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An elder’s ability of discernment is definitely related to the management of the church. An elder who has no discernment concerning people and things will surely be unable to manage a church. In other words, a person who is muddled cannot manage the church. The person who manages and oversees must be considerably clear in his mind. If you take three as four or four as three, you cannot manage the church. Even if you were to manage it, your management would be a management of confusion. Therefore, either we do not mention church management at all, or if we do, we need to see a basic need, which is the ability of discernment.
An elder’s sphere of discernment differs from that of the people of the world. Their sphere of discernment is worldly and materialistic, but the elders’ sphere of discernment is spiritual. This is an important principle.
In discerning people and things, the first thing the elders have to determine is whether or not the person or the matter is spiritual. For instance, a brother may suggest something to you as an elder. First, your job is not to discern if the matter is right or wrong, good or bad, but whether or not it is spiritual. The church is not a social organization or a business institution. The church is a spiritual family and a spiritual garden. Business affairs are there only to render some support. The goal of church administration is to nourish and supply every family member with life so that each one will grow to maturity. Or to put it in another way, this goal is to render every tree in this garden the adequate nourishment and watering so that each one will grow up. Therefore, everything in the church must be discerned with spiritual insight. Even if some brothers come with suggestions to buy land for a meeting hall or to build a meeting hall a certain kind of way, the elders must have spiritual discernment. Some brothers may suggest, “We want to send out a notice or an invitation.” The elders should first discern if this way of doing things is spiritual. This is a very serious principle.
An elder must also be able to discern whether a brother or sister has passed through the death of the cross and whether he or she is a person living in resurrection. Perhaps certain ones are still in the natural realm, because the things they say come from their natural and ethical concepts. Perhaps within them there is still the flesh, indignation, and some other things. Perhaps within them there is still insincerity and ambition. Whenever you contact people, pick up a conversation, or encounter a certain matter, you must have this ability to discern. You should not only discern whether a person fears God but also discern if he has passed through the death of the cross and is in resurrection in everything, in every point, in every conversation, and in every proposal. An elder should have such an ability to discern.
It may be the same opinion and the same suggestion, but when it comes from one who has passed through death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit within you will give a certain response or a certain echo. On the contrary, if it is suggested by one who has not passed through the death of the cross, who is not living in resurrection, but is living in the natural realm, in his ethical concept, or if it is suggested by a fleshly, indignant, insincere person, or one with other motives, the Holy Spirit will give you another reaction within. This is a great factor in the elders’ administration of the church.
A brother may say to an elder, “I feel that next week we should preach the gospel.” If that elder has spiritual discernment, he might not accept the suggestion. This does not mean that it is wrong to preach the gospel, but the elder touches something impure in this one who suggests this matter. Perhaps the elder can take the same suggestion from another person, because this one has passed through the cross and is in resurrection; his spirit is pure, and there is no mixture within him. Only through such discernment by the elders can the service in the church be so pure and so free from the natural realm, the human concepts, the human inclinations, and the human ideas, and be in resurrection.
For example, some brother may say, “Brother, now is the best time to preach the gospel. I received the news today that in ten days a certain denomination will conduct an evangelistic campaign. We should seize the opportunity first. We should not let others seize the initiative.” Let me ask the brothers and sisters: Is this thought good? Indeed, it is not good. Although what this brother tells you is a good thing and his motive is good, you can sense that this brother has not been dealt with by the cross; he is still in his natural person, and he is still competing with others. Gospel preaching is a good thing, but in this matter you can touch that this man has never been crucified by the cross.
Therefore, in any matter that the brothers or sisters suggest to us, although they may be good and may be for the church, the elders must discern if the persons have passed through the cross and if they are in resurrection.
An elder must also be able to discern if a person’s spirit is pure and if his heart is proper. When someone tells you that another is right or wrong, you should not immediately accept this word. Whether or not you should take the word does not depend on whether the words are good or bad, right or wrong. Rather, it depends on the speaker, whether or not his spirit is pure, and whether or not his heart is proper. Sometimes what a person speaks are good words and words of praise concerning the brothers and sisters. Yet behind the praises you can touch an impure spirit and an improper motive. On the contrary, it is possible that a brother may come to the elders and relate to them the shortcomings of a responsible brother or the mistakes of a serving sister. However, you can touch that his spirit is pure and his motive single. He may be talking about the wrongs of others all the time, but his spirit is pure, and his motive is single. Hence, the elders must not only discern if this is a criticism of the brothers and sisters or a praise of them and if this is about the brothers’ and sisters’ right or about their wrong. It does not mean that you can take it if it is right and reject it if it is wrong. Instead, you must discern if the speaker is pure in his spirit and single in his heart.
