DISCERNMENT

Discernment. You want to be exempted? You must understand the mystery of discernment.

Most people today have gotten into all kinds of trouble because they do not understand the power of discernment; we have become victims, terrible victims of situations and circumstances today because we have lost discernment.

What is discernment?

Discernment is the faculty of perception, the ability to perceive the influences behind actions.

Discernment is a quality of spiritual perception, the ability to know the spirit that is behind a physical activity and the ability to understand whether this activity is driven by God or driven by Satan.

If you use physical things in this end time you will call many good things evil and you will call many evil things good.

You’ve heard me say even darkness from afar looks like light until it comes near before you will see that it is darkness.

It is a risk to trust your senses and impulses alone in this end time. Those who will be exempted from evil, ladies and gentlemen are those who will have a high level of discernment.

Discernment to know when to collect and when to say thank you, discernment to see a door open and yet be able to say this door, even though its open, I know that it is not God, or it is not the season’.

You’ve heard me say even the prison door must be open for you to enter.

So just because a door is open, you need to find out where you are going. It can be a door into a prison, and you jump in there rejoicing only for you to find out that it’s a dead end.

There are many gifts you will collect that’s like selling your birthright; you need discernment.

Let me respectfully say this especially to ministers of the gospel, ‘we must be careful and sensitive.

Yes, ministry requires money, yes, the man of God requires his welfare, and all of this taken care of, but let me tell you, we need high level discernment in this end time because there are some gifts that when you collect you have destroyed the integrity of your life and your ministry for many decades.

There are doors you must never enter no matter how open it is, and it does not have to be evil, you must learn to say ‘no’ to many good things in your life because the impulse, that faculty of discernment has not given the permission to.

There are times when you can be embarking on a journey, and you will just sense a wrestling in your spirit ‘no’.

I’m going to teach you how to fine tune discernment, in fact let me say it straight to the point, you fine tune discernment using two keys.

One, using the word of God; Two praying in the spirit.

These are the keys that help to fine tune discernment because there are times what you feel in your heart does not just mean God is not there, it’s just fear.

When angels appear to humans, they tell them “Fear not” cause it’s a normal thing with humans.

Touring the unknown will always come with a level of inconvenience but there are times that doors may seem to be open, but you know there is this check within your mind, ‘what’s stopping this trip?

I’m to take this trip and yet for the past three days my heart and spirit has been having no rest’. It does not mean to not take the trip; it does not even mean you will die.

I want to do this business and I just need to sign it, five billion but my spirit and this one, I’ve prayed about it, and I’ve confessed scripture but there is an unrest in my spirit, stop it immediately! I don’t care how urgent what you want to do is, STOP!

Anything that has to be so fast to the point where you override that check in your spirit, you’re only giving access to trouble.

There are many people today who have crossed the line of life and death or have been exempted from death by five minutes discernment.

Do not play with your peace, do not play with your joy, do not play with how scriptural compliant it is, the pathway to obtain whatever it is that you obtain because the bible says the manifestation of the kingdom is in this threefold dimension:

Righteousness, peace, and joy.

There are many people today who married arm robbers, they came into Nigeria and spoke and lied to you that they’re into oil and gas and they even have five companies;

you say ‘really? Your life is about to change, in fact God has been speaking to me about favor in koinonia lately.

Listen carefully, Satan is taking advantage of a powerful genuine message. When everything looks right and yet your spirit does not agree, listen! There’s something God is saying, go back (tongues).

You see when there was a viper hiding in the woods, it was when they set the wood on fire that the viper was revealed.

There are many times the fire can reveal many things that are hidden beyond the surface layer of what you’re seeing (tongues)

I have a job of 350, I have a job of 250; someone said wisdom is profitable blablabla,..

Get that job and smile forever whereas your next level can be with job of 250 and the holy spirit is saying “pray”, and when you’re praying the holy spirit just comes and sometimes, he even says, leave all the two jobs… that’s right.

And then by the next week someone just says “we’re expanding our services, someone recommended you to us, do you mind being the African director of this company, for starters your salary is 3.5 with all the benefits per month”

When the lord turns again the captivities of Zion, you will stand there as if you’re dreaming and people will say you were lucky, but no you were not lucky you were discerning.

Please hear me believers If you do not cultivate discernment in this end times, you will get into trouble especially with men and associations.

You will need to learn this, there are many people who got into trouble in their lives because they joined a wrong chariot.

It was through discernment the spirit of God told Philip, ‘Join this chariot and that led to the salvation of the Ethiopian Enoch and so on and so forth.

