Quotes About The Spirit Of Discernment

“It is great to be desperate for the word of God. It is also assential to have the spirit of discernment because there are many vultures and wolves in sheep skin in the Body of Christ. They are longing to devour those who are genuinely seeking for Kingdom of God.”

— Euginia Herlihy

“God wants us to hear his voice through the Word of God, the discernment of the Holy Spirit, and the comfort of our redeemed life through the blood of Christ. For example, musical pitch is black and white. It is accurate, sharp, or flat. It cannot be both accurate and flat. It is exclusive in its claims. While a chorus can sing in harmony or cacophony (dissonance), a solo voice can only be accurate, sharp, or flat. So too is Scripture.”

— Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

“A spirit of suspicion is not the gift of discernment.”

— R. Alan Woods

“Among the gifts of the Spirit, scarcely is one of greater practical usefulness than the gift of discernment. This gift should be highly valued and frankly sought as being almost indispensable in these critical times. This gift will enable us to distinguish the chaff from the wheat and to divide the manifestations of the flesh from the operations of the Spirit.”

— A.W. Tozer

“Mama had greeted him the traditional way that women were supposed to, bending low and offering him her back so that he would pat it with his fan made of the soft, straw-colored tail of an animal. Back home that night, Papa told Mama that it was sinful. You did not bow to another human being. It was an ungodly tradition, bowing to an Igwe. So, a few days later, when we went to see the bishop at Awka, I did not kneel to kiss his ring. I wanted to make Papa proud. But Papa yanked my ear in the car and said I did not have the spirit of discernment: the bishop was a man of God; the Igwe was merely a traditional ruler.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“To summarize, then, it appears that Christian holiness is a number of things together. It has both outward and inward aspects. Holiness is a matter of both action and motivation, conduct and character, divine grace and human effort, obedience and creativity, submission and initiative, consecration to God and commitment to people, self-discipline and self-giving, righteousness and love. It is a matter of Spirit-led law-keeping, a walk, or course of life, in the Spirit that displays the fruit of the Spirit (Christlikeness of attitude and disposition). It is a matter of seeking to imitate Jesus' way of behaving, through depending on Jesus for deliverance from carnal self-absorption and for discernment of spiritual needs and possibilities.”

— J.I. Packer

“God, help me to hear Your voice speaking to my heart. Give me discernment so I can always distinguish between those who speak Your truth and those who give false prophesies filled either with fear or false hope. Help me to examine what I hear against the teaching of Your Word. Holy Spirit, guide me in all truth just as You have promised. Help me to identify what is from You and what is not.”

— Stormie Omartian

“Some people think they have discernment when actually they are just suspicious..
Suspicion comes out of the unrenewed mind; discernment comes out of the renewed spirit.”

— Joyce Meyer

“If souls can suffer alongside, and I hardly know it, because the spirit of discernment is not in me, then I know nothing of Calvary love.”

— Amy Carmichael

“The Holy Spirit gives liberty to the Christian, direction to the worker, discernment to the teacher, power to the Word, and fruit to faithful service. He reveals the things of Christ.”

— Billy Graham

“Spirit discernment is rare because it is expensive. It means a sensitive conscience, an instructed understanding through study of the Book of God. It means a passion for purity, for truth, for the right, for Christ Himself, and for living uncompromisingly true in the daily habit. All this lies back of a seeing spirit eye. And these things cost. Discernment is expensive.”

— S.D. Gordon

“The key to maturity is time and community. Discernment and godly wisdom develop in a community that spans generations. The church is called to be this place where the [God's] Spirit uses normal patterns and rhythms of the Christian life in a community, so that we may bear fruit like a well-watered tree. Despite common appearances, the church is the place where God's new creation is coming into existence and being sustained by the Spirit like a great vineyard.”

— Michael Horton

“The rarest things in the world, next to a spirit of discernment, are diamonds and pearls.
[Fr., Apres l'esprit de discernement, ce qu'il y a au monde de plus rare, ce sont les diamants et les perles.]”

— Jean De La Bruyere