The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum spiritual discernment

I jotted down these quotes from Spurgeon over the years and thought someone might benefit from them. Who cannot use a greater measure of what he is referring to? Some say all we need is our Bible. Some say we need to know the Greek. I think we need a great dependence on the Spirit of God in a spirit of meekness and childlike dependance. The words of the Bible are pure words, but we all are liable to misunderstand them without divine aid. Greek can be helpful, but an undue dependence can be misleading. Let us look up to God for spiritual discernment such as dear Spurgeon spoke about. Then the blessed Word will be blessed indeed, and the Greek, if we understand it, will be made a help and not a hinderance.

If twenty persons did not see a certain fact, their not seeing cannot alter the conviction of a man in his senses who has seen it, has seen it for years, and is seeing it now. The witness rubs his eyes to see whether he is awake; and then, bewildered as he may be for a moment that so many good people are contradicting him, he still believes the evidence of his own senses in the teeth of them all. – Spurgeon

Concerning tastes it is never wise to dispute, but Jesus’ love creates a delicacy of mind, a discernment of that which is tender and gentle, and pure and heavenly, an abhorrence of that which is evil, so that the Lord’s redeemed become very connoisseurs in things moral and divine. - Spurgeon

If you have an intense hunger after the Lord Jesus you will not need to be told which is bread; you will not be deceived by a stone, for your hunger will instruct you. In this case an instinct springs out of an appetite, discernment grows out of desire: if you long for Christ you will not readily be deceived by false teachers, for you will know what your soul craves after, and will not be content with anything else. - Spurgeon

That wisdom which operates without must be attended by a spiritual understanding which is powerful within. I hardly know how to explain this: it is an inward knowledge of truth, the knowledge of the inward parts of things. It is a spiritual discernment, taste, experience, and reception of truth, whereby the soul feeds upon it, and takes it into herself. We know many men who know much but understand nothing. They accept implicitly what they are taught, but they have never considered it, weighed it, estimated it, found out the roots of it, or seen the heart of it. Oh, to have in the church men full of spiritual understanding! These can say that they have tasted and handled the good word of life, and have proved and tested the truth as it is in Jesus. - Spurgeon

There is a spirit of discernment, and much is it wanted now-a-days. It comes to us in the following way: Instruction, apprehension, acquaintance, certainty, - these bring discernment to detect the false from the true. Very delightful, too, is it to my mind, to see how the least instructed Christian, who does know his Lord and love him, is not to be led astray. Mere professors like to hear a man who can speak fluently; and if he will use very pretty phrases and talk about cataracts, and the rippling rills, and the skies, and the clouds, and heaven knows what besides of mimic poetry, they cry up the orator mightily. The child of God thinks not so, for he has another way of judging. He says when he hears such rhetoric, “There was nothing for me.” “What do you mean? There were plenty of flowers.” “I cannot eat flowers,” saith he. He judges whether he was fed or not, and he knows what he can eat. Nobody teaches sheep what is good for food and what is not; they know by instinct. – Spurgeon

How low has sin brought us; for we even lack the faculty to understand spiritual things, and are quite unable to know them till we are endowed with spiritual discernment. Will God in very deed give us understanding? This is a miracle of grace. It will, however, never be wrought upon us till we know our need of it; and we shall not even discover that need till God gives us a measure of understanding to perceive it. We are in a state of complicated ruin, from which nothing but manifold grace can deliver us. Those who feel their folly are by the example of the Psalmist encouraged to pray for understanding: let each man by faith cry, "Give me understanding." Others have had it, why may it not come to me? It was a gift to them; will not the Lord also freely bestow it upon me? – Spurgeon

Hdbdan

Thank you for those great quotes.
Speaking of spiritual discernment, I would like to recommend to you a great book called 'The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment' by Tim Challies.
You can find out more at www.challies.com/writings/books-e-books/the-discipline-of-spiritual-discernment.

Tom