gift
is about, to bring deliverance and healing.
Okay.
If any of you have ever participated in a deliverance ministry, you're going, people
are, you know, people have some sort of stronghold, they have some kind of pattern in their life
that they really want to get free from.
And the gift of discernment would help you to recognize if there's a demonic stronghold
happening in someone's life.
Okay.
And then you can have a targeted prayer towards that for freedom.
Okay.
Sometimes it's just people's flesh, but some demonic stronghold of some sort.
Another thing that we do with the gift of discernment is for our leaders, you know,
if you're going to lead, like for me to lead this, to lead this business tree, if you were
the leader of a church or a small group, or, you know, a leader at work, you know, you're
a manager, you guys, you can use the spiritual gifts in your secular jobs.
You know that, right?
And you should, because everywhere that you go, you are a minister of our Lord Jesus Christ,
everywhere you go.
When you partook of the new birth experience, when you decided to follow Christ, you stepped
in the ministry of reconciliation, you know, you volunteered to be Jesus on this earth,
you know, a portion of what he was carrying with the help of Holy Spirit, of course.
And so this gift will help you to discern the motives and the spirits and the heart
postures of the people and situations around you.
It's important friends that we don't do that by suspicion or by our past experiences.
We have to be led by spirit led insight.
If we want to deal with people, I know a lot of people that think they have intuition,
but they really just have suspicion.
They are very, especially ladies, especially you, because women, we have a whole other
thing besides discernment called women's intuition.
And if you have a broken heart, okay, that's full of prejudice and bias against people,
men, perhaps if you have bad experiences that you haven't fully forgiven and let go of,
you know, that intuition is going to turn into suspicion really quickly.
And you are going to always be seeing things that are not there and you're going to be
labeling things wrong.
So finally, what this gift is for is to protect your own heart.
It helps you guard against spiritual intrigue, traps maybe that are set for you spiritually,
counterfeit relationships, unhealthy alignments.
And this is not just with the opposite sex.
Of course, you guys, this is with friendships.
This is with job opportunities, and I'm going to give you some real world, real life examples
of how to use this gift in just a few minutes, okay?
So we kind of take it out of this ooey, you know, spooky spirit realm, and we put it into
real life.
Has anyone learned anything?
Raise your hand if you're tracking with me this morning.
God wants us to walk in discernment.
He wants us to walk in discernment, you guys.
We have to have discernment.
Everything around us is trying to tell us a story, you guys.
Everywhere you look is trying to tell us that there's something happening, and we need
to know what's really happening.
We need to know what's really happening, not what the information networks want us to think.
All right, so I just told you what discernment is.
Now I'm going to tell you a little bit of what it's not.
This is what it's not, you guys.
It's not being good at reading people.
I am good at reading people, even though I told you that even when I see something negative,
I just talk myself out of it, but I am good at seeing it from the beginning.
But that's not what discernment is, being good at reading people, and you might even
pride yourself on it, and let me tell you, this could become a weakness for you, thinking
that you're so good at reading people, but you're missing spiritually what's really happening.
So it's not that.
And for those of you that are afraid of judging others, it's not just judgmentalism.
It's not just suspicion in disguise.
It's not what it is.
And finally, it's not just being spiritually aware.
It's not just being spiritually sensitive.
It's actually spirit empowered revelation.
So it's not just psychological or emotional.
It's important that we understand that it's not just feelings, oh, I had a feeling.
Anybody else?
Put your hands down.
Anybody else say that a lot?
I don't know.
I just something was off.
I had a feeling.
Okay.
The problem is, is that those feelings could be keeping you back into a lot of things from
a lot of things because those feelings may not be coming actually from the spirit of
discernment.
They might be coming from your own past experiences and your own self-protection.
You know, I, you guys know my backstory.
I was always very hypervigilant about my safety because of the way that I was raised.
All right.
So friends, listen, we have to be discerning.
This is not just for weird people.
This is not just for prophets.
And you guys know what I mean by weird people, a lot of weird people out there, always out
there discerning stuff.
Okay.
We live in a world full of false narratives.
We live in a world full of information that's trying to get us to take one side or another
deceptive doctrines, emotional manipulation.
We need spirit led discernment more than ever because we want to avoid deception.
But more than that, we want to partner with God.
We want to partner with what is God doing?
