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The Fundamentals of Distinguishing between Spirits
During my stint as a leader with a college campus ministry, I developed a strong friendship with another leader on the team by the name of Ron Eivaz. We had first met at an on-campus worship service, services that we both attended regularly prior to our leadership roles. Ron claims that during one of these worship services, I turned to him and gave him a too-friendly hug. It is something I cannot remember taking place, but it is a fact that he shares freely with almost everyone. He humorously claims that this is how I made the first move.
Ron and I were both invited to teach Bible studies on the college campus as part of our leadership responsibilities. We both agreed, but as a new Christian I obviously did not know very much about the Bible. And it was evident that Ron knew the Bible backward and forward. I would attend his weekly group and take copious notes before teaching his notes to my own Bible study. Ron often taught using material from well-known teachers such as Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland and Jerry Savelle. These men were referred to as “Word of Faith” teachers and were controversial at the time. This caused a mild degree of tension for our campus ministry director, but Ron was allowed to continue teaching from these sources. These well-known teachers laid a strong foundation in our hearts “to have faith in God and not to doubt”—a truth that grounded us through every obstacle we were going to face in the future.
The Holy Spirit then spoke to Ron’s heart and said, You are going to marry Jennifer. Ron was not too sure about me as far as marriage was concerned, and he also questioned if he had heard correctly.
I, too, heard the Holy Spirit, but He had a different message for me. I approached Ron and said, “The Holy Spirit told me to tell you that He really did show you who your wife is going to be.” I did not know the message referred to me, but God has a terrific sense of humor. Long story short, we fell in love and began to plan the rest of our lives together.
Ron and I both loved the move of the Holy Spirit, but this was something we rarely experienced in our home church, let alone anywhere else in our city. For that reason, we decided to leave Turlock, California, for good and go where we knew the Holy Spirit was moving. With much zeal and excitement we relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma, so we could finish our education at Oral Roberts University (ORU). We also believed God would respond to our zeal with a well-suited, dynamic ministry position for us upon graduation.
While we were still attending ORU, the Holy Spirit spoke to us both. He said that we would return to our home base in Turlock, California, and eventually pastor the church that we had both attended. Actually, Ron did not hear a voice. But during his morning prayer time, he had a vision of himself preaching on our church platform. When that happened, he reacted in shock by jumping backward and shouting, “No!”
For me it was a strong internal knowing, and like Ron, I was very apprehensive. Ron and I knew this church well, and we knew it would not be an easy assignment. In reality, it was an impossible assignment! The church had become spiritually sick with legalism, sin and strife and was very close to dying. Upon our graduation, however, it was the only door of ministry that opened to us, as if God was making His point. My soon-to-be husband accepted the senior pastor’s offer to become an associate minister alongside him, and we were married soon after.
What began to unfold through many trials, tests and decisions was a deeper understanding of the spiritual realm in connection to purpose. The gift of discerning of spirits flows the strongest and with the most impact when it is attached to purpose; only it is hard to discern what you don’t yet understand. With that said, as a means of increasing our understanding, let’s dive more into the fundamentals or the “hows” of distinguishing between spirits.
Recognition through Perception
Just to review, the gift of discerning of spirits is a supernatural ability from the Holy Spirit to distinguish spirits—meaning to differentiate, tell apart or discriminate between them, whether a spirit is divine, demonic or human. This gift is necessary to determine spiritual origins, which in turn will determine outcomes. When we fail in our recognition, we miss out on what God is doing, or we allow demonic harassment to continue out of ignorance.
James and Michal Ann Goll wrote this in their book Angelic Encounters:
In general, discernment always involves the evaluation of some kind of evidence. We can only accomplish this by using our five bodily senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch. We notice something; then we start sifting quickly through the incoming data. We discriminate between the pieces of evidence and we detect patterns. Then we decide what to do, based in large part on what our discernment tells us.1
Our first encounters with the Holy Spirit are often in the form of “goose bumps,” a feeling of electricity or perhaps a prickly feeling on our skin. Two of my neighbors were saved around the same time, and both would proclaim with excitement how they felt goose bumps during church services. It was exciting to them because they knew they were sensing the presence of God. They could distinguish their connection with Him through goose bumps and other sensations on their skin.
Conversely, our encounters with demonic spirits are not so pleasant. Sometimes we can sense them through a bad taste in our mouths, or we feel an unpleasant coldness in a certain location, or we might experience a nauseous feeling whenever we come around a certain person or group of people. While ministering at a conference in Latvia, for example, I began to experience a certain feeling around one of the attendees. I would compare the feeling to a rubber band being stretched around my forehead and temples. I also remembered this particular feeling, through past experiences, as being connected with occultism. At the end of the service, I went to this person and began to pray with her. I also asked her some pointed questions to determine her involvement, or not, in magic or sorcery. It turns out this person was practicing forms of witchcraft. After our discussion she left the service with a friend, to whom she confessed, and then she surrendered her life to Jesus.