Sometimes problems and arguments arise among the brothers and sisters. If they have enough grace, they will behave according to what is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 6, where some should be willing to suffer and to submit before the Lord. The problems will then be solved. But sometimes, neither side may be willing to suffer. Sometimes, one side may be willing to suffer, but the other side is not. Such things as these are often brought to the elders. At such times, how should you arbitrate? You cannot judge right away who is right and who is wrong. If you do this, you will have joined the battle and will be drawn into the dispute of right and wrong. If you really love the Lord and love the brothers, you will surely take their problem as your own pressing problem and will try to solve it before God. You will say to the Lord, “Lord, what shall we do? I do not know how to help these brothers. How should I help them without hurting them? How can they be perfected? How can they know themselves? And how can they have a more desperate pursuit after You?” Right away you can see that the matter is not so simple. This is more complicated than a doctor diagnosing an illness. You cannot base your judgment on right and wrong. You have to go beyond right and wrong to touch their inward condition. While you are listening to the two brothers, you must have the power of spiritual discernment.
The people of the world can only judge who is right and who is wrong; they can only tell who is reasonable and who is unreasonable, who has an argument and who does not. However, in the church we must go beyond right and wrong, and we must touch man’s real condition before God. Perhaps a brother has all the reasons on his side, but you can sense that his condition before God is quite improper. I would like the brothers and sisters to know that if we in the church try to take care of such disharmony, disputes, and arguments, and we make judgments based on right and wrong, we will be damaging the brothers and sisters. You will surely say that the brother who has all the reasons is right, but this judgment will damage him. First, it will damage his spiritual condition before God. Second, it will put him into a situation where God will have to give him another chastisement. God will have to stretch forth His hand to chastise this brother once again. For him to be confronted with an unreasonable brother this time is a chastisement from God; it is a discipline of the Holy Spirit. But you have helped him to remove this discipline of the Holy Spirit and have helped him to justify himself. On the one hand, you have damaged his spiritual condition before God. On the other hand, you have put him in a situation where he will have to go through more severe dealings from God. This is not a profit to him.
Perhaps you will ask, “What then shall I do?” It is not a matter of what you should do. First, you must have the ability to discern. You must be able to discern that such a brother may have all the reasons, but his very person is wrong before God. If you can exercise your discernment to such an extent, you can help him. Gradually, you may fellowship with him and explain to him, “Brother, in this matter no doubt you are right. All the reasons are on your side. All the blame is on the other side. But brother, let me have some fellowship with you. In this matter, what is your inner feeling before God?” If you fellowship with him in such a way, you will be not only a severe judge but a serious doctor; he will have no other way but to submit to you. He will say, “Although in this matter I am right, yet in these days my fellowship with the Lord is not as it was before. I do not feel any sweetness within. It seems that the Lord is not pleased with my condition.” Once he says this word, you will have many opportunities to help him. Immediately, you can tell him, “Brother, you are right. This is my feeling also. Although you were not wrong in this matter, I have been really concerned that your condition before God is off. I dare not speak for your side, because I am afraid that I may damage your spiritual condition before God and cause you to incur more severe dealings in the future.” There is no need to speak too much; these few words will suffice; no doubt you will have given this brother some serious help. There is no need to judge who is right and who is wrong. This brother can have his problem solved from within and solved before God. In the end both brothers, the one who was right and the one who was wrong, are brought before God by you; both of them receive a solution from within. For this reason, brothers, the ability to discern is crucially related to the administration of the church.