That's what Supernatural Saturday is all about.
What is God doing?
We want to partner with him in truth and in purity of heart so that we can be free and
we can help other people be free.
Okay.
All right.
So discernment, we know that we need it more than ever before, but you notice that a lot
of people are out here just vibing, right?
They're vibing.
They're like, oh, you know, I like your vibes.
Has anyone ever said that to you before?
They like your vibes.
People are vibing all the way into confusion.
Okay.
Because what are we really vibing with?
Seriously, what are we, what are we, what are we vibing with?
And the other thing is that a lot of people, you know, you, you might not call it vibes,
but you're always trying to pick up other people's.
You're trying to discern people.
As soon as you meet them, you're trying to discern them.
But friends, if you're just trying to discern people, trying to figure them out, trying
to figure the puzzle out, trying to look at them and figure out whether or not you
think they're good or bad, you don't have time to really like them, right?
Because you're trying to protect yourself to a place where you're not even really getting
to know them.
You're sitting there trying to just get to know what you think about them before getting
to know them.
And friends, a lot of things are going to feel off.
Okay.
Especially when we have broken places in our hearts, but that doesn't mean it's demonic.
Just because it feels off to you doesn't mean it's demonic.
And just because it feels familiar doesn't mean it's safe.
People often come to me, you know, because I'm a dating coach, obviously.
And they'll say, oh, wow, the first day I met them, it felt like I had known them my
whole life.
And I was like, oh, really felt like you had known them ever since you were a child, huh?
Let's talk about what your childhood was like again.
Oh, they feel like home.
Oh, can you remind me of what home was like?
Because that might not be a good thing, friends.
That might not be a good thing.
So just because it feels off doesn't mean it's demonic.
Because it feels safe and familiar doesn't mean it is.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
Just because it feels familiar doesn't mean it's safe.
All right.
And we can't walk in real discernment when we're using our trauma as a compass.
It's very important that we understand that this gift, more so than a lot of the gifts,
really needs a healthy heart.
It really does.
Okay.
I'm going to give you another, let's see, I thought I had another scriptural reference
here.
Okay.
I don't.
But let me give you, I want to give you a little bit of bullet points to help navigate
the spiritual realm, especially with the gift of discernment.
That's how we're navigating the spiritual realm, guys.
Remember, this is the gift that helps us see beneath the person, the surface.
okay, of a teaching, of a situation, of a news article, of a new friend that we're meeting.
Remember, we're not trying to activate it. We're just meeting that person at face value.
But as we get to know that person better, you know, this is the gift that would help us discern
what's really happening. And you guys, it's not necessarily so you can cut and run. It's just for
you to understand. Because remember, it's discerning between what's of the flesh,
what's of the opposing forces of the kingdom of darkness, and what's of God.
Okay, so let's give a little grid of discernment versus intuition versus suspicion. You guys want
to do that? Okay, here's some bullet points. Discernment is Holy Spirit led. It's not something
that you just have, you guys. It comes from Holy Spirit. It's Holy Spirit led.
It is also peace filled. Write that down.
It's also, get this, this is very important, it is very clear and specific.
It's not some vague feeling of it being off.
It's very clear and specific. And it comes with grace and wisdom.
Okay, that's the gift of discernment from Holy Spirit with Holy Spirit. Okay, here's some,
here's some bullet points of natural intuition. And ladies, you have this. Gentlemen, this is why
you want a wife because she's going to say, oh, hey, honey, my friend the other day, he was on
the phone. He's a business guy. He's making deals all the time. He was on the phone with someone
yakking away, and he was talking about someone else. He goes, well, you know, my friend so and
so. And his wife said from the back, from the back of the room, those aren't your friends.
And he's like, what? And she's like, stop calling that person your friend.
You don't even hardly know them. They're not your friends.
That's important. Gentlemen, your wife's going to keep you out of trouble.
If your wife tells you that she doesn't feel peace about something that you're about to do,
whether it's a business deal, whether it's whatever it is, you need to take that seriously.
Natural intuition. Let's do the bullet points. It's emotion and instinct led. Okay. And remember,
ladies, we got to get a clear channel going on here. Otherwise,
you're going to be zigging and zagging instead of zagging. It's gut based.
It's often vague and assumptive.
And it may come with some uncertainty. Am I really feeling this? Is this really true?
