I have this ability to be able to tell someone's character and see if they are a good person or not. I don't know what you call it, discernment maybe? I don't think I am the only one who is able to do this though. I'm sure a lot of people are able to tell one's inner nature just by being around them.
I was in the military and after about 2 or 3 years in, depending on your job, etc, you will develop this ability, not everyone is willing to talk about it, but some people would bring it up from time to time, how you can sense within 5 seconds of meeting the new guy, is he going to be a good fit for the unit or not.
I'm not saying your gift isn't specifically spiritual in nature. it could be, especially if the people you are able to discern said information, God gave it to you on a need to know basis. Sometimes people can learn to trust their pets, particularly dogs but in my wife's case, her cat... to give advance warning of good vs bad people. its like an energy field everyone emits.
Its taken me a number of years to get enough confirmation to realize i can indeed sense people's trauma, i don't know if that's a spiritual gift or not. most of that time its when the person is in physical proximity to me, but in one case, i instantly knew a woman was hurt when her boyfriend mentioned to me that they had started dating.* 2 decades later im in her house with her sister painting their child's bedroom, the older sister mentions her 17 year old son I've never met and i start connecting the dots realizing just what kind of "hurt" i was picking up on both of them over the last 2 decades. but both being in the same room at the same time made it almost overwhelming to the point i should have asked them to stop painting and pray together instead. but i don't know them well enough to know what would have happened if i had done that.
but i don't get that information on people i don't know, or won't know in the future. for example, the person in highschool i sensed something off about, i didn't think much of it it until i found out she had an older sister.. the person mentioned in the paragraph below. and then i found out my friends daughter was DID and i sensed the same thing in her, in a chance meeting in which i didn't even see her, she just walked by the partially opened garage door at dusk, coming home from highschool, i just assumed some part of myself was attracted to her, so i suppressed that, but later i find out all the other women i felt the same "concerns" about, were also significantly traumatized. when i realized this i was set on edge for several days. almost to the point i couldn't sleep wondering had i prayed about what i was picking up on, what would have been different.
however...
there are greater things that are obviously spiritual in nature. for example, for the first time in my life about 6 months ago i became aware of the root of a person's intentions in a certain matter, and it connects back to their highschool era wounds of which i already spoke to her husband about and he confirmed it was accurate and thanked me for sharing that information. Partly because i did nothing with that information, some minor things went wrong in an organization and i left it to avoid exposing the sin at the root of it, as it was not my place to do that. had i acted on the information i had months prior, that sin might have been prevented.
one such experience i wrote about on another forum, someone replied to the effect that he can read people as well as me, and told me i don't know what Jesus has to do with it, meaning he was not a christian and did not attribute these things to spiritual gifts. another told me "its like when you meet a person and you know they are going to die soon. don't tell them"
i would say the majority of people who are empaths learn to keep their mouth shut and don't talk about what you can sense. its kinda sad.
*for the past handful of years when i'm particularly depressed i'll cross paths with her randomly. i suspect she knows that i know some things about her, but we both don't know what to do with that information, partially because we're both married and i'm friends with her husband.. awkward....