We must believe that all the brothers and sisters are very much under the Lord’s grace. On the other hand, we must also admit that we who are under God’s grace are not so simple. We are a Jacob, a natural person, but we are also born again as Israel. Our expression is often that of Israel outwardly but Jacob inwardly. Therefore, many times when brothers and sisters come to speak to you, you cannot believe them according to their words only. You must also have the ability to discern. You must enter into their spirit and touch the feeling of their spirit. For example, some brother may say, “I am saying these things not as slander against the elders.” Yet you can sense that he is altogether trying to slander the elders. Another may say, “I am not at all opposed to the responsible brothers. I can see that they are all quite good.” Nevertheless, while he is speaking, you can feel that this person’s spirit is definitely an opposing, judging spirit. It is true that they are not intentionally lying, but each of these is one person on the outside and another on the inside. Here is the need for discernment. The elders’ shepherding of the brothers and sisters and their handling of the affairs of the church, their judgments and their decisions, are all based on their ability to discern. If you have the spiritual discerning ability, nearly no one will be able to hide anything from you when they come before you and present their cases before you. You can discern a person to the marrow of the bone, penetrating him more than an x-ray. You can clearly discern the motive of this person and the spirit of this person, whether they are calm, tender, pure, and single. You can tell if this person is in resurrection or in the natural realm. You can have a thorough discernment of his condition.
When elders encounter problems, they must also be able to discern whether the matter is according to the truth. For example, a brother may suggest something to you and may enumerate many reasons to support himself, reasons that seem to be very good. But is the matter according to the truth? At such times the elders need to have the ability to discern the truth.
The same principle applies in questions related to the church. The elders should have the ability to discern the truth concerning the way of the church, the ground of the church, the nature of the church, and the position of the church.
In addition, discernment concerning spiritual gain and loss is also very important. For example, when you make a certain decision, you must be able to discern whether or not your decision will cause a gain or a loss to the brothers and sisters spiritually. Sometimes there is both gain and loss. In such cases you have to discern whether there will be more gain or more loss, whether the gain can counterbalance the loss. All these matters depend on your discernment.
I can never forget how a brother who had helped us was sitting down with us one day. We were talking about the pressing circumstances that we were under at that time; we could not stop, but there was no way to go on. We had to turn either to the right or to the left, but either way we could turn would be difficult for us. What should we do? On that day this brother gave an illustration. He said that it was like driving a car with another car coming head on from the opposite direction. The two cars were about to crash into each other. If you turn to the side, you would knock the rickshaws down. But there was not enough time to stop the car. Should you hit the car in front of you, or should you knock the rickshaws down? It all depends on your instant decision at that moment. Within the twinkling of an eye, you have to make the decision, to hit the car or to knock the rickshaws down. Please remember that the church can sometimes be pressed by Satan to such an extent that it must, so to speak, either hit the car head on or knock the rickshaws down at the side; there is no way to escape a collision. At such times you have to exercise your discernment of loss versus gain. If it means that you have to be decisive and that you have to “knock the rickshaws down,” you should not be hesitant because you are caught in such a quandary. You should be able to make a swift judgment and to say that by so doing, you gain more than you lose. Of course, the gain and loss that we are talking about here refer to spiritual gains and losses.
Furthermore, you must be able to discern the result that this kind of action will lead to. You should be able to discern if these dealings with matters and people will be a gain tomorrow even when they are a loss today. You should also be able to discern if these dealings with matters and people will cause irreparable loss tomorrow despite their gain today. All of these depend on your discernment. Some churches in the hands of some brothers have passed through some very difficult times. Yet in the end they found themselves in a broad land. Some other churches in the hands of other brothers went through easy times for a while but suffered more and more difficulties as time has gone on.
During these years, among a few churches, often I have emphatically charged the brothers and sisters that they must take care of the young people. Because I emphasize this point, it makes the older ones feel very uncomfortable. Sometimes some of them say, “Brother Lee is simply causing the young people to rebel.” Today I speak this before the Lord. The reason I purposely encourage the young people is that I clearly realize one thing: if a church cannot raise up the young people, this church has no future. If a local church that has been meeting for many years is not able to raise up the new ones to serve the Lord, it will be like a couple who have been married for many years without children. When this couple have grown old, what would happen to the family? This is why I conclude that a church must have young people at all costs. The church needs the second generation. The future of the church hinges on the young people. Here obviously there is a matter of discernment. You should not merely look up some old brothers for fellowship and find some old sisters with whom to pray; every day you work on the old brothers and sisters and leave the thirteen- to fifteen-year-old young ones to their studies. If you do this, the brothers and sisters in the church will all be old ones, and the elders, the deacons, and the responsible ones in the district will also be old ones. If this is the way you work, you will have sold out the church of God and will have hurt the brothers and sisters. Those who are thirteen will become twenty-three in ten years, and those who are in junior high school will be Ph.D.’s in ten years. At the same time, do not forget that those who are in their fifties and sixties will soon be in their sixties and seventies. There is a real need of discerning ability here.
