I had a situation in Fiji. I was invited by one of the members of our church to go up with him to his property up in Yasawa, which is beautiful, a most beautiful area of Fiji but it's very remote. It's right at the outer end of the Fiji area, and right up in the outer islands, so in order to get there we had to catch a boat, and then we had to kind of catch a little boat ashore, all of that kind of thing. Then we were invited to a meeting for me to speak, at a meeting in the village, so to get there we waded out into the surf, got into a boat, travelled around through the reefs and landed on another beach. Someone met us with a lamp, and we went in, and we were in a building. I was the first white man to speak there apparently - and there was a gathering of people there. The men had fled the place. They heard I was coming and they fled, and there was a problem with spiritism and witchcraft going on in that area, so I went into the meeting.
At the end of the meeting there was a lady came up, and she - when I say came up, she crawled up. She crawled herself up, and she came up there, and I could see that she was in trouble from her waist down, that she actually could not walk. She had come with two crutches, she was unable to walk, and so I looked at her and I asked some questions, first of all: how long have you been like this? She said 10 years. Then the Lord just dropped into my heart exactly what the problem was. So how did I get it? I got one, discerning of spirits and two, word of knowledge. The first word of knowledge was, it had to do with her husband. The second was discerning it was actually a spirit of infirmity, associated with the occult, so I asked her the question then - and this is how you can bring out revelation, just ask questions - I said: what happened 10 years ago? I said did someone near you, close to you die? She said my husband died. I said: is it not true that he was involved in the occult and witchcraft? She said yes.
Now this was very significant, because this is a religious community, everyone's supposedly Christians, but actually many of them were not, and many of them were practicing witchcraft, and this was why the guy had got me to come over, because the conditions he described, I could tell were witchcraft operating. Everyone was denying it, including the local Minister. This brought it right out into the light, so now the woman's saying yes, my husband was involved in witchcraft, he was involved in spiritism. I said the Lord shows me, because the two of you will become one through marriage, that when he died, that spirit has come into you. You have a spirit of infirmity, associated with your husband and the witchcraft, so now everyone's absolutely stunned. So I broke the curse, I broke the soul ties to her husband, I broke the curses that had been upon her through her husband's activities, commanded the spirit of infirmity to go, helped her to her feet and she stood up, and she walked without crutches, she walked home.
So you see again that the discerning of spirits helps you know what the issue is, and you get a revelation, you get it from God. Getting the idea? So we've seen a number, a number, so the gift of discerning of spirits enables you one, to discern the activity of the Holy Spirit; two, to discern what the motives of people are; three, to discern the activity of demonic spirits and identify what they are. Now it would help if I just shared a little bit about your senses and how they work. We touched on it before. You have natural senses and you have spiritual senses, so your natural senses - after a little while you gain a memory bank of experiences, so you smell food, [sniffs] ooh, curry, Sargin's in the building. [Laughter] So you identify with a physical sensation, you have a memory you attach to it, and you identify it like that. So after a little while you can pick up lots of things. You can recognise voices. If someone rings up and they don't tell you who they are, oh, I know that voice, I recognise that voice.
So we attach associations to the experiences we have naturally. Now spiritually the same thing happens. You are a spirit being, and do have spiritual senses, and you do pick up stuff. People often call it a sixth sense, but it's actually your spirit man, for example, how many of you have had some decision you had to make, but you felt this terrible uneasiness, and lack of peace about that? How many have known that experience like that? Okay, very good, and of course if you went against that and did it, you ended up in trouble. We won't ask about that. [Laughter] You put that down to wisdom, okay, so that's one thing. How many of you have met a person - most of the women have met a person, and that person, a male, was incredibly creepy? There's something about them - don't go near me, I feel defiled just being near you, okay. So how many women would identify that experience? Quite a lot of women, okay.