So this is a region full of demonic activity, and this is the gift of discerning of spirits operating. He discerned, or looked right through and found what was at the cause, or what was the source of the problem, so discerning of spirits, this is what it is; it is knowledge God gives you, so it's a revelation God gives you. God reveals something to you. What does He reveal? He reveals what spirit is operating right behind some activity or action. It's a supernatural gift of revelation. It means to see right through to what is the root, or what is behind this matter, so the gift of discerning of spirits gives you information, or insight, or revelation about three areas; one, the activity of the Holy Spirit. We need to discern the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus consistently discerned what the Holy Spirit was doing, and did it, so one aspect of discerning of spirits is the realm of being able to see right through what the Holy Spirit is doing.
Another aspect of it is to be able to identify demonic activity. When there are spirits in a place, spirits in a person, or spirit behind someone's actions, we need to be able to discern, or see what is operating there, otherwise we come under the influence of it. Many times, on some of the big moves of God, they lacked experience in discerning of spirits, and a lot of things they said were the Holy Spirit, were actually demonic manifestations. I can remember being in a meeting one time, and they were just saying: this is all just a Holy Spirit working and so on, and I looked at the person who was next to me, or just in front of me. I could see clearly there was a spirit operating, so I just quietly went up and just commanded the spirit to go. The person dropped to the ground, it was all over, and she was set free. I found it impossible to just focus while there's all this demonic stuff just going on around me, so that sort of dealt to that.
So you have to understand one of the things it's not; it's not natural discernment. It's not working things out. You know some people train in body language, so they can work out things from body language, look at the person, figure them out, you know? It's not natural. It's not, you've developed some skill at being able to work out some things going on in people. It's actually, revelation just comes to you, God just speaks and reveals it to you, and so that's how you know. So He can reveal the activity, or nature, or name of spirits that are in a person, so this morning when I was praying, you notice I spoke against a spirit of infirmity. Now you notice that the moment I stood against that spirit of infirmity, there was quite a quick reaction or response, so that tells me that it was exactly what the problem was. There was a spirit was causing the pain in the person's body, for example I had a young man - I was speaking in City Harvest and I had a word of knowledge, it was a young man with a shoulder condition.
He had pain in his shoulders, so the young guy came up, and as he began to speak to me, interact with me, I felt the Lord say he has a major root of bitterness against his father. So I asked him how do you get on with your father? He said I love my dad, so it seemed like his initial response contradicted what God had shown me. I said to him well, isn't it true that your father travels a lot, and is not there for you, and actually you've got quite a lot of feelings about that? He said that's right. I said: the Lord shows me that you've been quite angry, and actually become resentful and bitter that your dad has not been available for you when you needed him, and he said that's true. I said: well the Lord's shown me that the reason you have this pain in your shoulder, it's actually a spirit of infirmity, and it's come because of the unforgiveness in your heart towards your father - now you see, so some of that was word of knowledge, and some of that is discerning of spirits. The cause of the sickness is a demonic spirit - that's discerning of spirit. The nature of the problem, the issue with his father, that's word of knowledge, see?
So I asked him if he's willing to forgive his father, which he was. I led him in a simple prayer, forgave his father, then as soon as I commanded the spirit to come out of him, it manifested quite strongly, he fell on the ground. He got up after that, and he then testified. He said actually, I didn't just have pain in my shoulder, I had pain everywhere, all over my body I've had these pains. The doctor has told me my back is stiffening, and by the age of 40 I would not be able to bend or move or twist at all, but he said I now am completely free. So the spirit of infirmity had created pains in his body, and they were associated with an issue in his life of unforgiveness with someone.