Discernment: Our Spiritual Filter | Shawn Bolz | Expression58

hey hey i'm so glad to be with you guys right mostly in your home i'm sure but i miss our family e50 it's been so good to be here live with the team just because having that live experience of worship i can't wait till we're back together it's going to be so good but until then thank god for this right thank god that i mean this team is doing incredible at streaming street and i have been so enjoying everything that our family here has put together and uh today i'm excited to be talking to you guys about our filter that god's given us it's such an amazing filter to be able to filter out what's wrong and bad in the world around us but also to filter in the good and it's called discernment so i'm going to teach us about that before we do i just want to pray for anybody going through a hard time and we have our phone lines right after the service open for you if you need prayer but i know that even here in los angeles if you're watching locally that uh you know there's rent help until august and then all of a sudden the rent helps gone and there's not been another plan yet to go in and i know a lot of people were moving even this weekend just because of problems financially and there's an unemployment rate that's still so high and there's also just the sickness and the threat of health issues and those things and for parents who are trying to figure out what to do with your kids during school i just want to pray for you and holy spirit thank you for expression 58 family here in los angeles but also all over the world thank you for everyone who's joining us i pray jesus that you would come as a father god that you would come and speak into the issues of our life and help us to have answers and wisdom to navigate complicated situations and bring breakthrough in areas that look like there's no answers there's no solutions there may not even be any hope except for you yourself i pray that you bring answers and help us to have confidence that you're already moving for us thank you that we're christians which means we have alternatives and options that aren't on the board for anybody else that you've you're already working for us and for our good would you reveal some of that goodness today and take any discouragement off of us take any hopelessness off of us and i pray you'd re-center us in the gravity of your heart your love your faith in jesus name so i'm gonna get right into the message and again our hearts go out to people and all kinds of circumstances but i really want to just talk to us today because i know that right now what's coming at us in media what's coming at us in government what's coming at us through social justice issues what's coming at us through family and maybe through your own career it's just crazy right now there's not been this much tension in the air over nations like a global warfare is happening right now when i say that i'm not just saying like spiritually there's principalities and powers of course there is and that's where our main fight lies but at the same time we have people in every kind of genre like i said government and media in these areas that are bombarding us with information and helping to be a filter to us even if we don't want their help so people are taking on the responsibility in media people are taking on the responsibility and political partner parties to be your filter and it's so good to be a christian because one of the things that we have as we have the holy spirit who's called from jesus's own mouth in john 14 15-16 the comforter or the friend or the helper one of the primary ways he helps you when you look at who the spirit is in isaiah 11 or you look at him through what paul prayed in ephesians 1 17 he's the spirit of wisdom and revelation and this word discernment's used both in the old testament and the new testament and it's a word if you could picture it this way this is one of the applications i'm going to bring you to today it's not the primary the only one but it's one of them if you can picture if you have a really good friend who's really good at helping you to balance your thought life when it comes to a hard maybe a conflict issue or somebody who helps you to deal with life the first person you call when you lose a job or an opportunity the first person you call when you go through something that's really hard financially and they help you to not only listen but to the person that you would process and listen to maybe their opinion and their advice maybe they help to rebalance you and of course we're called to rebalance ourselves but god gives us community around us who are filters for us over life circumstances and i know for me personally i've had many of those people i know hona who's you know the senior pastor with his wife jen of this church hona has been one of my main filters in life for you know over two decades now and i could sit down and talk to him and he's so good at listening and then i could just say what do you think and immediately if honey has a perspective on it it's just like my my shaking that's been happening all of a sudden gets stabilized through the lord in honor it's just all of a sudden i get stable i just feel like yes what you just said changes the way that i'm perceiving the situation and there's a stability that's come from god through you into my life and sometimes it happens directly through god sometimes it happens through community but we're in a season right now where we need to recognize that one of the ways that god wants to come to us is our stabilizer is our filter and he's given us a gift called discernment in first corinthians that's called the gift of discerning of spirits and this isn't just like there's a demon there there's an angel there although that's helpful but it's actually the to discern what's good that's coming to you and also it's bad because also you want those people during times when you're dating somebody and you're trying to figure out this is where you want to go with the next step is this the person is this the one and you have that one friend of that spiritual voice that friendship voice that comes to you and they talk with you and in that conversation something gets resolved in a deeper way that's another kind of filtering you could be filtering for the good maybe you're pursuing an opportunity but it feels too ominous and all of a sudden you you talked to one of your friends who was a filter with you and you're like you know what i can do this i can do all things through christ who's put himself into me and strengthens me to be able to do this so i just want to read this out of proverbs 3 21 my child this is the passion translation my child never drift off course from two goals for your life to walk in wisdom and discover discernment don't ever forget how they empower you this is huge because this is you know solomon who's one of the wisest men in the world is speaking prophetically wisdom and discernment help to establish balance in your life and we have a god who we're not limited to our own life experience we're not limited to our own education thank you jesus we're not limited to our own relational network but we have a god who we're limited to and he is the god who owns it all he knows it all and he has generous wisdom it says in james one that he'll give it generously whenever we face trials and tribulations of any kind so we know that that's his nature and i want to read out of proverbs 20 verse 12 lovers of