What Should I do With what I'm Seeing?

by Jim Driscoll

Obviously, people who have the eyes to see need to see - but they also need to know what to do with what they're seeing. That is one of the questions I hear when I teach on or speak about the seer gifting. People see strange stuff; they have odd experiences, and they want to know what they should do with them.

There is nothing wrong with asking other people for insight, especially if you have no idea what is going on. However, discerning what something was can be difficult for a person who wasn't there. Discernment is often processed through the emotions: If you sense that something is good and pure, it likely is, whereas if you sense that something is dark or harmful, that is likely true as well. Being there and feeling through a situation are both important.

So the best person to receive discernment about what you experienced is you. Other people could offer ideas about what it was, but in most cases, they wouldn't be able to tell you, "This is what is going on."

Interaction with God

What does this mean? It means that interacting with God is one of the most important things any of us can do. After we have seen or experienced something - a vision, a picture, a word, a thought, a feeling or any other thing He could use to communicate with us - we should return to Him with our questions. Seeking Him out is always the best, most important step we can take. There are countless reasons for this, but one of those reasons is that every person and situation is different. That is, it is problematic to take "stock answers" for what we, or others, have seen in the past and blindly try to apply them to what we're experiencing now. Some of them could be helpful, of course, but nothing is as helpful as doing what God is telling us to do in the moment.

The goal is to be with Him, keeping in mind that He is training us along the way. Today, He may tell us to pray about something every time He brings it to mind. Tomorrow, He may show us the same thing but tell us to do something different. He could say the same thing 100 times, or He could say it just once. He could even show us something - and not want us to do anything with it, other than be aware of its presence.

We need to practice being open to His voice, and then as our discernment builds, we will gradually start noticing that He is consistently and reliably informing us and giving us what we need in order to continue forward.

Like other revelatory giftings, discernment can fluctuate. We can go through seasons in which the answers seem to be immediately clear and other seasons in which it seems that nothing is clear, not even what we thought we knew in the past. Some of the exercises on stirthewater.com will help mature your ability to see and also help train your revelatory discernment in asking God questions, so that the next time you see something, you can interact with Him and know what it is while it is going on, as well as what He wants you to do with it.

Jim Driscoll