Spiritual Gifts, Toxic People, and Discernment

Narrator: Welcome to Self Talk with Dr. Ray Self, the place where you can get real answers to tough questions. Jesus promised you abundant life, but poor choices and dark forces stand in your way. It is time to learn how to overcome the obstacles that keep you out of your promised land. Knowledge of God will pave the path for you to walk in His blessing.

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Dr. Ray: Hello and welcome to Self Talk. I'm your host, Dr. Ray Self. I want to talk to you today about toxic people, spiritual gifts, and discernment. It should be a very interesting show so let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this show, we thank you for each person listening, Father, and we just declare a blessing, Father, upon everyone listening to my voice, Father. I pray that I could be a vessel for you. Folks, this show – I have an incredible sponsor, his name is Dr. Jess Youngblood, and Premier Family Care in Guntersville, Blountsville, and Arab, Alabama. He's also got a place called MediSpa, Premier MediSpa, that's in Arab, Alabama. An amazing medical doctor, so if you're in the North Alabama area, check out Premier Family Care, Dr. Jess Youngblood because this show is possible because of him.

So discernment is critical. God is talking to us and God has a lot of ways that He talks to us. I've been in…around the Charismatic, Spirit-filled circles for a very, very long time, I've seen a lot of stuff when it comes to the prophetic in the Spirit-filled world and you know, I've always been a guy that believes to– in Spirit and truth or the balance between the Spirit and the Word. I think you have to have the word of God, that's your foundation, that's your truth, that's what keeps you on an even keel, and you have to have the author of the word, the Holy Spirit, moving. “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit's come upon you and then you shall be a witness,” Jesus said, “Wait [until] Jerusalem…” don't minister, “until you receive power from on high.” And so I'm all about the Holy Spirit but I'm all about being grounded in the word and so, in the prophetic…Prophetic gift is extremely important because when it's operating correctly, it's God talking to us and there's nothing more important than hearing what God has to say, and you know this. God's got a message, God wants to tell you something, God wants to direct you, God wants to help you, God wants to heal you, God wants to give you an answer to that problem, God wants to show you your purpose, God wants to tell you how to handle your wife or how to deal with your children. God is talking to us, He's telling us things about our future, He may even tell you something about your past to show– to bring healing to your future. 

So the voice of God is critical and one of the ways He talks is with the prophetic gift. And you know that– you know how this works if you're a Spirit-filled Christian, somebody comes up to you and they go, “Hey, Louise, I believe I hear the Lord saying to you…and here it is.” And you know, the prophetic gift, if it's God talking, is, is critical. But if you're in a Spirit-filled church or you've just been around Spirit-filled people, you'll have a lot of people give you prophetic words. There'll be people giving prophetic words over the radio, maybe even over a podcast, prophetic words over television, prophetic words, you know, at your workplace and we have to be able to discern. 

Now, I was taught, and I believe it was incorrectly, that you always look at the character of the person who is giving the word. Well, I want to tell you something, God uses whoever God wants to use to get a message across. Let me say that again, God uses whoever He wants to use to get a message across. The Bible says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. If God had to have a perfect vessel to deliver His word, His word would never get delivered because all of us have issues. My son likes to call them “isms.” We all have isms, you got any isms? I got an ism. If you say you have no ism, you really got an ism. We all have issues. And so, sometimes there may be a situation where a person that you know is unhealthy. Maybe they have a sinful lifestyle, maybe they're just a– not…maybe they're kind of strange but you know that there are some things about this person that are not right. And they, they deliver a word for you which they say is from God. Now, the, the– our flesh is immediately going to want to go, “No, I don't want to receive that word from you,” because you're thinking - you may not say this out loud - but you're thinking to yourself, “Yeah, I know this person, I know what they're trying to do here, they're trying to manipulate me. I don't– no, I'm not gonna receive anything from them.” Do you remember in Deuteronomy, or is it Numbers? Numbers chapter 22, there was this uh, guy who had a spirit of divination and he was a pagan, his name was Balaam, God used him. And then he had a donkey and God spoke through this donkey. God actually spoke through a burning bush at one time. Matter of fact, all His disciples had issues, we all have issues. And so the point is not the person delivering the message, the point is can you hear and recognize and discern when God is talking to you regardless of how it comes to you? 

