Troublesome Doubt or True Discernment

Have you ever participated in a large Christian gathering and felt a struggle going on inside of you?  It's like you feel drawn into this sort of ethereal type of feeling that seems to have consumed everyone else around you, but you feel a skepticism welling up from within that cautions you from getting too comfortable in this space.  You think, "oh maybe the Holy Spirit is among us; I should step into this", but then your mind starts calling you a weirdo and wondering if this is for real or not.  Maybe its just some hokey nonsense stirred up by collective emotion and loud music.  After all, didn't the pagens of ancient times used to be captivated by such experiences?  Weren't the hippies chasing this feeling with various "herbal" concoctions?  And then you start to feel like an outsider wondering if this is actually manufactured and everyone else around you is just playing along, or if they are genuinely experiencing the presence of the Lord.  You figure that for the numbers around you, this is surely genuine, especially considering the boldness and confidence with which they prayed for, invited in, and proclaimed that the Holy Spirit was among you.  But you've been deceived before, led astray when you ignored your skepticism.  You want to join in and let that ethereal feeling grow inside you, but you distrust everything and everyone.  Your mind has been so poisoned by the deception of the enemy that you do not trust yourself to discern truth from lies.  You are divided, split apart by doubt.

No?  Consider yourself lucky.  As for me, this is too familiar of a feeling.  I have been deceived in the past, sucked into legalism.  It caused a lot of long term harm, like the kind that allows you to carry the full weight of a past sin around your neck for over a dozen years chocking off all life and hope of life in Christ.  And then on the side of truth I have been taught not to trust my feelings, as these will deceive me.  As we cast off our old selves and move into new life with Christ, the old way of the flesh feels familiar.  We have to push back against those feelings of discomfort, against the desire to drag our feet and wade in the pool of the familiar.  But sometimes our feelings are right and what we're being taught or experiencing isn't right, good, true, or from God.  Sometimes doubt is a good thing, keeping us from harm as a type of discernment.  How can we differentiate troublesome doubt from true discernment?

I want the quick and easy answer to this question.  I feel like life is a test, and this A student keeps getting a failing grade when it comes to recognizing the light from the dark.  After all, Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians that satan disguises himself as an angel of light.  Lord, how I wish you would bestow on me the spiritual gift of discernment! I often wish for a discernment guru to walk through life with me or some kind of situational decoder ring that would illuminate green for truth and flash red for lies and deception.

We do have the Word of God to rely on as our decoder ring, and we have within us the Holy Spirit to help us discern, but with so many different interpretations of the scriptures it can still be hard.  Keeping in mind my experience with legalism, I can tell you that these people backed everything up with scripture, but it was misapplied and/or taken out of context.  But context is tricky and can be time consuming.  Last month I attended a 2 hour session on hermeneutics, which is the study of interpretation.  It was a bit overwhelming.  It is a huge responsibility to handle the word of God!  It can be very easy to get something wrong.  We went over a couple of examples that are very easily taken out of context.  So what to do?  I am going to cling to Jesus with all I got.  He is the way, the truth, and the life.  He is my only chance of getting a passing grade on the discernment exam.  And even if I fail a test, I think drawing closer to Him through prayer and study in the uncertain is still a win.

In that room with all of those people when I feel the doubt starting to boil I can pray to Him and say, "Lord, you are the way, the truth, and the light.  I don't know what is going on around me right now, but I am here and I know that you are with me.  Help me focus on that reliable fact that came from your mouth, regardless of what I am feeling at this moment."  I am convinced that Jesus is our only hope, not just for salvation, but for our walk in the light and in truth.  We are bombarded constantly by different messages not just from the world, but from inside the church as well.  It is so easy to get rolled over by deceit, even from those who do not know that they are being used by the enemy to perpetuate it.  Anchoring ourselves from above by focusing on and holding fast to Jesus is the only way to stay upright.