We Must Clean Up Our Own Messes

Last week J. Lee Grady at Charisma Magazine wrote a good article on spiritual discernment that deserves a lot more attention. I recommend everyone read the whole thing, but here's an excerpt.

...in some charismatic churches, hunger for the supernatural is encouraged while leaders seem reluctant to put boundaries around it for fear of seeming intolerant. We stopped teaching discernment because it forces us to draw lines. We desperately need to return to what the Bible teaches us about this important subject:

1. We are commanded to discern. The apostle John instructed us to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). The word “test” means to “examine as metal”—the process a jeweler would use to prove authenticity. Metals may look the same; only when you apply heat will you find which ones are fake or of low quality. All that glitters, in such cases, is not gold.

We don’t like to test because it seems harsh. We don’t like confrontation. We want to be nice to everybody. But it is the Lord who tells us to test the spirits. Will we please people, or fear God?

2. Discernment is a sign of spiritual maturity. The author of Hebrews told his readers that they were immature babies who couldn’t handle eating spiritual meat. “Solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil” (Heb. 5:14). The implication here is that those who don’t learn to discern are spiritually stunted.

Is it possible that we in the American church have been so focused on satisfying our own material or emotional needs that we have gotten stuck in perpetual infancy? The Bible offers a remedy: Grow up! We will never come to full adulthood in a spiritual sense if we don’t develop discernment.

3. Discernment is damaged when leaders compromise. The prophet Ezekiel denounced the priests and governors of Israel because they didn’t teach the people to discern. “They have made no distinction between the holy and the profane, and they have not taught the difference between the unclean and the clean” (Ezek. 22:26). Discernment, according to this passage, is shaped by the choices leaders make.

When shepherds don’t build fences, sheep wander into wolves’ territory. That’s why God holds leaders to a stricter standard. In some cases today, leaders have brought their flocks to feed near toxic streams. The gospel has been polluted by false prophecies and poisonous doctrines and, in some tragic cases, by the direct impartation of immorality and greed from the pulpit.

After the tragic end to the Lakeland Revival meetings, all of us who believe in spiritual gifts and the continuing role of the supernatural in the life and ministry of today's churches need to pay a lot more attention to discernment, and to the proper pastoral oversight of renewal movements. Maybe then we can, as the dog in the picture is doing, learn to clean up our own messes.