god have been given eyes to see with spiritual discernment and ears to hear from god and this is so important in light of the spirit of god is our eyes and he's our ear so when something comes to you and it's something that you don't know necessarily how to filter you could cry out to god and discernment might be a process where it takes it may happen over the next two weeks the next three months but you're going to be able to discern what the position your heart should be towards an issue towards a circumstance in life towards a person you're going to be able to discern how to keep yourself in the right boundaries and also how to keep things outside of that jurisdiction to filter something out and so to know maybe you've never been told your christianity that you're called to discern this way that you actually have god as a filter that you're not limited to like man i have a strong bias or an opinion i don't know how to overcome it maybe it's with something current when it comes to the financial failure of whole countries that's going on right now or an economy challenge in america that's you know we've had a 30 decrease in our economy right now of spending or maybe it's something as far as you know one of the greater issues of justice like maybe right now it's the racism issue and you're trying to discern without your biases what is god saying about this or what should i believe what should where should my heart be and the beautiful thing to know today my friends and family is that god has given you a spirit of discernment to be able to discern what is this issue i think this feels spiritual and when i feel that it feels demonic and so no matter what i think about it i'm going to break off or come out of alignment with a wrong agenda before i even come into the right agenda i have to come out of a wrong one so i'm going to come out of a wrong agenda before i make a determination so i can really hear from god because there's things that are energized internationally right now that we need our discernment or else we're going to listen to somebody else's opinion and it's going to form that bias it's going to form maybe a wrong filter or wrong understanding inside of us i want to just look at just a minute second corinthians 5 11. therefore since we know the fear of the lord and understand the importance of obedience and worship we persuade people to be reconciled to him but we are plainly known to god he knows everything about us and i hope we are plainly known to also in your consciousness your god-given discernment so what does discernment uh that we have inherited spiritually from our relationship with god due to us in hard times like now what helps us to know who's got who god is sending us to help be that filter it helps us to know what god's thinking right now and what's in god's heart and we start to look at the big picture not just the micro how it affects us but the macro how it affects the world around us and we start to develop a sense of connection that we wouldn't have had without the holy spirit relating to us inside because otherwise we're trapped and i remember you know years ago when i was learning how to drive and i learned a little late i like to be driven my wife drives the car because she gets a little motion sick and she likes to be in control that's what i always say and so she drives all the time when we go places and so i get to drive i get to be a passenger all the time play with the girls hang out with my wife i love it but i've never loved driving unless it's a long distance and so i i started driving i think i got my learner's permit at 17 and somewhere around then i got my license but i went to the driving school and it was ex-cops or retired cops that were doing the driving program and the first one who took me around and was teaching me is like you don't really have to obey the speed limit on a on a road like this like it's 65 on the freeway but or maybe it's 55 then he goes but go 70. it's not a big deal and i'm listening to him and i'm going my gut's telling me no i'm not a complete rule follower but i i know that this was wrong and i'm like you're a cop you're the type of person who would have pulled me over before i'm like are you sure and he goes yeah cops won't really care that much and so i'm thinking in my head i i think i mean is this okay and i wanted to like really filter it with somebody because i asked my dad my dad is a complete rule follower and he's like don't ever go five miles above the speed limit and that's how he's been my whole life and don't go five miles below or five miles above just maybe two miles above at that and he's he practice it's like a game to him to stay at the speed limit in his car so he's that guy in the freeway that you don't want to be behind and so another cop came and he said you know to give me driver's training for the next lesson and i said can i ask you something you said yeah and i said is it okay on this road even though it says 55 to go 70 miles an hour if there's no one around and he goes why would you do that and if there's a couple cars or deer comes out we set the limits for a reason the government like there's a lot of deer on this road and if you were going 70 and you hit it you can go over to that lane and kill somebody because it's not that it's wrong wrong but it's just i mean you have to think of safety when you're first learning how to drive you're like this is your first experience you don't know how you're going to react when something comes at you and so you need to learn really to drive before you take more responsibility in your own hands like that and you will get a ticket and i'm like oh wow and i started i mean it was a totally different filter same kind of person same background but somebody who helped me to understand why the speed limit was set in place and my own lack of experience and my experience level and so we need those people in our life to come in and we also need god to be that person in our life to give us a greater perspective so i want to look at seven things that help us to learn how to use the sermon as a filter through and the first one is it causes you to have a connection to god in the midst of everything that can be happening now this is huge because some of you are facing things that are so hard maybe you've never been here before i mean if you had told me that our schools and education would be an industry right now that would be shaken even financially i would have been shocked two years ago because education is such a staple to society we spend a large portion of our government budget on education people spend a large portion of their private budget and so i just i'm shocked that friends of mine who start an educational program are suffering right now because no one can attend it i would have never thought that would have happened i would have thought it was the safe safest investment for their program or if you look at certain other industries like oil like right now in la i got gas the other day for two dollars and 30 cents a gallon now some of you don't know but that's like that was a miracle like i thought if i only had anywhere to go use this gas that would be amazing but i mean like that was a miracle so like you have to understand that we have this place where things are being shaken right now and god helps us to feel present or connected through his spirit to him he wants it more than we do john 17 jesus prayed that we'd be one with him before we ever prayed it so the