Wisdom and Seeing in the Spiritual Realm
By: David Martin
We have to develop a behavior of learning how to inquire of the Lord. God wants to help you every moment of every day. Israel knew God’s works — all of the miraculous works going through the wilderness, miracle food, miracle water, miracle healing, miracle clothes. Everything was miraculous. But Psalm 103:7 says, “He made known His ways to Moses, [but only] His acts to the sons of Israel.”
One of my favorite verses is Ecclesiastes 2:26, which says, “To him that’s good or pleasing in the sight of God, He gives knowledge, wisdom and joy, but to him that is not good, He gives the job of gathering up for him that is good.”
With a word of knowledge, God will give you a snippet of knowledge related to the present or the past. Wisdom points to the future. Either way, God knows exactly what to do. Begin to expect God to give you the words of wisdom and the words of knowledge to show you how to do things. Very simply, it is God telling you something He knows that will help you or help someone else.
You can get a word of wisdom by a personal visitation of Yeshua. You can get a word of wisdom by a prophet and in one case Agabus tells Paul—he actually does a prophetic act, puts a belt around him and says, “This is what’s going to happen to you when you go into Jerusalem.” That’s called a prophetic act.
John got the whole book of Revelation, a word of wisdom, while he was on the Isle of Patmos.
Another way God shows us is through the discerning of spirits, which is the ability to see into the unseen realm of the spirit. The reality is I’m a spirit. I have a soul and I live in a body. This body is just my earth suit. It is what gives me legal right to live here on this planet, but the real me is a spirit made in the image of God. God is a Spirit and He made us in His image. When we’re talking about the spiritual realm, it means seeing (or sensing) into the spiritual realm. One Bible translation calls it distinguishing of spirits. We’re able to see past the facades of the natural realm. The three types of spirits that you find are the human spirit, angelic spirits and demonic spirits.
This gift will usually operate through spiritual eyes. Your eyes are open to the spiritual realm, but it can operate in a way resembling our natural senses. And to avoid confusion, this differs from the gift of discernment, but like the gift of faith you develop it through your experiences. The Bible tells us that by reason of use, you are going to have your natural senses trained to discern good and evil. Every one of your natural senses has a corresponding sense for the spirit realm. God will probably have you specialize with one of these senses. That often seems to be what happens. Like the gifts of healing, there are specialties. One person tends to see more. One person tends to hear more. One person tends to smell more. But expect them all.