And then last but not least, let's talk about suspicion.
This comes from the wounded place. It's fear and past pain led.
It's anxiety filled. It always assumes the worst, worst case scenario.
And it comes with accusation.
All right. Discernment comes with wisdom and grace.
Intuition comes with uncertainty. Sometimes you're not really sure.
And wounded suspicion comes with accusation.
You guys, let me talk to you about just for a second about why a wounded heart corrupts
discernment. Proverbs 4.23. Write that down. You guys know that this scripture is in the
heart workbook. Guard your heart above all things, because everything that you do flows from it.
The quality of your heart controls the quality of your life.
So you can see there, friends, that unhealed heart wounds distort perception,
especially spiritual perception.
So when you've been through trauma, and we all have, everyone suffers. We've been through
rejection. We've been through betrayal, whatever it is that hurt you before. You're trying to
protect yourself. You're trying to protect your loved ones. You're trying to protect your
family. You're trying to protect your loved ones. You're trying to protect yourself.
Whatever it is that hurt you before, you're trying to protect yourself from it hurting you again.
And this creates false flags, pretty much. False flags. It creates warning systems in your heart
because you have hypervigilance now. You're trying to keep yourself safe.
So these alarms go off in your heart that are false alarms.
Okay, and the problem with this you guys is that a lot of times if we're spiritual people
we'll start calling, we'll start calling control wisdom.
We're really just being very controlling but we'll start calling it being wise, being responsible.
We'll start calling manipulation kindness, oh I'm just being, you know, I'm just being
kind, I'm just being good.
And unfortunately we'll start calling criticism conviction, right?
I'm just giving you guys a chance to write this down.
So we're not discerning red flags friends, we're not.
What we're doing is we're re-watching our past trauma on repeat and we're calling it
discernment.
It's you're like, you're like I saw that movie, I don't want to see the sequel, right?
So you're just trying to make sure that you don't go through it again and again and again.
All right, so how do we heal our hearts so we can hear clearly?
Well that's why you're here.
We do the heart work, okay?
We got to diffuse those bombs before they go off.
Remember I say that a lot in the book, The Heart Work.
We have to diffuse those bombs before they go off.
All right, another way besides just the heart work is we stay in the word, you guys.
Real discernment is rooted in truth, not feelings.
You got to stay in the word.
We have to know what the word of God says.
Make sure that you are studying the word of God, okay?
Not just letting someone else study it for you and tell you what it says, but you're
studying it yourself and you're praying before you look at the word.
You're asking God to help you to see what it really means.
You're asking the Holy Spirit to come alongside you, okay, the spirit of truth.
Read the Bible with the spirit of truth, okay?
Ask Holy Spirit to reveal to you what God is really saying in these scriptures.
And then of course, you know, we want to be in godly community.
We want to be surrounded by people, and it might not be a church, you guys.
It might be a small group.
It might be another group of believers that you have yoked yourself with.
You want to avoid Lone Ranger spirituality.
You guys, you can't silo yourself.
You can't be off alone and expect to have good discernment because sometimes it needs
a sounding board.
Sometimes you're feeling something, you're not sure, and you want to bounce it off someone
else.
I can't tell you how many times I do that.
Hey, this is what I'm thinking, and this is what I'm feeling.
This is what I think that God is saying.
Let me run this by you and see what you think.
The Bible says that a multitude of counselors are of safety.
The Bible says through the mouth of two or three witnesses, let a word be established.
It's very important, friends.
And then the Bible tells us to test every spirit to see if it's of God.
You guys remember a third of heaven fell with Lucifer.
It wasn't just the Lone Ranger devil.
In fact, a lot of times when you're talking about, oh, you know, I know the devil is after
me.
Well, the devil's not after you.
Lucifer is just one being, and trust me, he's not paying attention to you.
But there is a whole host, and beyond that, of fallen beings that we call the opposing
forces or the kingdom of darkness or, you know, a whole bunch of different things that
we call.
Obviously demons, all, you know, that's what we're calling all those fallen angels, right?
So what I'm saying is, is that there's a whole spirit realm and not all of it's good.
And so we want to make sure that we're testing.
How do we test?
By fruit, you guys.
1 John 4, verse 1.
If you want to look into the command to test every spirit, 1 John 4, verse 1.
