The Witness of the Holy Spirit

Exercising the Gifts of the Spirit

Why are we so insecure about being Spirit-led? Why do we not have the confidence that we should have? Most of us do not give attention to the witness of the Spirit when He is telling us something. We do not practice hearing and responding to the extent that we can be certain we recognize the voice of God.

Being able to exercise our spiritual senses to discern good and evil is a sign of maturity—a sign that we no longer need “milk” but are ready for “solid food” (see Heb. 5:12-14). But to get to the point of maturity, we must use our spiritual abilities regularly. The gifts of the Spirit—prophecy, the discerning of spirits and so on—are meant to be practiced!

Often we want to be able to operate in the gifts and functions of the Holy Spirit without having to exercise them. Why? Because exercising them requires us to get into faith—and it’s an effort to do that. It’s much easier to simply receive whatever is said rather than making the effort to listen to the Spirit within us, especially if He’s saying something different from what we are hearing with our (natural) ears.

Do you realize that we have a responsibility to discern not only between good and evil but also between that which is good and that which is God? If someone comes and quotes a Scripture to you, listen for the witness of the Spirit. The verse may be true, but it may not necessarily be the thing God is speaking to you right now.

I have some friends in Georgia who love the mission field. However, the Lord brought them back for a period of time in order to get some things sorted out within their own family. During this time, someone came along and gave them a conflicting word, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” That threw them into confusion for a couple of weeks.

Fortunately they had good discernment and felt that although the second word was scriptural, it wasn’t a word from God for them at that particular time. The second word was well-meaning, but it came from someone’s soul and not from the Spirit of God.

God said to me once, “Kathie, things are not as they appear.” This is why we are not to judge by what we see! Jesus learned not to judge by the seeing of the eye nor the hearing of the ear, and we are supposed to walk the same way.

The desert fathers learned to do this. These were men who secluded themselves in the caves in Egypt during the second century in order to pray unhindered by worldly distractions. One of them, a man named Anthony, was a seasoned prayer warrior who had clear discernment.

Anthony tells a story about a two-week period when the devil tried to stop him from praying. At first the devil came undisguised to the door of his cave.

“What do you want?” Anthony asked.

“Why don’t you leave me alone?” the devil said. “Why do you Christians keep praying? You are tormenting me, and it is not my time.”

Anthony sent him packing. A few days later the devil came as a wild beast and tried to kill him. Anthony discerned it was Satan and rebuked him. The beast disappeared.

After a few more days Satan came as a preacher with a Bible. Anthony discerned he was not from God. Finally the devil showed up as a group of psalmists, singing psalms. “This time,” wrote Anthony, “…I cursed them, and they disappeared in the desert.”

How many Christians today have this kind of discernment? Yet Anthony and the other desert fathers lived in a spiritual realm that is available to us all. In fact, we too are meant to live in it! The same Holy Spirit who dwelled in them now dwells in us.

I believe God wants to awaken us to our need for discernment so that when He begins to move, we can thwart the enemy’s plans to pull down what God is building. We can be on the lookout for his tactics rather than seeing too late what we would have seen in the beginning if we had had our senses exercised.

We have all missed it here and there, but we can learn from our lack of faith and decide to walk in the discernment God has provided for us through His Holy Spirit. Let’s learn to listen to Him and look to Him to guide us into all truth.

Kathie Walters is co-founder with her husband, David, of Good News Fellowship Ministries in Macon, Georgia. She may be reached via e-mail at [email protected].