holy spirit's job is to connect you to the deep parts of the process of what god's thinking god who thought of the earth before time began god who thought of you who knew you'd be in the circumstance who understands what you need and if we would just cry out to him stay connected to him stay present with him even when it's painful when we're experiencing pain don't turn away don't just get into something else that would soothe the pain but turn to god and when you do he starts to give you discernment on how to even look at your circumstances because you have scriptures in the bible and you have a spirit to tell you that this day right now that you're experiencing will change this is not your whole story that whatever you're facing is not the final verdict and even on good days we also have god to show us you know there's sometimes we're experiencing something so good and we'll think can i ever have better than this and a few of you if not a lot of you have experienced that maybe in marriage or a business opportunity or finances or creative opportunity will i ever have better and when you have god you feel the spirit of god inside of you helping you discern like yes there's always more we go from glory to glory to glory and in heaven we only increase in it and so when you don't have that discernment you don't have the spirit of god working in you you can lose connection to yourself the world around you your career your passions just because of something that's happening but when you have god he keeps you the course of stability so i just wanted to point that out today and i want to just read the scripture proverbs 1 7 the spear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom and in other words discerning people know that god not their experience or instinct is a source of wisdom ultimately the source of safety from this place humility discerning people seek from help from one who gives it freely and abundantly and you can tell somebody who's discerning because they're humble people who aren't discerning like they'll listen to one google report they'll hear one thing and they'll tell you like an expert like this is what it is people who are humble because they're discerning they're like there's this place inside that's saying i'm still learning how to filter the information i'm still learning the ultimate truth about that not about god not about morality not about those things we know what the truth is but when it comes to humanity like you might hear a report on somebody who's connected to epstein right now and you immediately go i knew it or your discernment might say i'm going to keep my love on because i don't see the whole story and i want to see what god says about the situation i want to see what the courts say about the situation like my gut says this because that person was connected but my heart my spirit says something else i'm not going to trust my instinct first number two i love this sermon because it helps you and causes you to keep good boundaries and this is a big one for right now because it helps you discernment helps you keep boundaries over self relationships work occupation and passions and also entertainment i just want to look at that a little bit because when you have good discernment operating in your life it's like the voice of your conscience when you're spending time and you're you know you're doing something that maybe you're you're with friends uh and you know you're supposed to be doing something else like work or you're with you're at work and you realize you're being a workaholic in this moment but you're finding great satisfaction but you could be at home with your children discernment helps you to to kind of tip the skills in that decision and say you know what i'm going to go after this and i'm going to really go after spending time with my children even though it's not necessarily what i want to do or it's fulfilling to me in this moment and it does for me like i actually take a lot of time off to spend time with my children because i love the age that they're at and i love who they are but i do know that there's times i like my work and it feels like my work is more of a engine passion center than sometimes when i have to go home and i have to resolve three fights or something or i have to do something with my children that i don't want to do because they're little girls they want to play like little bears or something you know it's like that's hard when you when you look at it in the micro but when you look at the big picture of it and you go this is forming who they are in their identity that i get to play with them and i only have so many minutes hours and days you know with them i mean this is huge when you see it that way and discernment helps you to see the value that this is more valuable than this and it starts to help you keep your boundaries so some people will say to people who are discerners they'll say how do you keep such good boundaries it's because they're fighting for it because they're filtering between two things saying is this better or is this better does this line up with my core values for the moment or does this and they actually make decisions based on their spirit not just their gut or not just what feels good or not just wet as a passion center but they're making decisions based on the big picture of what god's called them to who they've made choices to be the goals that they've set and the people they're involved with and discernment helps you to stay involved with that and i just want to look at that a little bit with entertainment because i know right now entertainment home entertainment we're spending between 6 and 12 hours a day per person in household with home entertainment it's bigger than ever before children were already spending 900 hours per school year on entertainment before this between 8 and 18 kids were spending 6.43 hours a day on screen time and consuming media but now it's more like eight so kids are spending around eight hours if not more a day on screen time when we understand that now i love entertainment i think i'm an entertainment you know i'm passionate about it i love video games i love these kinds of things but when we understand that we're consuming so much entertainment media screen time actually dulls or desensitizes our filter at times and it can actually take us out of thinking about what's pure have you ever been on tick tock or even on youtube or something and you've watch like 20 minutes too long and you're supposed to be doing something else and you feel dull going to the next thing like if i sat up here or stood up here and tried to teach you right after i spent three hours of video games like some fortnight or something and i tried to teach instantly after that i would be present differently i wouldn't be as connected to you i wouldn't care as much about my message because i'd be thinking i have to get another run you know i have to go again and and i won't need a spawn point right now i'd be seeing that in my imagination so we do have to have boundaries up and the good thing about the spirit of god is he doesn't take away your passion for entertainment he helps to refocus it and when you listen to the voice of conviction which is one of the main ways we hear discernment where you feel like this is not going to lend to your spiritual growth the holy spirit spirit's trying to not tell you what not to do he's trying to keep you in the center of your spirit thriving sometimes our spirit thriving