So probably the second thought that came into your mind was, I shouldn't think like that, but actually you are right. What's happening is, you're discerning an unclean spirit or intention around the person, and you are feeling the impressions of it, and you're identifying it as a yuck, I don't like this, I don't trust that man, I'll stay away. Understand? That's actually discernment. Your spirit is sensing things. You've got to learn how to recognise what it is, and how to work with it, and I'll show you what to do in a moment. Okay, and men have a similar kind of thing. You may find yourself in situations, or have you ever been into a house for example, and you go in there to meet some couple, and as you go in there everyone's being polite and nice, but you can feel like the whole atmosphere is full of tension, as though there's been a big row or something go on there. How many - now let me ask you this then. How on earth did you feel tension? What part of you felt that? Your spirit felt it.
So all of us have a human spirit, and all of us can sense things, but we can develop that so we become sharper at it, and become more used to dealing with it. Getting the idea? Okay then, so you have ability then to sense things spiritually, and when we're born again of course, that whole - it's brought to a different realm altogether. We now have the Holy Spirit with us. He can actually identify for us, what the things are that we're dealing with, so here's a thing. Remember in almost all of the moving in the spirit, what you get seems to be a thought, or impression, or picture comes into your mind. It's not strong necessarily, or very big. You could easily sweep it aside if you didn't stop and focus on it, so the way to deal with it is simply this, is - I think there's a couple of practical things. Number one, I think we need to ask the Lord to help us to deal with having a judgemental attitude. You can never discern properly if you have a judging attitude.
You notice what Jesus said in Matthew 7? He said: if you judge, you'll be judged. The measure you give to others is how it'll come back to you. Then He said an interesting thing. He said: why do you say, I want to get the speck out of your eye, when you've got a big beam in your own? Notice then what He said. In other words He's saying - I'll put it to you a different way; if you had a little speck in your eye, you wouldn't ask someone to help you dig it out, who had this huge log covering most of their vision. You'd say, no way do you get near my eye, you can't see clearly, you'll mess this up. You'll damage me and hurt me, see? Now so what Jesus then said was, take the beam out of your own eye - speaking of judgement - and then you'll see clearly. So putting it another way, He's saying if you have a judgement in your heart against any person, or you hold judgements about certain matters, it will affect how you see and interpret what's in front of you in life. So in the journey of growing in the things of the spirit, we need to deal with bitterness and judgements and unforgivenesses in our heart, because it will colour how we see people, it'll colour how we interpret life, it will affect our ability to discern. We will tend to judge rather than discern, and think we're completely right and justified. That make sense to you? Very, very important.
So if I was to allow the Lord to help me deal with any judging attitude in my heart, against myself or against people, and to begin to meditate on the love of God, and His great love for me, and grow in that love, I will see clearly, because when you love people, you see clearly. When you have judgement in your heart, you can't see clearly, and you mess it up every time, so this is an important thing. I need to cultivate purity of heart in my motives towards people, or I can't see very clearly, so that's a very, very important thing. I'll just stop from that point, and then just move on to, so how can you work in this area? I'll give you an example of it.
A person - I used this illustration recently because I've had this experience. There's two people standing in the entrance of a church, and one of them has got a deep rejection in his life, or a judgement that there's something wrong with me, people don't like me. He learnt that years ago. The other one hasn't got that at all, he's quite free. Suppose the Pastor walks in and he's very, very busy, preoccupied and he walks past and both say hello Pastor, and he just doesn't hear. He didn't hear it, he was preoccupied, so there's no willing rejection of them. He just didn't hear, and carried on. Now each of them has had an experience, an identical experience. Each of them will interpret it. Now the one who's got the rejection and judgement in his heart will pass judgement on what it means. He'll say: this means he doesn't like me, and he'll get angry, won't enjoy the service at all. He'll be angry all through the service - Pastor doesn't like me, and it'll stir up all his anger over this, but the judgement was in his own heart. The other person looks and says: oh, he can't have noticed me, he must have been busy, I'll catch up with him later.