Praying for Discernment

Hi everybody, welcome back to another edition of Ignite. I want to talk to you for just a few moments here about discernment, discernment is a gift. I'll let you find all the scriptures out of it, but it's having a spiritual understanding. This is not dictionary wise, but just my own thoughts. Having a spiritual understanding where somebody is, and you want to, it's not about judging people, judge not unless you've been judged, but that's not saying you shouldn't know where people are. In fact, I'll just say, he tells us to be fruit inspectors. You should know them by their fruit, so. But you can't really help somebody unless you know where they're at. And today, it's a different world, isn't it? I mean, there are a lot of, a lot of pastors, a lot of denominations, universities, they're saying, can be family members, that you thought they were with us, but the pressures of our time were starting to divide the wheat from the chaff, aren't they? And I don't know that whoever gets to the point, I think the rapture's going to happen first, but we might someday get to where they are in other parts of the world, where people who are acting like their Christians are turning other Christians in for bonuses and social credits and whatever, and they're a Christian. And so it may have come to a time when we're going to really need to know who our friends are. That's to the extreme. I don't want to dwell on that, but that would be the down the road. We do need to know who it is, and then there's a, we could have a lot of heroes in our lives, and I suppose you're like me that I have had some people that I was hugely impressed with, by their demeanor, by their godliness, by their quoting scripture, by their ability to have decorum and all this, and then I'll send, I pick up on something that if you don't have no scripture, you wouldn't know it. But the moment they cross over and it's something that's against scripture, you start, that gives you your discernment, that's not, that's not scriptural. And once you see something that you start listing, and also you start saying there's something wrong. And I have found that as you pray for discernment, it comes more quickly, and you'll know there's you, you can sense, there's a, there's something going on, there's something spiritual going on, it's in your spirit, you feel it. And, and it's not to condemn that person at all, we don't condemn anybody, we're all condemned just, only because of Jesus Christ dying the cross that we saved. I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about being concerned for others that understand where they're at, and, and beyond that to the point of not following people who are, you might call them antichrist, false, false doctrines, that are getting a whole lot of people into a whole lot of trouble today. Is there been a time when you need to be in the word more than today? If you're done in the word, then you don't know when they're saying something that's not scriptural. So if I, I guess if I could do anything with this, with a short message of this podcast, just get into the word, start reading the word, start understanding the word, come up with questions. If you don't want to be a methodical reader, then come up with questions in your mind. And quite frankly, sharing your faith is a wonderful way to do that because you'll be asked questions. Some people say, I don't want to share my faith because then I'll get asked a question. I won't know how to answer. It's going to be horrible. I'm going to bear this guy. No. When they ask you questions that you don't have answers for, that's where the fun starts. Okay? I've been sharing my faith for 50 years, so I'm not at that point anymore. I almost wish I was because I remember back in the early days, I just tell me, you know that's a great question. And I don't know the answer to it, but God does. Would you allow me to pray for you for the next several days, maybe we'd get together on Thursday? And I know God will give you the answer for you. They always say yes, and then guess what you're doing between now and next Thursday. And nobody's going to have to tell you to be frank and nobody's going to tell you need to be in the word. Man, every chance you get a, it breaks through the day you're searching like treasure trying to find it. And then you find it. There it is. That question and you get so excited and you're praising God and then you, you're sitting down with a bird, you share it with them and it impacts them and it changes their lives before your very eyes. And you see the tears and the emotions and, and the broken jury, God just used you and it all started with a question you didn't know how to answer. So I mean, all these fears about sharing your faith are, that's just Satan putting fear into you is debilitating and it's stopping you, it's sterilizing you. It's preventing you from reproducing yourselves. The most important thing Satan wants to do is stop you from reproducing yourself. So it all goes back to the sermon to begin with an understanding where people are. The first part would be, are they a Christian? I so after I asked people, well, that's a friend of yours you've known for a while, are they Christian? I'm not really sure. How long have you known them? You know, when, when you say, I don't know if somebody's a Christian, what you're really saying is, I don't care. Mike Kennedy, one of the members of our team hit this about three years ago in the meeting, why are the people not sharing their faith? We came with all these spiritual reasons, we're all over Mike's