doesn't look like making a choice that we enjoy right now just like when we're trying to eat healthy and when we're trying to eat something that's you know that doesn't necessarily taste good or is our favorite thing to eat but it's giving our body the energy we need and giving our body the sustenance that we need and you don't want to do that because you have a breakdown and so now you have to do it you want to do that now so that you're actually living a life that you you have full energy for every day and every moment you have and your body is working though properly and and food is about 80 percent that battle most of the time unless you have a condition well the spirit of god he's trying to show you how to enjoy not enjoy like because i love all my sugar and that's what i want every broccoli to taste like but to enjoy the quality of life you have in the midst of eating things you wouldn't normally want to eat based on your own desires my daughters don't want to eat all the healthy stuff they want to eat done healthy stuff and i'm helping to be their discernment this is why we do it set their goals and once you do that enough it creates a pattern where they enjoy how they feel so they get up and they go you know what i don't want junk food cereal i want something healthy we'll go to a restaurant on a trip or something and they'll pick a good choice because they've learned that they're listening their body not to their desires and discernment helps us to do that holy spirit so helps us to see what's important number three discernment causes us to find beauty and brokenness and i love this scripture by david it's one of my favorite in the old testament in the psalms i would have despaired david wrote unless i believed i would see the goodness of god in the land of the living psalm 27 13 discernment helps us it's that it's that hope against hope where god's spirit rises up inside of us and connects us to the kingdom that's only growing right now right now it may look like all kinds of you know enemies are winning and that there's darkness on the earth but jesus's government that he has been building since he returned from the dead the grave has only been growing and it takes eyes to see it until he begins to manifest in more prominent ways but i want to encourage you to let his discernment show you even in the midst of brokenness of what's happening maybe it's the racial issue or the financial issues in this nation i remember with the finances oh gosh i had so many friends who were wounded by what's been happening after covet with finances and then i asked god lord show me what you're doing in this because i know your economy is different than america's or europe's or wherever you know south america's so show me your economy because right now it feels very limiting and even in our own life we're having to make decisions and try and figure out how to not lay people off and we probably will have to we're going through so much lord show me and he started to align my wife and me to discernment like this is what i'm doing now this is the small steps you could take now and we could feel the spirit of god over our finances and of our friends and then he sent us this is how good god is he sent us stories from people like they would call me out friends i've had for years and say i'm thriving during the lockdown i'm actually making business decisions i bought you know these real estate properties for pennies on a dollar i've done this i've done this kind of project where we're starting these resorts down in this area we're doing this i mean crazy stories i'm listening to them going how do you have faith for that like how do you how did you even know it was on your grid they're like god's just giving it to us so when you're not limited to your own brokenness or the brokenness of the world around your brokenness of systems but you're limited to god's kingdom then when you see brokenness you can start to see even in the midst of that god's working he's going to exchange it for beauty if we'll help to harness his power and his glory for it and the other thing that you see in that is that you can see somebody who's going through the hardest time in life maybe there's somebody who's in prison or maybe there's somebody who's going through a lawsuit and you look at them with god's eyes and you discern what he's doing and you start to see something that maybe not everybody else sees why they're in that circumstance and it helps them to feel the love of god and a connection to god in a way they wouldn't have felt if you didn't show up with that discernment so i'm going to encourage you to look for god's beauty whenever there's brokenness there's always a plan of beauty and restoration in the midst of brokenness so the more broken it is the greater the plan of beauty and we have to always see that number four discernment causes us to see god's intention and keep our focus on it and this is huge we know this one so well but it's one of the hardest ones to do i mean especially if you i get up in the mornings i no longer do this but i was getting up in the mornings looking through flipboard looking through different news media and they all contradict each other so looking at different stories look at what's going on in our with our president looking at what's going on with our you know situations that are the most volatile look at what's going on with cobit and i'm looking at this and i'm just like after 15 minutes i'm supposed to start like some you know zoom call or something with my team or i'm supposed to be on some tv show for christian perspective uh after an hour and i'm looking at the stuff and going you know i'm deflating as opposed to being filled with faith and so i i was like how did i not do this i've done this in other seasons but i'm not going to look at this first out of my desperation and curiosity to know if there's any breakthrough any good news i'm going to look at the good news source i'm just going to look to him and i love that you know when when paul was talking about this scripture philippians 4 verse 8 this was during a really dark time where rome had invaded so many countries i mean the the state of israel was really hard paul you know most of christians were being persecuted and he says this so like he's they're experiencing something that we don't even know what it's like to experience philippians 4 8 so keep your thoughts continually fixed on all that's authentic and real honorable and admirable beautiful and respectful pure and holy merciful and kind and fasten your thoughts on every glorious work of god praising him always and what's hard about this is a lot of people think you just go into la la land like you know you just go into okay everything's okay everything's beautiful everything's good no no no this is whatever is authentic and real sometimes the authentic we have to fasten our minds on like right now for those of us who've been on this journey of believing that god and our generation wants to end uh human trafficking i've had to fix my mind a few times and say god you're using the epstein case and what's going on right now you're using that as a big huge you know just just battering ram towards this issue it may not break it all open but it's going to do something in a major way that nothing else ever has you're going to use this case because prominent figures were involved with it and you haven't let us let it go even though that man had died there's other people now involved i just