But there are 50 many people, it depends on who is in your boat, if Jesus is in your boat, you will survive the storm but if Jonah is the person you’re carrying, even if you don’t die your business will die, other things you’re carrying will die.

They lost so many things and Jonah was sleeping instead of him to just confess that “sincerely, gentlemen so that you don’t waste these things further, I am the reason” they were casting lot and he was seeing it but he still kept quiet till the lot fall on him, he now said it’s true, l’m the one’.

You can imagine that kind of thing? Hear me, I was talking to someone, and I was teaching him that a wicked person, a selfish person, and a foolish person can commit the same havoc to your life.

They are effective tools in the hands of Satan, if Satan looks for a wicked person and he does not find him, the next person Satan will look for is a selfish person and if he can’t find it he will take a stupid person.

The whole three can be used to do the same thing in someone’s life, the only difference is that a wicked person will be happy before and after, a selfish person will suddenly realize that I’m selfish and a foolish person will realize his foolishness but all three as far as the committing havoc to your destiny is concerned, you need discernment.

There are many people who will come into your life, they are not wicked, but some may be very self-centered, they may not be wicked, but they’re bankrupt of spiritual light and illumination that they may be used to cause the same thing. You need to pray for the spirit of discernment.

Judas was not wicked; he was only selfish. He wanted to make money out of Jesus, and it still led to the death of Jesus. Peter was not self-centered, he was not wicked, but he was foolish. He still denied Jesus and ran away.

Thomas was outright foolish and all of them still caused trouble and pain.

You have to learn discernment and you can only build it by the spirit of God, understanding the word of God, you build discernment by investing in prayer.

Do not trust anything until you have prayed. Let me say it again, do not trust anything, no matter how right, no matter how authentic.

Whether your decisions, your products, your business, I don’t care what you want to do, just take it to the place of prayer.

The hymn writer says, “all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer”.

Lord this company is about to expand, I told you about koinonia in 2013 or so, just two years when we started koinonia, there were already a lot of suggestions to come into Abuja and it was a great idea,

God was already doing great things only to go to God in prayer; such a great idea and I had a vision, I saw a plane lifting from Zaria and coming down to Abuja, it was written on it ENI, when it arrived in Abuja it crashed, and I knew exactly what it meant.

Do you know how many people have tried to open koinonia offices around the world?

‘They say apostle, we’ve opened it in advance, I told them i love you please close it back’, close it and be following online, don’t worry you’re part of the vision just relax, when God has sent us around the globe.

The way of the spiritual man can look deceitfully slow but one step with God will bring 10-20 years together.

I will rather crawl with God than run with Satan, I will rather crawl with God, one step after three years than to have a thousand step now only to realize that Satan has been the one escorting you all this while.

Because the way Satan does is that he will give you the food to eat and after 10 years he will say ‘pay me, I forgot to tell you that it’s not free.

Discernment! – There are many people who relocated out of Nigeria just when their blessings were coming because a door opens, Satan opens doors!

And there are many people whose destiny are not in Nigeria but because there is no discernment they are still here, and they cannot connect to anything going on in Nigeria.

My prayer for you ladies and gentlemen is that the discernment you need in this end time or every aspect of your life through prayer and in the place of prayer, may you find it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

One of the greatest tragedies of the church in Nigeria and Africa is blind copying and blind imitation.

The moment something seems to work, people may not understand the altars and covenants that activate those things, everyone just jumps into it.

That’s why when there is failure, there is mass failure and catastrophe. Blind copying.

The key is discernment. Please be a believer that prays over everything, if you don’t trust your hearing call the attention of seasoned brethren who love God.

Don’t call a lazy believer who has never had anything for himself. The two things he heard was never from God and you say he should pray with you. What are you going to hear from that meeting?

There are people who have been given the gift of the seeing ears, the seeing eyes and the hearing ear. I’m about to expand and sometimes God will just give you a scripture, it does not have to be a flamboyant revelation.

And I will increase your greatness and grant you rest round about; that is already a prophetic word. Until God speaks, please do not move, even if the door is open just sustain the discipline and maturity to remain.

When you pray, you will discern the purpose behind what God does in anything he does, without discernment you will call everything that carry a negative semblance evil.

There are many good things that come in a semblance that looks like evil, but it is a blessing of the lord. You meet a woman; a young virgin and you say ‘Hail Mary! You are highly favored!’ and the next thing that happens to her is tragedy,

 

She is about to lose her marriage; and she is about to lose everything. Yet the angel never said, “hail Mary full of endurance” he says “you’re highly favored”. What in the world about Mary’s life afterwards looks like favor? Yet the bible says that is favor.