We also will discern the attitudes and struggles of people, good or bad, which can be a directive for prayer or an opportunity for ministry. While I was traveling with a ministry partner to a conference, she predicted that we would encounter a homosexual woman in need of ministry while there. I asked her how she knew that. She replied, “Well, I can tell by where my thoughts are going.”
This can be tricky, because such thoughts are often mistaken as your own thoughts unless you know yourself really well. But in this case, my ministry partner was discerning very accurately. Right before the conference session, I felt drawn by the Holy Spirit to a particular woman in the room. I walked up to her and began prophetically to call out her gifts and talents. I then revealed God’s heart for her and His plans for her future. Tears began flowing down her face, and she gave her life to Jesus. Later we found out that she was the woman my ministry partner was discerning before we ever even got there.
Once you realize how much spiritual information you perceive through your senses, you begin to pay attention. Gut feelings and hunches that were once ignored are now examined for their meaning. We sift more carefully through our random thoughts and feelings, asking questions like, Why am I thinking that? Where did that come from? We also begin to notice coincidences and patterns involving our senses, now investigating them for spiritual possibilities.
Examine Your Senses
With the Bible as our foundation, let’s begin to pair up biblical precedent with our modern-day experiences, to better identify how the gift of discerning of spirits flows through our senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell and feeling). What follows is only a snapshot of illustrations, but it provides a framework to help you begin recognizing when this gift is operating in your individual world.
What do you see?
Discerning through sight involves our inner eyes, also known as the eyes of our heart, as well as our two physical eyes. The apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesians, that their spiritual eyes would be opene
d by the Holy Spirit, resulting in knowledge and understanding: “And [I pray] that the eyes of your heart [the very center and core of your being] may be enlightened [flooded with light by the Holy Spirit], so that you will know . . .” (Ephesians 1:18 AMP). This is a prayer we can also pray for ourselves—that our eyes would be opened, and that we, too, would know what is happening in the spiritual realm and would respond accordingly.
Afraid of the Israelites, Balak, a Moabite king, hired Balaam to curse them. Balaam waited on God for permission to curse them, but God instead said that He had blessed them. King Balak was persistent, however, and summoned Balaam to a meeting to try to change his mind. As Balaam traveled on his donkey to meet with the king, the angel of the Lord stood in his way to oppose him. Balaam’s donkey saw the angel, but he did not. The donkey then stopped cooperating with Balaam, and Balaam punished his donkey severely enough that the angel intervened. The Lord caused the donkey to speak like a human and to argue his case with his master, and He also finally opened Balaam’s physical eyes to see the angel as well. This sight is what led to Balaam’s repentance (although short-lived), and he did not proceed in cursing the Israelites. Once Balaam saw the spiritual realm, he could see things properly. What he saw changed his direction (see Numbers 22).
Have you ever had your eyes opened to the spiritual realm in a way that radically changed you? There was a young hippie by the name of Lonnie Frisbee who was on one of many LSD acid trips, this time in the Tahquitz Canyon in Southern California. While high on LSD, he had a life-changing vision where he saw himself evangelizing a sea of people who were crying out to the Lord for salvation. Much like the apostle Paul’s Damascus Road experience and subsequent conversion, what Lonnie Frisbee saw in the spiritual realm—namely a vision of himself as Jesus intended him to be—changed the course of his life. He converted to Christianity and became an unusual evangelist who helped birth two major Christian movements, the Jesus Movement and the Vineyard Movement. (You can watch his full story in the movie Frisbee: Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher.2)
Through the gift of discerning of spirits we will see angels, visions of Jesus and even the Lord through signs in nature. When Jesus was born, for example, a new star rose high in the sky. Three kings from the East, astrologers according to tradition, saw the new star and came to Jerusalem in search of Him. They asked King Herod, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2). They discerned a sign in nature and through it found their King and worshiped Him, offering gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Have you ever noticed something in nature and wondered if God was trying to show you Himself? I have experienced this over and over, from rainbows to cloud shapes to insects, birds and more. He opens our eyes to distinguish the spiritual realm, both good and bad, by causing us to see it in nature. The summer before the 2016 election, for example, I distinguished such a thing. It was just after 3 a.m., and I was walking up to my front porch, having just completed a night-watch prayer shift at our church. The Lord had been speaking to my heart all week about “change,” only I did not know what He was referring to. As I headed toward my porch, my eyes gazed down to the ground and to a dragonfly lying on the pavement. I thought it might be dead and gave it a little nudge with my foot. Apparently, it was only napping, and it gave me a loud, angry buzz in response. Strangely, I felt the anointing of God in that moment. I rushed inside my home and googled the symbolic meaning for dragonfly. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this beautiful insect was often a sign for “change.” I distinguished God’s heart through interaction with His creation. He was saying that we needed to prepare for significant change. Looking back, I believe He was pointing to the 2016 election.