i'm like i look at that it's authentic and real it's not a feel-good thing it's not something i want to look at and go wow i feel great after reading this but i also fix my mind on what's authentic and real and don't go down the rabbit hole of conspiracy where it's all about all the you know a lot of times we do i'll talk about in a minute i'm actually not going to go there yet but it's a good one there's so much amazing you know miracles that are happening right now and it's so easy to focus on the negative those of you who have listened to me before i like to you know quasi study neurology and it's interesting that negative information has sometimes seven times more impact immediately than positive that means that sometimes somebody can tell you something really good and they'll say hey did you know this just happened and you go oh yeah have you ever had someone give you that reaction where it's kind of like that's cool and it was something amazing like maybe that wouldn't even affect them but they didn't give you that great of a reaction but you told them something negative like did you know there was this and they're like oh my gosh and they immediately respond with more passion or intensity it's because neurologically we're wired as survivors but god through the holy spirit has rewired us to be overcomers but we're wired for surviving so i mean the whole humanity for thousands of years was trying not to die that was our primary motivation is to stay alive you know we're in a generation where we're believing we're supposed to overcome not just have a mentality and stay alive but have a mentality that we look at the world through god's eyes and look for what he's doing come into agreement with it and see god's kingdom come in ways that transforms the earth transforms us individually and if we believe that that means we have to stay focused on the transformative power of god more than political situations or more than racial situations or more than economic situations or more than even our own family or sickness situations i've had to stare sickness in the face before many times and sometimes with the covet thing it's scary but i think of some of us like gen toledo and myself and others who have gone into leper wards where there's no protection they didn't give us mass or malaria i don't know why i went into malaria hospital tents in africa and different places where they don't give you anything to wear you just go in and we're laying hands on people with faith saying god heal them and we saw healing of aids and malaria and different things because we believed that god would do it and now we're facing covenant and there's been a couple times where i'm like oh my gosh i can't go to the store right now and i'm like well i've been to malaria awards you know like i've been to places where i wasn't even wearing a mask i've been a play i've had malaria not because i wanted to lay hands on people but because i didn't use my mosquito net um where it was important to use on another trip and so which was just stupidity but i have had malaria and i know what it's like to not use the tools available to keep yourself from disease i understand that but also this place of faith to focus that there's a god of all the universe who loves us and is for us and wants our best interests that are already in his heart to manifest and so we have to say what's focused on what's good and you have to disciple yourself through the spirit mentor yourself and say this isn't good this is causing fear this is causing apathy this is causing complacency this is causing hopelessness you're in in charge of that with the spirit of god over your life no one will take the reins of your depression and fix you even a good therapist can only give you choices you can make but man the holy spirit will sit inside of you and breathe into your desires to live and have hope and to have goodness but you need to listen number five this causes you discernment causes you to sense from god's spirit of truth and gives you a higher value for truth and this is such an important important one where it's you know it keeps you in a place of humility to receive instruction and correction proverbs 4 1. listen to my correction my sons for i speak to you as a father let discernment enter your heart and you will grow wise with the understanding i impart in other words god wants to speak into the place in your spirit but you need to open your heart and say i don't know everything what i just researched online what i have a phd for it doesn't give me enough knowledge compared to who god is have you ever sat down with somebody and you were an expert in something or you knew a lot about something and you listened to them and you thought i'm in kindergarten again that's how god will make you feel not in a negative way but where there's so much more to learn and grow in and so we can't be so uh hinged to certain doctrines and things that we believe you know this happens all the time with eschatology where somebody cares so much about one certain part of eschatology not about heaven not about the return of jesus not about his reign but they start to think about well as they are we're gonna go through a tribulation or not a tribulation and they live their lives not motivated by being with jesus where he is was this eschato eschatological but they start to live their existence on what if you're not raptured with me and they start to preach a gospel that's not the gospel of jesus returning but a gospel of fear and this happens so many times well truth when you have discernment truth becomes more important humility becomes more important and understanding becomes more important than and majoring on majors becomes more important than majoring minors now i want to take this a little bit further and just say you know um uh this can come also in a time to help in knowing what is fake news or how to evaluate other people's perspectives even when it comes across as proven or scientific it helps you to not get caught up in conspiracy rhetoric false narratives conspiracy discernment causes you to want to grow in an oh sorry discernment cause you want to grow in knowledge that is connected to the kingdom building not just experts that give information and so we have isaiah 8 12-13 it says you are not to say it is a conspiracy in regards to all that people call conspiracy and you are not to fear what they fear nor being dread of it it is a lord of hosts whom you already regard as holy and awesome he shall be your source of fear in other words god is the one who holds your life in his hand not these people not these people not this political party not this economic system god holds your hand so when you hear these things and you give it power in a way that it's not really empowered even if it looks you can feel the spirit on it you can discern the enemies on it but how do you discern what god's doing the moment we stay in our discernment of spirits and powers without discerning god's spirit and his power we've actually come into an anti-god message because he's no longer powerful to overcome his enemies do you know that the bible says that he will get justice over every issue that he is the king and part of his reign as justice forever that means that god is a judge and he's just and he already has in his spirit the the in his mind the plan to judge all the enemies done and everybody who's participated who doesn't walk with him he already has it in his heart in his mind so he's already