sister, and he said, I thought about a lot, you know, the basic line is, they don't care. They don't care? Do you care? Let me tell you how you can find who a Christian is real quick. You do it, you know, you can qualify it about 30 seconds. The moment you meet somebody, all you have to do is mention something about your church. And you don't do it directly, I often use, you know, you know, you don't have this mentioned message, you know, Cholo, that's my favorite mentioned message. I go there every Sunday after church. Now, that didn't offend them at all, but what did I tell them? I told them I go to church every Sunday, they know I'm a Christian. I might say, you know, I met Bob, Bob's one of my great friends. We know each other from church. I mean, there's a million ways to say you can just, I mean, you can think there's all kinds of ways, I mean, there's no one way to do this. The fact being that once you mention that you go to church, if they are a Christian, a thousand percent of the time without exception, they're going to say, oh, you're a Christian, where are you going to church? Because it's seldom you find a Christian anymore. When I was a kid, it wasn't a matter of, do you go to church? It's a matter of what church you, what church do you go to? But today, you can't find anybody going to church. So when somebody says, oh, I go to church, the immediately I'll say to you, oh, you're a Christian, wow, where do you go to church? If they don't ask you that, which is most the time, then you know, they're not a Christian. That helped you with your discernment. So you now have, I've qualified them. You're not judging them. You realize that they're apart from God. And that's where you can start your ministry. And then I call it chumming. And every time I with these people, I know that I want to move them closer, move everybody every day closer to Jesus. So I just start chumming. Every time I'm with them, I mention something about God. I don't get preachy. I don't ever make it like I'm condemning them or that I know that they're not a Christian. I just, I just throw it out. They're all preachy. God was so good to me. He did this the other day and it was God. It was just guys. I mean, he's so guy. And then you go on and you don't say anything more. If you do, you're going to start getting preachy. They're going to start running from you. I did that back in the early days. People didn't want anything to do with it. I realize, okay, I'm getting low overbearing here. Bag it out. I just let her know that some people have this. They were there in the face of everybody. Hey, do you know Jesus? I'm not condemning them. Everybody has their own style. But most of us are not going to do that. It's so easy to love on people. It's just so easy to love on people. And have discernment of where they are and how they're progressing. And when the Lord gives you discernment of their way to take that next step, you get a little more bold. It's just amazing. Discernment plays such an incredible role in our lives right now. Everybody around us. Well, first off, I understand about 90% of our populations lost, okay? And it takes about 20. They say somewhere, some say it lasts maybe 10. We can easily take 20 different interventions or whatever you want to contact with a spiritual person of touching that person before the person. Finally, it comes to the point of accepting the Lord. And you never know where you are in that chain. You may be the very first person or you may be the last. I mean, it's really exciting. It didn't happen very often. But on occasion, I get to lead people across that last line. And I'm so proud and so excited that thank you, God. But I know that there was probably 20 people before me that had been part of that process. It's a team sport. It really is. My point being though, that it takes discernment to figure out where they are on that continuum or they just right closer, they just starting off and having discernment so that you use your thoughts. And quite frankly, a script does not allow you to do that. You're going to say that same script over and over and over has nothing to do with where that person is. So, folks, I just want to encourage you, pray for discernment so that God can tell you where every person in your life is. Whether it be the stranger in line at Starbucks or there'll be a long time friend or somebody you work with, I hate to say that most Christians walk through life every day and they have no thought of that. And we have responsibility for everybody around us. And the beginning of that response is to be able to come to discernment, pray for discernment. And particularly when something's going on in somebody's life, it's tragic and people smile. I find it so often, they're smiling, they're laughing, and all of a sudden I ask just a simple question and they break into tears. It's a veneer. We're all looking like we're happy but underneath people are hurting. What you ask people is anything I pray for you about more than half the time they say yes. I'm a well-balanced guy, I have all kinds of faces, I have a business, I have friends, I love doing all kinds of things. I'm not just a flat side of the end, just preaching all the time, that's what I mean. If I know me, that's not me at all. You don't get to hear that from me, but if I sense it's your hungry, I'm going to go accordingly. It's discernment folks. This is a precious gift for discernment. I pray. I pray that everyone of you will start right today praying for discernment as you move everybody every day closer to Jesus, okay? See you next time.