Welcome to Apostolic Life in the 21st century. Today we want to talk about one of the

spiritual gifts that Paul listed in 1 Corinthians 12. If you want to go back, we have episodes.

We actually have a playlist on YouTube, for those of you who are watching us on YouTube, where we cover other spiritual gifts.

But today we want to talk about one of the gifts, and that is discerning of spirits.

Dr. Bernard, Paul lists discerning of spirits among the gifts of the spirit in 1st Corinthians chapter 12.

I do think, based on my own personal experience,

this one seems to be often misunderstood. What is the gift of discerning of spirits and how does it

operate? Well, as you mentioned, it's listed as part of the gifts, what I would call the

supernatural spiritual gifts that God gives to people at certain times.

So there are principles by which we live all the time, but then there are special endowments

for particular times. And the nine gifts listed in 1st Corinthians 12 seem to be of the latter nature.

So there is living by faith every day but

and there's faith as a fruit of the spirit but then there's the gift of the faith for certain times

there's wisdom natural human wisdom that we can acquire there's spiritual wisdom by which we live

every day which we can acquire from from the Proverbs and so on.

But then there is a gift of the word of wisdom

for a specificer time God supernaturally endows you.

So it is with discernment.

So the concept of discernment is being able to distinguish

good from bad, right from wrong, or discerning motives or discerning

intentions or discerning what's truly going on. So again, I would say there is a threefold

application of the concept of discernment. Humans can have discernment, even if they're not

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