planning and he's using us right now and his goodness it brings condemnation on the enemy's evil as god manifests his plan one light in a dark room like this like this is a very dark room that i'm in right now the lights are a little too bright i can't see the camera i'm just looking at a red light but i see you in my spirit and so one room like this has these lights and you can see all of this stuff all this stuff is exposed because of these view lights that are up here that's how it is one christian with their light when they're operating out of right discernment brings light into situations that everybody only has darkness and they're groping around saying i feel something this is what it is and that's how confident they are now say this many uh many of the conspiracy conspiracies that float around christianity are started if not promoted by nominal christians people who don't have a very deep relationship with god they like information more than they like the practical action and the scriptures not again about this at all this is a shame because this kind of theoretical uh indulgence and idol gossip lies in the face of christian duties and ethics many are based upon false theology not consistent with what the bible teaches jesus never told his father followers to be concerned with secret events or conspiracies he said watch in matthew 24 42 matthew 25 13 and matthew 26 etcetera all the events and signs jesus pointed to were observable this is so important even around the time he'd return he said it'll be a normal day you can observe this kind of day and so he he warned us to be diligent in the day not just when bad things were happening the other thing is when you see he would say we are not to be concerned with rumors matthew 24 6. in exodus 2016 and this is very important for discernment it says do not give false testimony or witness about your neighbor you know false witness when we have that it damages the whole witness of christianity and so many christians who are getting involved with conspiracies or biblical prophecy that is not accurate it's not accurately interpreted or prophetic dreams and words that are about doomsday or gloom versus what god wants to do we're telling people what bad things are going to happen we don't give them any hope these are not what your discernment will tell you to stand on your discernment and your relationship with god will tell you to stand on the fact that the blood price jesus paid in the cross that we just took communion over that there was a resurrection from the dead that he paid that price so we could be resurrected with him and his kingdom could be built through our lives even now otherwise he would have just taken us right away as soon as we got saved we would just gone to heaven but he wanted us to live out this earth to show that his justice and his mercy work even in a fallen broken world that his kingdom could be manifest and he could we could be reconcilers of this kingdom of man even now and this is so important so many times when we hear these uh negative conspiracies online and there's a whole bunch of different groups that do research and we go down the rabbit holes of one of these things what happens is it turns our love off towards a specific person so now they've become the enemy and we can no longer have authority to speak to them or to have relationship with them if you hate the clintons or you hate obama or you hate trump i don't care what put whatever politician you want to put in there if you hate them and begin to you know on your facebook repost negative things about them not about politics not about principle but these ones are evil they've killed this many people they've done this many things then can you imagine if god the god of all the universe when you know who came to daniel in the time of nebuchadnezzar who was one of the most evil men who wanted people to worship him for real if god came to daniel he was like daniel i want to send you to nebuchadnezzar and i want to make a difference in his life and daniel was like oh my gosh oh i better delete my facebook because all i've said was he doesn't like christians you know or hebrews worship he's terrible with women he's an adulterer and he and if he had all this public stuff on there nebuchadnezzar would look at it his advisor would say you should bring this guy in and get in tour with dreams he would look at his facebook and go this guy hates us this guy's evil and daniel would have no authority to speak and it's really from our heart even more than social media do you believe that god's going to give you authority to talk to people in powerful positions who might be operating out of an evil structure they might even be involved with a conspiracy but that's not their story according to jesus jesus looked at them like they could be the joy set before him and he endured the cross even for them so do you allow yourself to separate humanity from spiritual powers and say yes they may be operating in something and it's okay to be truthful but it's not okay to spread a false witness about them even if some of the truths or truths have you lost your voice to love in order to be right and this is a huge one number six discernment causes you to pay attention not just to words but also to action and this is a huge one it goes with the last one there's so many people who are in the know on things that are happening in government or in finance education these kinds of things maybe they have a position of somewhat of power influence or they serve someone of a power influence and so you know they know a lot and we see this happen a lot with i love people with phds i think it's important to have education but we'll see some people who have tenured and phd and they stop learning and they stop growing but they talk like an expert still but new breakthroughs have happened in their field that they're not paying attention to because now they're in autopilot mode we've seen that happen well a lot of christians are doing that right now it's like new things have happened but you settled at one point and said this is the maturity i have whenever whenever we stop maturing that's one of the actions whenever you can't see someone's growth anymore whether it's a leader over you or somebody under you it means that they've stagnated and it's actually dangerous because your discernment will tell you they're not at a healthy place or they're not the ones who should filter with you over something proverbs 10 23 the fool finds his fun in doing wrong but the wise delights in having discernment faith without works is dead so many things that sound good or right when played out or just humanism or non-spiritual compassion we see that with socialism and marxism it sounds right like when you when you read most socialism it's like this sounds really right also extreme forms of capitalism they sound extremely right but somewhere in your spirit you start to see a whole generation one third of humanity sold itself into communism and how did that play out for them one third of humanity they sold themselves for security and maybe a little bit better tomorrow but not for their grand kids grandkids because a false operating system came because we have humanity we need different checks and balances in the midst of that system i'm not saying all socialism is bad but there's a spirit that's behind a lot of this that drives this information and so if we have all kinds of philosophy of how things should be but we don't have