Be careful so that you’re not bounding the next level of your life because you don’t have discernment.

There are people in ministry and God will just give you instruction, close down that ministry’ you will just think it’s a demonic thing, hmmm hmmm,

I shared an experience I had then, I was praying for a family, they have been trusting God for the fruit of the womb and as I prayed for them, I had this very strange vision.

I’m seeing the man and the wife and three children running around and then all of a sudden, they entered this car and maybe they’re going somewhere with the children, and they had a ghastly major accident and the children all died.

So, I’m back to myself praying for them and I asked, ‘sorry, did you lose the children and they said no, we’ve never had any children.

And I said you’ve never had any children? They said yes. I said ‘God, what is this that you are showing me? So, what did I see?

I now understood that what they call delay is God saving them an eternal memory of pain over certain things.

There are some things that will look like delay. It’s because God have seen that you are not prepared for the attack that will come with that blessing, so he will suspend it until certain revelations build capacity in you, then he will give you access to it.

There are many people who just go and start ministering or start business and in six months you will go and see somebody who tells you, ‘My father was a wizard, my mother was a witch, my elder brother has been a wicked spirit and you just stand and say well, let me tell you, I just finished a bible school. You laid hands on all three of them.

The man is just looking at you as you’re laying hands on him and instead of you to ask why he’s watching you like that, after praying by the next day one hand will not lift again, your leg will not lift again and you’re now wondering what happened to me? The man was watching you.

God warned you and said, “you just stay”. One day you will be a pastor just be patient.

There are many things you don’t know about demonology, there are many things you don’t know about the believer’s authority, but your blood is rushing, you have revelation and now you go straight to a village, the missionaries there warned you before you arrive, you ignored all of them;

You people don’t have knowledge, you now went to lay hands and then you now have the gut to carry hoe or cutlass and scatter the altar that they built there; brought down the tree and was laughing.

Just because nothing happened in one week. There are rules of engagement. I’m not making you people afraid; we have authority in Christ but not blind authority.

Authority works with knowledge.

There were many Israelites in Egypt crying for help, why didn’t God pick anyone of them and say after all you’re Jews go and talk to pharaoh.

Was that how God brought deliverance?

If it was all about talking to pharaoh, why did it take forty years to prepare one man? What it is about pharaoh that you must be prepared for forty years?

Many men of God have carried different kind of trouble on their heads because of touring levels in the spirit where they do not have the capacity.

Out of pride, I am a man of God, you’ll just go and the bible says let every man minister according to the measure of grace; there are certifications in the spirit, it is true.

I talked about my experience years ago in the mortuary, they took me to raise a dead body in the mortuary and I went, the bible says you will heal the sick and all disease and I went quietly, prayed for the dead body, and pray.

As far as I’m concerned everything, I spoke there was correct even till today I will still do that right thing again but for some reason the dead body did not come back to life.

I prayed a number of times, yes.

Listen, when you hear that a dead body comes back to life today, that rehearsal was done many years ago. Don’t make a mistake of believing it just happened, I need to encourage people so that when you see people’s result you don’t think people just jumped into it overnight. No sir.

I’ve prayed for people on wheelchairs, and nothing happened, absolutely nothing happened; when I say nothing, not even a tiny movement, absolutely nothing and it’s as if you came to make a fool of yourself there.

That’s the price it takes for power, when your ego dies then the glory can rise.

You might love deliverance but not anyone can stand before pharaoh, there is an encounter of the burning bush and a season of training that qualifies, the point I’m trying to make is that you must discern.

There are many of you the issues and matters you are praying over; you do not have the spiritual capacity to receive with accuracy what you want to hear.

You will need to tap into the supply of higher and experienced people who have toured this dimension of the spirit sustainability and power.

When you want to make sensitive decision like leaving Nigeria or quitting your job, you don’t just sit down and work with instinct and say I heard God.

It is a very sensitive decision, and you need to dedicate yourself. Sometimes through fasting and prayer and even call unto the attention of seasoned brethren, people who have a proven track record of hearing. That’s how it works.

Discernment, I’m saying things right now because there are some of you who are about to destroy yourselves with wrong and careless decisions.

Everybody is leaving to Europe, everyone is leaving to America, who told you that you are part of them, as long as God’s blueprint is concerned? So, hear God first!

 

An excerpt from Apostle Joshua Selman of Eternity Network International (ENI) message on Discernment 2023.