Godly Instinct

I have always heard, "Trust your instincts." Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Blink, tells the story of a firefighter in Cleveland who answered a routine call with his men. It was in a kitchen in the back of a one-story house in a residential neighborhood. The lieutenant looked around and thought, "There's something wrong here," and he immediately ordered his men out. Moments after they fled, the floor they had been standing on collapsed. The fire had been in the basement, not the kitchen as it appeared. Gladwell was intrigued by the gut-instinct with which the firefighters reacted to the immediate evidence. In fact, if the lieutenant had dilly-dallied on the facts, he and his men would have perished.

When it comes to people, I have had this same strange feeling encountering certain individuals--the kind of warning that shoots through your brain and screams, "Something's wrong here!" The Bible clearly speaks of fruit when it talks about evidence of Christ's presence in people. The Apostle Paul writes in Galatians 5:22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."(NIV)

In 2 Timothy 3, Paul warns his young protege about impostors of the faith: "6They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, 7always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. ... 9But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone."(NIV)

It is hard to explain, but God gives us a degree of discernment through His Spirit. His desire is to make folly clear to everyone who desires Truth. This discernment is based on His Word and in this particular scripture, the basic list of spiritual fruit listed above. God also helps us discern in deeper ways when He puts a check in our hearts as to a person's motives or intentions. In this life, we must be as Jesus said in Matthew 10:16, "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves."(NIV) We must always act in love but never let our guard down.

Today I received some startling news that a former band-mate of 30 years ago was arrested for fraud in an ever-expanding FBI investigation. Brenda and I knew there was something not quite on the up-and-up when we visited he and his wife in Orlando 12 years ago. Now we know. Beware the Greek who offers a large, wooden horse as a gift!