practical understanding of how it's already played out maybe maybe you're flirting with socialism right now you're going well this could be an answer if we just had this and this and this it works for that country we're not called to discern what works for other people we're called to discern what works for our nation for our cities and if you really want to get involved find out how it's worked out and played out for other people find out if it's worked before find out what has worked fight for what has actionable items to it i would also say in the midst of that uh galatians 5 and this is so important that we have action in our faith and that's one of the ways that we can discern that this is from god and so i love this one of the actions is defining fruit and when we define fruit as the divine love and all its varied expressions according to galatians 5 it says it's a joy that overflows peace that subdues patience that endures kindness and action a full life of virtue faith that prevails gentleness and heart and a strength of spirit never set law above these qualities for they are meant to be limitless in other words these are things that should be represented whenever you are believing or discerning something does this bring me joy that overflows peace that subdues patience that endorse you should be able to measure the fruit in your life when you're operating out of something like if you know a lot of things i know for me in my career there was times that i was problem solving and helping to fix people in ministries and in businesses and using my spiritual gifts and using my my uh coaching gifts to help fix organizations and i became somewhat of a fixer for a season and i realized it was draining so much of my valuable energy and that most of the stuff i was fixing should be personal responsibility that people was fixing not things that i should come in and have to spend more energy than them to fix it and i realized i was discerned from the holy spirit that i was in the wrong occupation that i had to stop fixing people and it felt right it felt like so great because i knew all this stuff i knew what should fit and how it should all fit together but then i had to fix everything to make it sure that it was according to that mold that i knew from my education i knew from my own you know times of being trained to be a coach these kinds of things i knew how it should fit and then i'd work so hard i'd work like i had an image of what it was supposed to be and i worked so hard to make it happen and no one was working with me as hard as i was and god wasn't working with me as hard as i was which means it wasn't the grace of god when we have discernment it helps us to work out of grace but also to have action and not just a vision of how things should be it's like i don't want to be gladiator i want to be maximus who died for a version of rome that would never exist ugh how would that be no thank you i'm going to pay a price and die on the cross he sent me to die on in this lifetime carry it around and die daily number seven discernment causes you to seek out goodness and embrace it no matter where you find it and this is a huge one in galatians 5 what we just read if you read the message version i love it it says that we believe that the whole world is permeated with his glory that everything has his glory in it and that basically basically there's a place inside of everybody that uh has original and holiness in it or that it's permeated by his holiness when you think of that think of it this way every human being was made in his image and he had a desire for him and they have still an imprint of the original goodness of god that's why people are successful in different areas have good marriages or good parents at times because even without christ he gave us the free gift of life and everything that was in his nature that could cause us to thrive today now sitting alongside of that is original sin it's all the stuff that the enemy tries to work through to destroy our lives and make it you know terrible well if you walk in good principles and you walk and we see this with the jewish people many times that are practicing jewish people that are there's so many practicing jewish people that are in the top of their fields right now so we see if you walk out a life that has a governing of the ten commandments a governing of morality a moral compass a connection to your family a ritual of that connection that we see there's a blessing on that that god's blessing even on people who don't know messiah are still being blessed and we can see even with people in the world at times and so there's something about discernment that causes you to look for god's goodness in all of its forms not just in the christian form and when i say this god's goodness is perfected by faith but it exists everywhere just like sin exists all over in every human there's goodness in every human and there's goodness and many of the systems humans have built many of the things humans have done there's goodness in them when we look at our founding fathers of america there's so much goodness in how they founded america but there was it was sitting right next to perversion they were sitting right next to you know humanism i was sitting right next to wrong understanding of slavery and all these issues but there's so much good that we can thrive on the goodness still today even though we have to filter out now and discern what's not good without doing it with cancer culture we have to do it with spiritual culture hopefully the church will be a voice but it's so beautiful when you look for original goodness like for me it helps me when i know there's goodness and humanity around me and and and i've sat down with humans of all types we've gone to new age fairs and didn't outreaches we've done outreaches in red light districts and my my disposition is if i'm going to talk to a pimp tonight i'm going to look for what god's doing in them and who they are to god i'm not going to look at them as a pimp or i'll hate them because of how they're manipulating men and women but i'm going to look at them after god's eyes and i've never not been able to find god in that circumstance unfortunately with our biases and opinions over issues and subjects they cause us to not look at people or goodness they cause us to only see sin death and darkness but god has given us eyes to see love and light he's caused us a light to shine from within us that when we spend time with people it shines a light on who they are not who they're not that's what we're called to be now i'm not saying if you're a judge or if you work as a lawyer if you work in a career that there's not times to expose or to tell people who they're not i'm not saying that and there's even a time as friends to hold each other accountable which is part of friendship a part of family to say hey you're not being that good nature i see you you're being this instead there's times to hold accountable but there's also times to learn from people by saying i don't understand who they are and i don't understand their issues but i'm going to listen with empathy so i can learn something about the person maybe the brokenness the pain maybe the strength of who they are i'm going to listen and stop here and not be concerned if i hear something that doesn't fit with my agenda my politics my faith my convictions i can listen to somebody from another religion a mormon who comes to my door and listen to their passion speech