In the New Covenant life, we are supposed to be encouragers. That’s not all of our assignment. There are times when encouragement will be displaced by a warning. These warnings have occurred across the timeline of Scripture, from Genesis to the end of Revelation. What we can miss in our desire to always be  encouraging is this: a warning is an act of love.

Jesus warned His disciples of what would come in the future, “For false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even God’s chosen ones” (Mark 13:22). We may be shocked, or even angry, at what we thought was true, but it was not.  God’s chosen people are not exempt from deception.

Deception happens to those who once believed the truth but were offered something false – a false savior telling us there is another way to God apart from Jesus, or false prophets who say or demonstrate something that’s so convincing it could even be accepted as the truth by a follower of Jesus. 

What has been lacking in the Church in recent decades is discernment. Some of this discernment is so subtle that we can miss it when it first appears. It’s a signal from the Spirit warning us that something is amiss. It’s like an unsettled feeling we get when something’s not quite right. 

This discernment is not a form of unhealthy judgment; it is used to get our attention for something the Lord wants to do to help His people mature. When our discernment exposes falsehoods and a warning is issued, it will be used by the Lord to keep His Church pure and unsullied.

If we are hungry for a fresh move of God, we need to know this: all moves of God begin with confession and repentance. Human failure is not the end. It’s the beginning of something new. Confession and repentance will shake our current status quo and lead us down the path of truth and restoration, something we lost when we failed to heed the warnings of our discernment.