And then the last thing, you guys, to help us to heal so we can hear clearly is just
stay humble.
Remember the gift of discernment is really at the, at the end of the day about advancing
the kingdom.
It's about serving others.
It's not about feeling spiritually superior to other people.
It isn't.
Okay.
Real discernment is going to promote truth.
It's going to expose deception.
It's going to help people find deliverance.
So you, you know, if you discern that someone's struggling with something, something, you
can come to them and say, hey, I really feel like God is showing me that you're struggling
with this.
And I pray for you.
Like that is how discernment works.
It's really great.
And that's different from words of knowledge that you might receive about someone's situation.
Okay.
All right, hopefully everyone wrote down, uh, this is obviously available in, um, replay
so you could write things down later.
Okay.
So I know it's a lot for a, for a Saturday.
morning, but I really felt like God wants us to really go after the gift of discernment.
If you don't feel like you have it, you're just operating in your intuition, ask God
to give it to you.
All the gifts come from the same Spirit, Holy Spirit.
It's just as easy to receive one gift as the other.
And so go ahead and ask, say, God, give me discernment.
And remember that real discernment doesn't just call things out, it calls things up,
calls things up.
It brings light.
It's not just an excuse to walk around, you know, afraid of everyone because you're discerning
things.
That's most likely the gift of suspicion, just so you know.
All right, so I'm going to give you some real world, some real world examples of how discernment
might show up.
Like, let's talk about dating.
How might discernment show up in dating?
It's when you're meeting someone, you're getting to know them, and you can sense when someone's
words don't match their spirit, right?
They talk Christian, but something feels counterfeit.
It doesn't just feel counterfeit, it looks counterfeit, and you're not imagining it.
Their words and actions should match, friends, they should.
All right, so remember I told you that you sometimes feel like, just like intense chemistry
with someone.
You guys, I want you to write this down.
Anytime you're just meeting someone and you start feeling intense chemistry, it's usually
not a good thing.
Nine out of 10 times, it's just not going to be a good thing.
You can feel, you can feel like you like them, you enjoyed yourself.
I'm talking about intense chemistry.
You all know what I mean.
A one-hour date turns into an eight-hour date.
You just don't want to leave their presence.
Now you're texting them every single hour.
You guys, what's probably happening there is some sort of familiarity, some sort of
trauma bonding situation because of familiarity.
Discernment would help you to recognize the difference between attraction and something
that feels so familiar and comfortable because of not healthy stuff.
All right, so here's another one.
You feel a spiritual check even when everything looks good on paper.
Everything about the person, and this is why you have to have a healthy heart because some
of you are just afraid.
Some of you are afraid.
You can't find anything wrong with them, but you still don't feel safe, and the reason
why is because you just don't feel safe.
But when we have a healthy heart, you guys, if everything looks good on paper, their story
checks out, you know that they're not lying, you've been out with them several times, you're
getting to know them, they seem like a really nice and great person, but you still just
don't have peace for some reason.
Don't ignore that.
Pray into that.
God, what is it that I'm discerning?
Because it doesn't mean that they're terrible.
It just means that it's not the right thing for you for whatever reason.
God could be protecting you from something that your eyes can't see yet, but also he
could be just trying to keep you moving forward towards something that's better.
All right?
When you're discerning, you're not going to confuse red flags with people that are just
quirky.
I mean, everybody has yellow flags, you guys.
Everybody has things that we would call ics, quirks.
That doesn't mean that it's a deal breaker, and when you have discernment, you're not
going to see a red flag when it's really just an eccentricity of some sort of that person
that you could probably get used to and get over if you got to know them better.
All right, I'm just looking to see my notes here if I have anything else.
You're not going to get swept up in love bombing or false peace.
Okay, the spirit of discernment is going to help you see that this person is just an anxious
detacher, and they're just trying to feel secure in the relationship by telling you
all these things and saying all these things, but it's not sustainable.
You're going to spot a counterfeit situation before you get all your time wasted.
Okay, you're going to have spiritual clarity.
Clarity, I just made up a new word, clear and clarity.
It's clarity, friends.
You're going to have spiritual clarity.
All right, and you're going to know when someone's potential is God's project, not yours.
Okay, discernment will help you.
help you if you begin to fix people.
Okay, and so I promised you some real life scenarios,
so I'm gonna go ahead and give that to you guys.
