Jane Hamon – How to Discern the Voice of God

SHAUN: I was a part of the early conversations about this book, so I know this is a topic you’ve been pursuing and teaching on for multiple decades and I’d be curious to hear what were some of the challenges you faced in your journey as you developed in this gift. This isn’t something that just happens overnight. There have been many experiences and many hours that have poured into what we see in this book, so talk to us about some of the peaks and the valleys of the journey.

JANE: Well I would say that in the beginning days there seemed to be more valleys than peaks. You know it was interesting because my father-in-law laid hands on me and activated this gift after I received a prophecy saying that the Lord had given me a gift of discernment.

I’ve always been quite a people person and suddenly it was literally like a curtain went up in my mind and I could see and hear conversations. I could see what was happening and it was pretty intense. I would go to church and I would hug people and after I would hug them I’d be like, “Aaaaahhhh, stop,” because I was suddenly seeing and hearing.

Two weeks after he activated this gift in me I went back to him and said, “Would you put your hands back on me and take this gift back? I don’t want this gift. This gift is awful because of what I’m seeing and hearing.” He said, “No it’s a gift of the Holy Spirit. You’re gonna have to learn how to walk in it and manage it.” So the earliest days were learning how to process what I was seeing and hearing in a godly righteous way without becoming critical or judgmental against the people of God.

From the time I was a child before I was ever saved, I saw demons. I could just see them. It freaked me out. It put a spirit of fear on my life, but then after discernment got activated I could see and I could hear them even more clearly, so it gave me an ability to be able to set people free from the things that were binding them. It gave me the power of God and the thrust of the Holy Spirit to be able to say, “You know what? I see this is what’s operating in your life and we have authority over that so we can break the power of that demonic spirit.”

Of course, seeing the operation of angels was equally as important, to understand that only one-third of the angels fell, so there are twice as many good angels as bad devils. We need to be able to see angels in operation and understand what their function is, but I would say my greatest challenge probably was dealing with becoming critical, becoming judgmental towards people, and the remedy for that was that the Lord put two very mercy motivated men in my life, Bishop Hamon and my husband Tom Hamon. I would share with them what I was seeing and I would feel very emotional initially about what I was seeing and they would say, “You know gifts are given to edify the body, that means to build up the church not to judge.” Another part of the discernment is you have to know if this is a wolf. You have to know if this person can’t receive mercy because they’ve got an agenda that won’t submit to being delivered.

There was a man that came into our church one time and he looked good. He lifted his hands in worship. He did all the right things, but every time I was around him I got so angry and that was an emotional response to the gift of discernment that was happening inside of me and I got so angry. He joined our church and every time I saw him I wanted to knock his head off. I’m sorry, that’s exactly how I felt. I just wanted to knock his head off and I would have the words playing in my heart, this is not to judge people, this is not to criticize, but after he was in our church one month we discovered that he had seduced three young women and taken all their money. I kind of reverted back and thought maybe I should have just hit him the first time I saw him, but know I don’t teach that, okay.

I do believe that we have to know how to discern if this is something that God’s giving us as a key to bring people into deliverance and sometimes we have to discern if this is mercy or judgment. Sometimes having the opportunity to say, “You know what, this is a wolf who doesn’t want help, who doesn’t want correction, and so we have to separate them from the body and that’s a hard thing.” Paul even said, “Beware of false brothers.” So we have to be wise in how we handle that. I think that the gift of discernment though because of some of the challenges to emotions and how people react to what they’re discerning really have to be married together with the spirit of revelation and wisdom.

In Ephesians chapter 1 verse 17 and 18 Paul prays for the church at Ephesus and says, “I pray that you have the spirit of wisdom and revelation.” and I think that that’s really necessary to walk in a right way, because I find that with this gift so many people that actually have this gift operating in them have done one of two things out of their hurt or out of their challenges. They’ve either done completely the wrong thing with what they’ve discerned. They judge people, they’ve been unkind, or they cut people off. That’s not what God’s asking us to do. Or because they don’t know what to do with what they see they just shut the gift down entirely. I think that as people learn that this is a gift of the Holy Spirit, this is something good that the Holy Spirit has given to us to always be able to walk in a place of triumph, then I think people will begin to take the lid off of that gift and be able to give themselves permission to discern, the Spirit of God discerning demons, discerning angels, and sometimes even discerning false brothers that are in our midst.