The Path of Discernment (Part 2)
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.”
—Phil. 1:9-11
We must realize first of all that our discernment is not about us at all, it is about how we can fulfill God’s purpose for our lives, and minister effectively to those in the family of God. To that end, we must experience the love of God in our own hearts and learn to love even the least of these. Paul’s prayer for the Philippians was that their love would abound or grow “more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,” so that they would be able to discern what was best.
Ruth Haley Barton writes that discernment, “requires us to move beyond our reliance on cognition and intellectual hard work to a place of deep listening and response to the Spirit of God within us and among us.”19
As I stated in the previous chapter, it is important for us to spend time listening and learning to listen to God. In order to be able to hear God, we need to create space in our lives where we are not being distracted, where we can focus on God without our attention being divided.
These special times we spend with God will bless us as we experience the presence of God and learn to identify the way(s) in which He relates to us. It then becomes easier for us to listen for and hear God when we are in the midst of all the distractions in our lives.
I have used the analogy of shooting free throws or making the game-winning basket. When a young person starts out, they are practicing in their driveway without anyone watching. They practice the free throw or game-winning shot over and over a thousand times. Next, they practice in the gym with their coach and other players watching. When the time comes for them to have to make that shot in front of a crowd of hundreds or thousands, with fans hurling insults and waiving balloons, they aren’t distracted. They are focused on doing what they have done time and again, and they make the shot.
Discernment is like that. The time to seek out God’s will or His counsel in a situation is not when the heat is on and we aren’t even sure what an answer from God would look or even sound like. Continuous practice is required.
When we are caught up in our own lives, in our pursuit of what this world has to offer, what we value and have made a priority, we will find it very difficult to focus on what God may be saying to us. We will not hear or understand what God is doing and what our part is in it.
Nouwen points out in his handling of the temptations of Jesus that we too may be tempted to be relevant, to be spectacular, to be powerful. In solitude, Nouwen says, we find our true identity is found in our relationship with God. When we are able to experience that, we are more open to allowing Him to transform us, to make us more like Himself, in His image. We become more discerning of what is best.
How can we separate ourselves from the world and still have an impact upon it? How can we be in the world, but not of it? How are we to be transformed without being conformed? Paul writes, “Be transformed by the renewal of your minds.” Paul says it is the only way, "to discover the will of God and know what is good, what it is that God wants, what is the perfect thing to do (Rom. 12:1-2)." So, of course, that is what we want. But, how do we get there?
I once spent the day retreating in the woods, reading "The Way of the Heart," by Henri Nouwen. In it, Nouwen tells of the desert fathers (and mothers) who were determined not to be tainted by the influence of their world, to such an extent, they retreated to live in the desert.
Now, I am not advocating we sell our house, buy an RV, and move to Death Valley. But, I think the counsel is still applicable; we need to flee, to get away from the world. Fleeing is essentially about finding a place of solitude, a place away from all the distractions of the world, to create conditions whereby transformation can take place. Nouwen goes so far as to say, that it is out of this type of experience that "real ministry flows."
He writes, "We have, indeed, to fashion our own desert where we can withdraw every day, shake off our compulsions, and dwell in the gentle healing presence of our Lord."
We need to flee from the world and run right into the arms of our Savior, the one who approves of us, loves us, refuses to condemn us, and calls us His friends.