Okay, so this is not just about your love lives,
it's about every area.
So here's some real life scenarios that I have here.
Okay, so you can use the gift of discernment
when you're meeting someone,
like say you're meeting them on a dating app.
They're saying all the right things,
maybe they quoted a scripture, okay?
You know, just all the kind of things
that maybe you want in a future mate,
but every single time that you're with them,
you're hanging out with them, you feel spiritually uneasy.
And you're not scared, you guys, that's important.
It's not fear that you feel, you just feel a lack of peace.
You feel what we always call checked in your spirit.
You sense that something is off spiritually,
not just emotionally, that is very important.
If you're in your emotions, you guys,
it could just be from, it could be from fear,
it could be from a past bad experience.
It could be that you don't have any experience in dating,
so you don't know what it's supposed to feel like.
But this is not in your emotions, it's in your spirit.
And when you have experienced real discernment,
you will see that it doesn't come in your emotions,
it's just a knowing.
It's just a knowing, I can't describe it any other way,
you just know.
Don't ignore that.
Don't ignore that like I did.
Guys, I was in a lot of pain when my pastor fell
and went to prison, and the reason why was
because I was not paying attention
to what God was showing me all along.
I was dismissing it.
You know why I was dismissing it?
Because of my emotions, because of my loyalty,
because I didn't want to think bad things about somebody.
Because that's the category that I put it in.
I didn't put it in the category of wisdom,
I put it in the category of negativity.
Please don't do that.
That's not what it is.
You're not being negative, you're being wise.
And God's trying to prevent you from going 100 miles an hour
down a dead-end road into a wall.
My pastor's fall gave me a nervous breakdown,
and it didn't need to happen that way
because God was trying to show me what was ahead.
And I was not listening.
So you're hanging out and you just don't feel
spiritually easy, you just feel checked, you guys.
You sense something is off.
It's not in your emotions, you know it's not.
You could even run it by someone else
that's not related to the situation at all,
someone that you know is wise,
someone that you know has discernment as well.
And so maybe you find out later
that they have a hidden addiction.
They have an unresolved past relationship.
Guys, I'll tell you truthfully,
I know that God gives gifts because we need them,
and everyone needs this gift.
I don't think that anyone doesn't need this gift,
so please ask God to give it to you, okay?
But God has definitely given me this gift
because of the life that I've led
before coming to you guys,
the kinds of ministries that I have led,
and also what I do now with you guys.
And if I ever show up in your DMs and say,
hey, I really, I need you to take a look,
a better look at this relationship,
I'm discerning that something's off, please listen to me.
Because every single time that I have done that,
and the person has gone on to get married,
they are now divorced.
I'm not saying that to toot my own horn.
It came from discernment, it didn't come from me.
But I am here to try to help protect you,
and so is my team,
and so are your other brothers and sisters.
Now, some of them might be operating in fear,
and some of them might be alarmists
that are constantly pulling the fire alarm
when there's no fire, I get that.
But our team, our peer coaches,
and the people that work for us are not those people.
If they ask you very kindly to take a deeper look
at something on one of your posts,
hey, you might wanna look at this,
or what they're saying is,
hey, I discern something's off.
I went to a wedding, this person was a client,
but they were also a dear friend.
And you guys, the entire time I was at that wedding,
I was just cringing inside,
because I could discern that the man that she was marrying,
who had been an addict in the past,
was not over his addictive personality,
he wasn't delivered from it.
I could see it in his eyes when he talked to me,
I could discern what was happening,
and I just had to sit there.
It was a beautiful wedding, she was a beautiful bride,
and that marriage didn't even last a year.
It's very difficult, you guys,
to be sometimes in the seat.
And that might be true of you,
at your workplace or in your ministry,
and what you do at your spiritual community or whatever.
And so we really have to take seriously
the gift of discernment.
So here's another example.
And this has happened to me so many times, you guys.
This is a really great example.
But you're about to sign a lease, okay?
You're about to sign a contract of some sort.
Okay, let's just say it is a lease.
Let's say it's a lease or a mortgage.
You're about to buy a house or something.
And everything seems great.
It's affordable.
It's cute.
You know, it seems like a blessing, like,
oh, wow, I can't believe that I'm going to have this car
or this house or this whatever it is.
But something in your spirit is unsettled.
And it's not anxiety.
