Learn to trust your instincts. That’s what Jesus did. Christ was not a superhero endowed with x-ray vision and extrasensory perception. Mental telepathy was not His way of discerning truth. Jesus prayed often and carefully observed the world around Him. He studied the people He met. He did not read minds, but He read people and He knew when they were pretending. He discerned the false smile and the dishonest compliment, the disingenuous offer and the two-faced personality.
“So they watched him [Jesus] and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor,” (Luke 20.20).
Not everyone who pays you a compliment is sincere. Some are pretending for reasons more sinister than you may wish to believe.
Trust your instincts.