Yeah, now I know there's certain people that have a reputation of manipulating people with the gift of prophecy, which I truly hate, there are people that will try to control you with the gift of prophecy, people that will try to use you with the gift of prophecy, there's people that will use the gift of prophecy to make money, uh, for personal gain and I know that grieves the Lord and Lord will deal with them over that. But in the midst of all the crazy, weird, unusual people out there, God can still be speaking. And it may be that you're in a situation where somebody is giving you a prophetic word and you don't trust that person, but could it be that God is still using them? You don't trust them, you don't like them, you think they're toxic, narcissistic or whatever you want to call them, but could it be that God is still talking through them? Absolutely it could be. What do we have to do? We must be able to discern, we must pray and activate the gift of discernment. The gift of discernment I think next to prophecy may be the most important gift you can have. Discernment is critical. 

Now, the Bible talks about discernment this way: it says– it's called the discerning of spirits. What happens, unfortunately, is people use this gift of discernment or they call it discernment, it's actually a counterfeit version of discernment and it turns into suspicion of people. Discerning of spirits is discerning of…spirits, it's not suspicion of people. So the– what we need is this gift of discernment to be able to determine is this the Lord speaking to us, or is this that person's flesh or is it maybe a demon? Usually, it's one of the three sources, it's going to be the Lord, it's going to be– or could be flesh, or it could be demonic. Oh, and what makes it even a little more confusing is it could be a mixture of all three. So, what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? You have to practice discernment. 

The gift of discernment allows you to know in your spirit, there is a witness in your spirit that the Holy Spirit is speaking and also the gift of discernment allows you to– now I'm from Memphis, Tennessee, so bear with me. I don't live– I live down Winter Park, Florida now, but I grew up in the South and we had this expression that comes to you sometimes, uh, we have to…it's like eating catfish. You got to eat the meat and spit out the bones, and sometimes a prophetic word will come to you and you may have to– parts of it may not be from God, parts of it may be from God and you have to discern what is from God. To me the gift of discernment works like this: If it's God speaking, something inside of me, we call it bears witness. I know in my heart it's, it's a voice that I have peace about. I have peace inside about it. The Holy Spirit recognizes His own voice. So when the Spirit of God is speaking to you from another source, the Spirit of God dwelling in you - because you are the temple of the Holy Ghost - the Spirit of God dwelling in you recognizes the Spirit talking through another person, you get it? And so, regardless, I may get a prophecy from a world-famous minister, okay? I may get a prophecy from… ”Joel Osteen! He gave me a prophecy! Well, I got to receive that because that's Joel Osteen!” or, I get a prophecy from, you know, whoever…you, you know, the, the mega pastor, and “I got to receive that!” No, you have to understand you must be able to discern the voice of God regardless of the source. It could be a famous person, it could be a very reputable person, it could be a disreputable person. But what I'm trying to tell you is that even God can even use a disreputable person. Um, He showed that in scripture.

And so, our job is not to judge the source but to know the voice. Is this God speaking to me? You know, I've had instances where God will speak to me through a movie or television show or an advertisement or a billboard or just through a circumstance or through a, through a stranger and they said something and I know it's God speaking. 

So many times…so many times when it is God's speaking, it literally is a confirmation of something you should have already known or something that maybe God's been trying to tell you, you weren't sure if it was God and you heard it again and then you heard it again and then you heard it again. God's got this uh, wonderful, amazing way when He wants to get something across to you, He'll repeat it and He'll make sure you get it and He will confirm it because He knows that we struggle with doubt, we struggle with recognizing God's voice. I wish I could tell you that I am so perfect at recognizing the voice of God I always know when God's speaking. You know, I don't. I miss His voice a lot and if you're truthful, you do too. And sometimes people are trying to give me a word from God, I'm not even paying attention. Uh, I don't really receive it, I don't record it, I forget it, I make all kinds of mistakes. I'm not perfect at this and nobody is, but what I'm trying to say is let's don't dismiss people who may be a messenger from God. And maybe you don't like this person, maybe, you know they're a sinner, you know, haven't we all been sinners? Don't we all sin? But maybe they're a unrepentant sinner but they still could have a message. They may be telling you something is from God, and, and vice a versa. There are unhealthy people who claim to be messengers from God who are not messengers from God and you must be able to discern that. Now, I'm not trying to discern the person. Jesus said you will know them by their fruit, so I'm a fruit checker. Now, if the person looks like a con, acts like a con, they probably are a con. If the person seems toxic, acts toxic, they probably are toxic. If it looks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. And that sounds ridiculous, but it's really what Jesus was saying, you judge an apple tree because you see apples on it. 