It's discernment.
The Holy Spirit is alerting you that something is not right with this.
Okay, every time it's been like a place, like,
of course I own my own house now, and my house is amazing,
and it's a blessing.
But the apartments and things that I've lived in,
the ones that I ignored that discernment and went ahead and went there,
there was, like, some loud, violent neighbor.
You know, something happened at all of those places when I ignored that.
Okay.
Say you meet a new group of friends.
Say you meet a new friend.
I've met, you know, I'm a pretty friendly person,
so I meet people a lot.
And then if they invite you to go deeper into relationship, right,
maybe they invite you into a friend circle.
Maybe you get, you know, you go to a new church,
and you join a small group.
And everything on the outside seems great.
Everyone loves Jesus.
Everyone's deeply emotional.
But something in your spirit says, hey, this is, you know,
this is not a safe place.
And once again, you have a healed heart.
And then pretty soon, if you keep going forward,
you see that people are gossiping.
There's all kinds of drama and stuff in that friend group.
You guys, I will tell you one way, without even the spirit of discernment,
one way to see that really quickly is if you're talking to people
and they're already talking about other people as you're getting to know them,
even if it seems really innocent and it seems really like, you know,
not a big deal.
And also, if you're just getting to know someone
and they don't have good boundaries,
they're asking you very deeply personal questions,
like they're trying to create a really deep emotional connection with you
very quickly by telling you their story,
even if it's their quote-unquote testimony.
You guys, you can bet your bottom dollar
that's going to be an unhealthy relationship.
And I'm talking about friends right now.
I'm not talking about the opposite sex.
You can bet your bottom dollar that that is not going to be
a relationship with good boundaries
because they're already showing you that they don't have them.
And the last thing you want to do, friends,
is get all entangled in some dysfunctional friendship.
In fact, I'm going to do a deep friendship probably not next Saturday.
Next Saturday, you're going to have David Dorman.
He's going to be teaching you guys some really powerful stuff
that's been on his heart.
He really wants to come and do Supernatural Saturday,
and so I'm really excited for you guys to have my husband here.
He's very wise.
And then business opportunities, friends,
those of you that are in business,
if you're about to say yes but you feel an internal no
that you can't shake, even though it seems like a total blessing,
answer prayer, there's money connected to it,
please, please just pay attention, okay?
There could be something unethical happening that you're not aware of.
There could be something.
I know one woman who didn't take a job
because it seemed like such a great job and she really, really wanted it.
And you guys, sometimes God will close doors, and that's awesome.
But sometimes you're going to have to say no.
We can't just be like, well, God, if this is not for me, just say no.
No, ask for the spirit of discernment so you can say no.
He doesn't want you to be a little child that always has to be told no
or have closed doors or have baby gates.
He wants to take those baby gates down
so that you can navigate things with the spirit of discernment.
You can be mature and be grown up.
But anyway, she didn't take the job.
She ended up taking another job even though it wasn't as shiny,
didn't pay as much, but she felt at peace about it.
Six months later, you guys, the first place went out of business.
The other place, the better-looking job on the outside went out of business.
So these are practical ways where the spirit of discernment
can be really important, okay?
So did anyone learn anything today? I hope you did.
I definitely want to continue to operate in the spirit of discernment.
And sometimes as you're practicing any new thing, you guys,
as this gift comes to your life, and remember, you receive and you believe.
You believe and you receive. I'm sorry.
You believe by faith and you receive.
Bible says that you should covet earnestly the gifts.
It says to ask God for them.
So you ask and you believe you receive and you have.
And so you begin to operate in it.
When you go into situations, you say to Holy Spirit,
help me discern what's really happening here.
It's how you practice it.
Start practicing, all right, friends?
All right, Father God, we thank you
that you have given us these gifts
to help advance your kingdom,
to help advance our own lives in your kingdom.
And so, Lord, we thank you for the gifts.
We thank you, Lord, that you're leading and guiding us
by your Holy Spirit.
We thank you, Lord, for your love for us.
We thank you, Lord, that we are a powerful people,
that we are your people,
that we have been built on your rock
and the gates of hell cannot prevail against us.
And so, Lord, help us to discern between the demonic,
between our own fleshly desires,
and between your kingdom and your way and your will
that's always the best for all of our lives.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Love you guys, see you soon.