We also will distinguish demonic spirits through sight, often as shadowy shapes, dark mists or actual demons. When this happens, don’t be afraid or overwhelmed, and always remember your spiritual authority. As a new Christian, I would see demons in and around my church almost every Sunday. When I say that I could see demons, what I mean is that I could see our natural surroundings, but also our spiritual surroundings at the same time. These spirits were typically about two feet tall, hideously ugly and obnoxious in countenance, and they would hide behind stairwells, inside closets and underneath furniture. I tried to warn our pastor about this, but it only irritated him. At the time, his reaction was hurtful to me, but now I understand why he reacted that way. He did not need me to tell him there were demons in and around the church all the time. For most leaders, hearing that is distracting and very discouraging. He needed me to pray discreetly and use my God-given authority to command these spirits to leave the premises—something we all have the authority to do as believers in Jesus Christ (see Mark 16:17).
When we surrender our inner eyes and physical eyes to the Holy Spirit, He will flood them with light and we will see beyond, into what is imperceptible to the natural eye. Sometimes we will see something in our mind’s eye that is crystal clear and applicable to the situation. Other times, we will just see a glimpse of something in our imagination and almost miss it. These sightings should always draw you into dialogue with the Holy Spirit, who will joyfully teach you how to respond.
What do you hear?
Just like our eyes, we also will discern the spiritual realm with our inner and outer ears. What I mean by this is that sometimes you will hear the spiritual realm as a sound or a voice, perhaps, but you may hear it internally or you may hear it audibly, outside yourself.
The young Samuel was sleeping in the house of the Lord, where the Ark of God was. Three times he heard a voice call his name in the night. Each time, he woke up, found the priest Eli and asked him, “Did you call me?”
Eli had not called the boy but realized what was happening, so he told Samuel, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening’” (1 Samuel 3:9). The Lord called out to Samuel again, and Samuel, now able to distinguish His voice, responded as he had been instructed. God spoke to Samuel even further, telling him the things to come in regard to both Eli and Israel.
Many people have experienced what Samuel experienced. They have heard the invisible, and they have even heard someone call their name. Or they have heard other things such as doorbells, a telephone ringing or bells sounding, only to be unable to find the source of the sound upon investigation. These sounds are typically a call to you from heaven to listen further. The Holy Spirit has something more to say to those of us who have the spiritual ears to hear (see Revelation 2:7, 11).
Other biblical examples of hearing God’s voice include Moses, who heard God speak to him from the burning bush (see Exodus 3). This is another example of discerning the supernatural in nature. We then read about Ezekiel, who heard the mighty sound of angel wings, and Elisha, who supernaturally heard the secret plots of an enemy king against the nation of Israel (see Ezekiel 10:5; 2 Kings 6). Mary, the mother of Jesus, saw an angel and heard the angel’s voice (see Luke 1:26–38). The disciples heard the sound of a mighty rushing wind in the Upper Room in Jerusalem (see Acts 2:2).
One woman in our church learned to discern the spiritual realm by what was actually happening to her ears. When her ears would ring in a certain way, it meant there was the presence of an evil spirit. This kind of thing was something she originally mistook for tinnitus, the medical condition of hearing ringing in the ears, before she received clarity from the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, when her ears had the sensation of popping open, she discerned this to mean there was the presence of an angel.
What do you taste?
Discerning spiritual realities through our sense of taste, although biblical, is probably a new concept for many and one in need of more exploration. King David exhorted us to “taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8 NKJV). We can readily accept “seeing” His goodness, but “tasting” His goodness? How does that work?
Whenever we discern something good or bad by the Holy
Spirit, even if we have discerned it through taste, we have received knowledge from His treasury of wisdom. That is always His goodness being revealed to us. I have heard some people, myself included, describe how they have identified the presence of the Lord through a sweet taste in their mouth. This experience has biblical precedent. The Lord instructed the prophet Ezekiel to eat a scroll with prophetic writing on it. Ezekiel described the scroll as tasting sweet, like honey (see Ezekiel 3:1–3). The apostle John experienced something similar. An angel gave him, too, a scroll to eat. John said, “It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour” (Revelation 10:10). I don’t know of anyone whose stomach turned sour after tasting the sweetness of God, but it is something to note.
On the negative side, perhaps you have experienced an unsettling situation that “left a bad taste in your mouth.” That, too, is a point of discernment, even if it seems obvious. Others have discerned heart issues in people through a bitter taste. For myself, I have identified the spirit of violence in people and in certain cities through a metallic, gunpowder-like taste in my mouth.
As an activation exercise, I once asked a group of people to partner with another person in the group and discern through their sense of taste something about their partner. One woman shared how she distinctly tasted wood oil in her mouth. She discovered how accurate that was once her partner revealed that he was a wood sculptor.
What do you smell?
Have you ever been in worship before the Lord, only to be overcome by the distinguishable scent of His fragrance? This experience is a common one for discerners and is a tangible expression of this gift.
Cari Perazzo, for example, who attends our church, had a powerful experience during a prayer service with our ministry leaders. “As we prayed together in the Spirit, all of a sudden this heavy scent fell down,” she said. “It was musky, like a frankincense and myrrh blend, and it lingered in the air.”
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