Now you can be fruit observers and that's not, that's not a bad judgment. That means I'm observing people's fruit. However, even a person with bad fruit could possibly, could possibly give you a word that's from God so I have to make sure that my, quote, gift of discernment is not dismissing a potential messenger from God even though this messenger is flawed. Now sometimes you have a flawed messenger who's giving you a flawed word, I get it, okay. That happens a lot. I've seen that usually those words are meant to…you know, for some form of manipulation or some form of control. Sometimes these these words come from unhealthy people to glorify them, look at me, I can hear from God, I'm a prophet of God, all glory to me, I've seen all kinds of stuff. But what happens is we…we, we dismiss things that may be from God I need to be tuned in to God possibly speaking to me through a variety of sources and I don't know what that source will be. You know, sometimes it's just me, it's through my spirit He's talking to me. Maybe it's a dream, it's a, it's a mental picture, it could be– and I've had the audible voice a few times in my life. I've had God speak to me in many ways, but this show is about toxic people, unhealthy people, and spiritual gifts. God can use any vessel that He wants to, to perform the miraculous with spiritual gifts. I have seen churches where the Spirit is flowing and moving and I know that the pastor is out of order - big time out of order. I, I knew a particular church, I will not mention a city or place, but the pastor was having multiple affairs. And the place– but it was a place where people were coming into this church and they were getting healed, they were getting delivered and set free. The Spirit of God was moving. One day I actually– I got disturbed by this, and I prayed, I said, “God I don't understand. This pastor is…he's a cheater, I mean, he's, he's having affairs and…but, but you're moving in this church.” And the Lord said, “That is My ministry and those are My people and I will do as I please for My people.” And I realized that you know what? That pastor was out of order and he was going to be in trouble with God, but God still wanted to move amongst His people because that - truthfully - that was His church that happened to have an out-of-order pastor. 

You see, God can still move in unhealthy situations. God can still move in ways that you would not think He would move because He loves us. And so He loves me so much that God may bring a message to me through an unlikely source, an unhealthy source, and I want to be aware that God speaks through a lot of people, and a lot of unhealthy people, and some healthy people, and some righteous people and unrighteous people. But with the gift of discernment, regardless of the vessel, I can discern if this is God speaking to me or what part of it is God. Now again, I, I don't want you to be foolish. You need to be a fruit checker and if a person has a background of control and manipulation, working for personal gain and they have a bad history, yeah, you want to be cautious. But at the same time, even a person with a terrible background could still be used by God to deliver a message that is from Him despite all their flaws and I…you know, I'm not here to judge them. I can observe their fruit, but the judgment that's going to come from the Mercy Seat or from the, from the, from the Judgment Seat, eventually, that's up to God. That's up to God. 

I hope this makes sense to you. I think what I'm trying to tell you is that when God speaks, don't dismiss a possible source because you know this person is not right, this person is not healthy or they're toxic. Just keep discerning, “God, is this you talking? Is this you talking?” Don't dismiss a word that may come from a person you do not like or you're in a conflict with because it still could be God speaking to you. I mean, it's a lot easier when there's somebody you love and somebody you respect and they say they have a prophetic word for you and you hear that word, you receive that word, that's great but just be aware that God loves toxic people, He loves unhealthy people, and He's trying to get them healed. He's working with them to restore them and redeem them, okay? I mean, God loves– I mean, we all have unhealthy stuff. Nobody's perfect. So my point is this podcast– what, will spiritual gifts and toxic people– do they go together? They could, they could, but you with your amazing gift of discernment and your, your tuned gift of discernment, but you're able to discern if it’s the Holy Spirit speaking or not, you're able to discern the difference between a demonic voice, a fleshly voice, and a Holy Spirit voice, you're going to be fine! You're going to be fine. And that's what I wanted to tell you in this show. God will use any vessel He chooses. Our job is to know when it is God using that vessel and when it is God speaking. Can you imagine Balaam when he finally figures out that God was talking through that donkey? Hahaha. 

I love you much, I appreciate you. Hey, check out my books on Amazon, Hear His Voice, be His Voice,  Redeeming Your Past, Finding Your Promised Land. If you would like to sponsor this show, you know, you got to make the financial appeal because you know all ministries need finances. Go to uh, you can go to my Patreon page, it’s patreon forward slash self talk icm. self talk icm. ICM is my college, International College of Ministry. You ever want to get an online Spirit-filled, accredited college degree, check out icmcollege.org. I love you, I pray this show has been a blessing to you. This is Dr. Ray Self, God bless you, and we are signing out.

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This is Dr. Ray Self. Thank you very much for listening to my show. If this show has been a blessing to you and if the Holy Spirit so leads you, I would appreciate you becoming a partner with me so we can reach more people with the truth that will set them free. You can do this very easily by going to patreon.com forward slash self talk icm that is patreon.com forward slash icm. I appreciate you very much listening, don't forget to check out my book, Hear His Voice, be His Voice, available on amazon.com. Don't forget to follow my show and download every episode, it really helps. God bless you.