Do you need Discernment?

I have been thinking on this today because of a warning dream I was given last night in which I saw a dreadful, evil spirit. Don’t ask anyone else to pray for you until you have gone before God and prayed for yourself, ask Him to show you what HE sees when He looks at you. Ask for discernment….

Discernment is the most needed gift in the body of Christ, why? Matthew 7:15-20  “Be wary of false preachers who smile a lot, dripping with practiced sincerity. Chances are they are out to rip you off some way or other. Don’t be impressed with charisma; look for character. Who preachers are is the main thing, not what they say. A genuine leader will never exploit your emotions or your pocketbook. These diseased trees with their bad apples are going to be chopped down and burned.

1 Cor. 12:10 gives a list of the gifts from the Holy Spirit and the discerning of spirits is right there among them, but it seems to be the least used of all. I see people that seem so smart, maybe even “spiritual” and yet they get sucked into the vices that people lay out for them like traps and fall into it seemingly without knowing how it happened! Judas acted like Jesus’ best bud, but when it came time, he gave Him up and did that with a KISS! But Jesus knewit was coming, He told the disciples as they ate the Last Supper, that one that sat among them would soon betray him. That betrayal was part of the Master Plan, the plan of salvation for us, and I wonder if Judas really thought that he had Jesus fooled?

We are all guilty of putting on our own disguises; we put on our “smiley face” and go out making people think all is well, even when our heart is breaking, false confidence even when we’ve been humiliated and for some, fake the appearance of holiness when our insides look like Jesus’ description in Matthew 23:27 “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You’re like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it’s all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you’re saints, but beneath the skin you’re total frauds.

God is the only One who really knows who we are, we may fool ourselves with smoke and mirrors but read Jeremiah 17:9-10 The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out. But I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, not as they pretend to be.”

When I pray for someone in need of discernment, I pray for me first! I don’t want to be the one that gets fooled by anyone, but mostly don’t want to fool myself into thinking that I am living in the center of God’s will when a little examination of my insides will show me differently.