“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” This old saying is so true in regard to the spiritual gift of the discerning of spirits. Here are some hints to discerning between the Holy Spirit, the Human Spirit, and demonic spirits working in and through people:
1. First impressions are intuitive snapshots. When a woman reacts with distrust on first meeting a man, she is very likely on target. First impressions really are important!
2. Familiarize yourself with the voice of your Good Shepherd (John 10:2-5). You’ll then quickly recognize “the voice of a stranger” – the lies of a deceiver. The voice you hear should never contradict the voice of the Good Shepherd in the Gospels. How quickly you spot a fake will depend on how familiar you are with the real thing. One woman believed an evil spirit that told her she was fat. When I met her a voice had deceived her into thinking that she could eat only an apple a day and drink only one hot hot coffee a day.
She told me that in her youth she had been a member of the Salvation Army. I too had attended their meetings in my youth, so I asked her to join me in singing some of the hymns we could remember. I asked her if she had made a decision for the Lord back in those days, and she said she had. On that basis I informed the evil spirit possessing her mind that God had a prior claim on her life, so it had to leave — and it did. Months later she greeted me as I was boarding a ferry, and I was unable to recognize her. Another time, I visited a very large man and broke the power of a lying spirit off his life, and only just managed to prevent him from falling onto his glass coffee table!. These days more and more people are being lied to by evil spirits, which are intent on deceiving them and destroying them.
3. Renew your mind until it becomes the mind of Christ (Ephesians 4:23; 1 Corinthians 2:16; Philippians 2:5). This will involve action as well as words. “Let him who stole steal no more but rather let him labor, working with his hands that which is good, that he may have to give to him who has need.” (Ephesians 4:28). The “put off” vice was stealing; the “put on” virtue is to be giving. (The virtue is the opposite thing to the vice.) But the renewing of the mind takes place as the thief learns the value of money earned by hard work.
Most thieves are lazy. Why work for money, when you can steal what money buys? But not only does the former thief quit stealing – he becomes a giver! His giving is not simply due to the fact that he has stopped stealing but is a product of his renewed mind.
4. Wash your own window, or you won’t know which one is dirty – the other person’s or your own (1 Corinthians 11:28, 31). If you have confessed every sin and are walking in the light of God’s Word, the problem you are seeing is not yours but in the other person’s. If you wish to see clearly, you need to clean away any personal prejudices and preconceived ideas that obscure accurate discernment.
5. Don’t mistake normal sexual desire for sinful lust. Desire is a legitimate emotion (1 Corinthians 12:31; 14:1). It’s possible to discern a woman’s longing for a husband and mistake it for lust. Most discernment involves interpretation. There are no “positive” and “negative” emotions, just emotions which can be rightly or wrongly expressed. It is as right to hate sin as it is wrong to love it. It is perfectly natural to be jealous over what is yours.Jealous and zealous mean the same in both the Hebrew and the Greek. What most people call jealousy is really envy. It means that someone wants what someone else has, so it’s a sin.
6. Don’t judge prematurely (1 Corinthians 4:3-5). The revelation of some secrets will only be revealed on the Lord’s Day. Even Elijah knew nothing of the 7000 who had not bowed their knees to Baal, and as insightful as you may be, you are probably no Elijah.
7. Take captive and imprison opposing thoughts that contradict or oppose the truth of God’s word (2 Corinthians 10:5). Arrogance and defiance in the face of truth needs the rod of apostolic correction (2 Corinthians 13:10). In the church at Corinth the “high things” that exalted themselves were false apostles. Demons can come dressed in people.
8. Reject humanistic, alien suggestions that oppose the Lord’s direction for your life. Peter tried this with Jesus and was soundly rebuked, not long after he had received a great revelation (Matthew 16:21-23). The apostle Paul was not swayed by accurate prophecies warning him of imminent imprisonment. He knew them to be true but wouldn’t allow them to divert him (Acts 21:10-14 & 20:22-24).
9. Don’t dismiss the unthinkable. The king’s servant, who exclaimed, “Am I a dog, that I would do such a thing?” soon showed what a dog he was (2 Kings 8:7-15). But avoid a spirit of suspicion. (I avoid Christian Martians who say they always have their “antennae” out.) Just remember that people will always surprise you. If you think you’ve seen everything, trust me, you haven’t.
10. Know your own spirit (Luke 9:54-56). If you don’t, how will you identify the Spirit of God that’s in you? (1 Corinthians 2:11) Many hear God’s voice and think it’s their own thoughts. (I don’t like hearing from someone at the end of a meeting that they had a prophecy, but thought it was only them!)
11. Guard entry-points. The wall of a city is only as strong as its gates (Psalm 141:3; Psalm 119:36, 37). The point of an enemy attack will be your weak points. Why would your enemy attack you at your strongest point? The battle is always “carried to the gates”. God promised Israel that it would possess the gates of its enemies. At its zenith, the British Empire possessed the Suez Canal as well as Gibraltar, and the United States of America controlled the Panama Canal. These were “gates” that allowed their ships to come and go at will.
12. Don’t mistake information for intelligence (2 Samuel 18:19-32). Intelligence is the end product of raw information that has been carefully processed.
13. Appearances can be deceptive, so ask the Lord about who’s who and what’s what (Joshua 9:3-15). Not doing so was Joshua’s one mistake. God corrected him and he put the deceptive Gibeonites to work as woodcutters and water carriers. Joshua got off lightly, but the consequences for praying about something that looks real to us but is deceptive can be catastrophic.
14. Who has the Naming Rights to a tall office building? The major tenant! (Mark 5:9) Legion spoke for the man because it had taken him over. Jesus asked the man -– not the demon — for his name. When Legion replied, Jesus knew that it and many others were occupying the ‘upper floors’ of the man’s life, and the man’s will and personality were on the ground floors and in the basement.
15. Watch out for the usual suspects. An adulterous spirit in a woman can be heard in her spiteful voice, and a man with a lying spirit speaks in a voice filled with pride. The voice of envy often expresses itself in cold criticism and harsh accusation. After hearing these and other evil voices a few times, you’ll quickly identify them.
16. Don’t prophesy what you discern or you might discern a very strong woman and then ‘prophesy’ that she is a valiant Deborah; and in so doing release a destructive Jezebel on an intimidated ladies group and perhaps a besieged pastor!
Two notes of caution: Firstly, if you think these keys will enable you to discern others but your own life is in a mess – forget it. Don’t even bother trying. Secondly, don’t mistake presumption for faith. You do so at your peril. Just because you are able to discern doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to handle what might appear. A man who was likely the best I’ve seen in the gift of discerning spirits, advised me to “always wash your own window before ministering, so you won’t think it’s the other person’s window that’s dirty”.