and just be like wow they're more passionate than a lot of christians i know this is crazy that they're at my house trying to give away their passion for their god and i listen to it i'm just like wow and i've done this a couple times i'm like thank you for sharing your passion that's incredible that you believe so strongly like your faith is so strong what you believe i'm also a person of faith and i'd love to share too but if you don't want to hear it's okay but i'm not going to ascribe to your faith today but it was just so meaningful that you shared i'm so glad that there's people such passion but i do want to tell you i i do have a different faith in you that i think you would really that would really connect something in you that you don't have that's missing in the story you just told me and i've had both people that i did that too both listened to my version were so encouraged by it that i was able to pray for him and by the end of it bring him to salvation so i know it works to be able to pray for people with passion by seeing who they are and even respecting a muslim who's praying way more than christians pray the average christian household spends one minute a day right now in prayer in america according to the bharata group want want you know but the average muslim spends several i think it's up to uh 22 minutes a day the average muslim spends 22 minutes a day in prayer i respect that i respect that conviction i respect that that passion i respect that i don't care what it comes out of i'm just saying like when i'm with them i'm going to treat them with value respect and honor because that's how god treats them and so i say this maybe it's an issue like where the cancer culture thing or maybe it's an issue with the black white issue right now where you hear some people if you're white or hispanic or asian and you hear people who are black say we should or maybe they're not black who say we should defund the police i want to hear why and i've listened to a few of my friends who believe that i want to hear why it does not change my personal conviction and you don't have to have this conviction that we shouldn't defund the police i love our police structure not all of it and i believe there's some corruption and there needs to be reform if you look at what god's done in l.a through some of the christian cops and through even our mayor who's not a christian believer who's brought in some of the greatest teaching in the nation because of so much imbalance for so many generations one of the things that mayor garcia had said at one point was the effect of hey what if we spend this much budget to do this this year and repeat this teaching we'll form the curriculum and the teaching will be far less next year but you guys aren't mental health professionals you're not marriage advocates you're not all these things that cops who have to show up on site have to be so let's train you in these different compartments for some reactionary understanding of what to do so you don't you're not left to your own conflict model from your own family but you actually have tools and we're one of the first police forces i've heard that's gone through extensive training i mean for this long and i look at that and i go wow i'm really proud of some of the efforts they're making but then i hear some of the stories even locally of some of my friends even my roommate before i was married who got pulled over seven times in one year being my roommate as a black man i was never pulled over once in our neighborhood just down the street because i'm white i was never pulled over he was definitely pulled over because it was black and i go this is wrong i remember just thinking this is so wrong i would hate for his children to have to go through it let alone him and so i understand like when i'm listening with empathy i'm hearing things and it puts action in me i discern differently it's not my biases are going to are you crazy do you from the police i actually go i need to hear what they're saying and even if i'm not going to apply the knowledge of what they're saying the way they would apply it there's something in me that i want to hear kingdom and i want to hear what god's saying and it's not going to hurt me to hear it and that's a huge one is that when you're looking for goodness it will not hurt you to hear another perspective no matter how extreme it is you will eventually filter it out because your relationship with god if it was negative or if it was wrong to hear if there's something that's of course opposing your faith directly of course we don't want to listen to the rhetoric of opposing our faith directly when it's an argument or a fight but when it's somebody who's sharing out of a place of pain or passion god will help you to filter it and he's actually put us on the earth to be listeners like jesus at the well with the woman at the well who was giving false theology about her narrative of how you know they believed samaritan messiah was going to appear and in the midst of that he used that place of passion to say i am the one you've been looking for how beautiful is jesus that he brought revelation through a very wrong narrative in her life that's who god is and that's who we're supposed to be so discernment is not only your filter but it's going to help you to stay in the lane in the center of the lane it's the bumpers for bumper bowling for little kids it keeps you you might bounce off against a few things but you're going to stay in the center lane that's how good god is as a father he said i put this inside of you a connection to me so you could stay and tune in and step with me but if you give yourself to this lower thought or this low lens of christianity or this conspiracy or this wrong thinking you're gonna get a stronghold there that's gonna take power and time to break so stay in discernment stay in my lane so that we can stay out of these realms of spiritual warfare that you don't even belong to those are my battles not yours you say the lord rebuke you satan don't go after this one directly come to me come to my feet when you're confused and i'll give you wisdom so i just want to pray as we're ending here holy spirit i pray that you would just align us to this gift of discernment and this wonderful ability to have wisdom that only you give us that's not the wisdom we can gain in our own and we receive from your spirit right now the fullness of your wisdom and we thank you god that our story isn't limited to our own intellect or what we can research or what we can know but it's limited to your goodness your grace and the fact that you're gonna have justice for all the fact that you're the god of goodness for all and we receive you that way and god if i need to change today to receive more of your discernment change me lord make us humble so that we'll change change our biases change our opinions change our expressions change even our theology if it doesn't line up with you in jesus name amen well thank you so much for joining us today we love you guys and uh right afterwards there's a prayer line open if you want a prayer we'll pray for you right now bless you [Music] you

Channel: Expression 58

Views: 11,676

Rating: 4.8947368 out of 5

Keywords: shawn bolz, bolz, cherie bolz, expression 58, expression58, e58, church, los angeles church, revival, jen toledo, jennifer toledo, jona toledo, bolz ministries

Id: J7BrFbpKVpA

Length: 49min 40sec (2980 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020