Brothers, let me repeat that it is not a simple thing to be an elder in the church. If we miss a little, we lose a soul. If we are off a little, a hundred will not be saved. You can see the seriousness here. Salvation and perdition hinge on the one thought of the elders. How then can you act properly and judge accurately? It all depends on your ability to discern. If you have discernment, the church will be brought onto the proper track. Only then will you have the real administration.
The development of the ability to discern is based upon learning and experience. This is an ironclad rule. The amount of learning and experience we have determines the ability in discernment that we will achieve. There is no shortcut or second way here. If I have not been saved, I can never differentiate who is saved and who is not. If I have not been consecrated, I can never sense who is consecrated and who is not. The degree of learning and experience you have before God is the degree of discernment you will have. The most profound discernment comes out of the most profound dealings. If you judge your motive and intention in everything before God, and if you judge and condemn everything that has impure motives or mixed intentions, it will be very easy for you to touch the motive and intention of the brothers and sisters; you will be able to sense them right away. At the same time, if you are one who has learned to judge your flesh and has dealt with your fleshly person, you will find most conspicuous the flesh in another person who is fleshly. You will have a keen spiritual sense of smell. This sense of smell becomes your discernment. We read in the Bible that a priest who served God could not have a disfigured nose (Lev. 21:18). The disfigured nose denotes a lack of spiritual sense and a lack of spiritual discerning ability.
If you have learned serious lessons in consecration and are fully under the Lord’s authority, you will have a keen spiritual sense in this matter. Whenever you touch a person, you will immediately know if such a one has handed over his own rights before God. Although a person may be a preacher already, he nevertheless may not have given up his rights. Although a man may have sold all that he has and may have given everything away for the Lord’s sake, yet he may still have not given up his rights. Although a person may sacrifice his body for others’ sake and may be willing to be martyred for the Lord, he may still have his rights in his hand. If you have been exercised in the matter of consecration, you will be more sensitive than others in this matter, and no one will be able to deceive you. This special sensitive feeling is your discerning power.
Consider again the matter of the truth. If you have never seriously studied the truth or practically learned it, you will not be able to have any discernment when you are confronted with any question regarding the truth; you will feel that everything is more or less the same. But those who have fought the battle in the truth and who have applied the truth will be experienced in the truth, and they will have the discernment in the truth. For example, several words may be similar in spelling. They may look the same, and most people may make a mistake concerning them, taking one for the other. But proofreaders will be able to spot the difference right away. The reason for this is that they are doing this every day. They are particularly experienced in the discernment of the characters. In the same way, there are many spiritual truths that are very similar to one another. There is definitely the distinction in discernment.
When I was young, I once heard a brother who was leading us answer a question involving the truth. I could not help but admire him. A problem arose; two things were very similar, and it was difficult to separate them. But as soon as the question was raised, he immediately gave the answer and separated the two things clearly one from the other. No matter how many smoke screens there were in the question, once it was asked, he was clear already. His ability to discern the truth had reached such an extent that when you asked him a question, he would know immediately what your next question would be. Many people could testify that they had originally intended to ask another question, but the answer to the first question stopped their mouths, and they no longer had any need for further questions. His discerning ability was so keen that no one could be sloppy before him.
In the local church there are also many difficulties and problems; they all appear ambiguous. If we do not have the discernment, we have no way to deal with them; the only thing we can do is let them go on. Please remember that this is the main reason the church becomes weaker and weaker, with sickness after sickness. There does not seem to be a way for anything; there does not seem to be an answer for anything. Everything is in confusion. In order for the church to be strong and have all things on the right track, the elders must have clear discernment. This discernment must not be something worldly or of man’s wisdom and understanding. Rather, it must come from a man who has learned the lessons before the Lord, who has been dealt with, and who is exercised in the matter of truth.
Of course, in such a thing as the management of the church, you can never make anything absolute; everything is relative. Take man’s behavior as an example. It is relative and is not absolute. One thousand persons have one thousand different ways of behavior. The same is true with the way people manage their homes; it is relative and not absolute. Each family has its own practice. In the same principle, the way to manage the church is also a relative matter; it is not absolute. This relativeness is based on the condition of the elders: If the standard of the elders is high, the management of the church will surely be high in standard. If the standard of the elders is low, the management of the church will surely be low in standard. May the Lord have mercy upon us that we will not be discouraged in these things; neither will we be proud. The demands here are relative, not absolute. On the other hand, they are also unlimited and boundless.
