11 Minutes
Spiritual discernment offers clarity of vision to ready us to receive new light that will enhance truth. God’s people can accept “no”. We can accept rejection. It aids our readiness for the suffering and the trials to come. We step outside that self-outlook programming in order to see things differently and be ready to let go of all those "right" opinions we thought were true. With this readiness comes a peace, an inner calmness. We do not have to agitate to make sure that anyone accedes to our words. We do not have to be stressed out or have sleepless nights because our emphasis is not on manipulation. No longer do we have to convince anyone of the absolute correctness of our reasoning with God, but rather, we are free to let go and allow God to speak and act through people and events according to His will based upon their decisions. We discern that God’s plan is always better than ours. Discernment is a process that begins at the heart but must progress outwardly to include others if we are to serve God’s purposes. It is time to act. God’s will is making itself known to us through events. Be firm in your stand for truth. Do not vacillate or look back or waste momentum on those who are self-sure in their own works. Put your face to the light and trust in our loving and powerful God to work through the smallest and weakest of us to accomplish His plan. The work is God's, not ours.
The responsibility of God’s teachers in the last day is awesome. Probably at no other time in history have God’s teachers been faced with decisions whose outcomes are as weighty as those with which we are faced. There will be struggles and strife from within. But we are to be a people of courage and wisdom and deep spirituality. We abandon ourselves to the providence of God and are very careful not to run ahead of it. God strengthens our discernment with careful reflection as a matter of faith. Following the way of
discernment means becoming increasingly able to notice where God is at work in the world and in one's own life and becoming increasingly generous with one's own life in response. The power of God working through events is evident as He moved His people into a discerning mindset to worship, connect, and teach in an online environment. New truths abounded from the concept of reasoning with God. Spiritual discernment teaches how to engage to meet the spiritual needs of those who feel comfortable with online worship. In this format God’s people engage the Holy Spirit as a decision partner while removing the pastoral leadership role. It makes for greater exchanges of thought to arrive at higher realms of truth in the word of God. Our focus is broadened. Debate is outed in the face of reason. Extra care is taken to ensure dialogue is productive and relevant to each participant. God’s word is the guiding principle to the discerning body and specific to every issue under consideration. Spiritual discernment creates meaningful boundaries for all conversation being guided in principle from scripture, allowing meaningful engagement of both the person in house and online community. Reasoning with the word of God involves the laying aside anything that might prevent the group from focusing on God’s will as the ultimate outcome to arrive at a decisioned truth. It’s as though we ask ourselves, “what needs to die in me for God’s gifts and direction to find room in our worship”. Because there is reason rather than debate, there is such a preference for the intimacy of worship that minds yield to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. In this, God stays our spiritual groundedness and opens our heart and mind to divine wisdom as He shapes our lives.
The approaches unto discernment must be the beauty of sacrificing or emptying ourselves. We abandon social-discernment, self-discernment, for the sake of God-discernment. In this discernment we will find repose and peace in listening to God’s heart. Personally, I choose to discern based upon God’s determination to bring Christ to my life. Hear the expressions of the impressions of God’s gifting His Son...
How is it that spiritual discernment is to bring us to godly conclusions? We must first conclude that Jesus is better in every way. And we see that God and His Word, at the end of it, is all we have to stand on as we keep our eyes on eternity while keeping eternity in our hearts. Spiritual conclusions must be bound on scriptural reasoning that necessarily follows from God's word, binding authority presenting inferences as evidence. If example is a valid way to determine God’s will, then what greater example is there than Jesus Christ. Can there be a truth concluded expressed in spiritual reasoning with the word of God? If asked your age and you provide the year of your birth, can the answer be reasoned? The Lord said, "come now and let us reason together." The bible says, “be ready to give an answer to every man who asks a reason for the hope within you.” Our reason is Christ. We must reason from what the bible says to discern the proper conclusion about what is right. Let us not think to defend the use of "human wisdom" in which conclusions are based on human authority or evidence, instead of on bible evidence. We are not defending binding invalid or even possible conclusions that do not necessarily follow from bible statements. Such instances do not prove a conclusion but simply jump to the conclusion. What we defend is the practice of using God's word as our evidence and from it reaching conclusions that truly, validly must follow from what is stated in the word of God. Old Testament prophecy definitely shows that Jesus is the Christ, but this requires taking passages and "adding them up" to reason to the necessary conclusion that is arrived at in the New Testament. Life is in the blood. Jesus had no sin in him. Can we infer that Jesus’ blood was perfect? Discernment means doing a better job of understanding the word of God. When you cut the ropes of truth that anchor the ship how far will it drift until a wreck is imminent. Very real and serious are the consequences when we fail to spiritually discern through scriptural reasoning.
Discernment, if true, must be revealed in the likeness of why God caused His son to be as we are...divinely imaged in human flesh. Christ came to make us truly human, our divinely intended nature, made in the image of God. This done in the most powerful way possible...changed from the spiritual essence of God to the bodily presence of man that we may attain the spiritual body of Christ. Our every discernment is to be transformative. We are to become more and more like Jesus Christ, the “man of heaven,” and less and less like Adam, the “man of dust”. And from this we are to discern that as Jesus has gathered to himself and in himself a community, we are to share in the capacity to do the same through his Spirit’s power at work in us.
There is no room to doubt but that if we accept of Christ, God will give eternal life. For He has given it already into the hands of our Savior for us. He has entrusted him with the whole affair. He has given all things into his hands, that he might give eternal life to as many as should come to him. The Father has appointed him who died for believers, to be their judge, to have the whole determination of the matter, and the disposal of the reward, in his own hand. And you cannot doubt but that Christ will be willing to bestow eternal life on them for whom he purchased it. For if he is not willing to bestow it, surely he never would have died to purchase it. Who can think that Christ would be so desirous of sinners being saved, as to undergo so much for it, and not be willing to let them have it, when he had obtained it for them. Consider, the wisdom of God, contrived that there should be in the person of the Savior all manner of attractives to draw us to him. He has in him all possible excellency. He is possessed of all the beauty and glory of the Godhead. So that there can be no manner of excellency, nor degree of excellency that we can devise, but what is in the person of the Savior.
But yet so redundant has the wisdom of God been, in providing attractives in order that we should come to Christ, it has so ordered that there should also be all human excellencies in him. If there be anything attractive in this consideration, that Christ is one in our own nature, one of us, this is true of Christ. He is not only in the divine, but in the human nature. He is truly a man, and has all possible human excellencies. He was of a most excellent spirit, wise and holy, condescending and meek, and of a lowly, benign, and benevolent disposition. Again, the wisdom of God has chosen a person of great love to sinners, and who should show that love in the most endearing manner possible. What more condescending love can there be, than the love of a divine person to such worms in the dust? What greater love can there be, than dying love? And what more endearing expression of love, than dying for the beloved? And the wisdom of God has so contrived, that Christ shall sustain that office which should most tend to endear him to us, and draw us to him: the office of a redeemer, a redeemer from eternal end, and the purchaser of all happiness. And if all this be not enough to draw us, the wisdom of God has ordered more. It has provided us a Savior that should offer himself to us in the most endearing relation. He offers to receive us as friends. To receive us to a union to himself, to become our spiritual husband and portion forever. And the wisdom of God has provided us a Savior that woos in a manner that has the greatest tendency to win our hearts. His word is most attractive. He does not merely command us to receive him, but he condescends to apply himself to us in a more endearing manner. He entreats and beseeches us in his word and by his messengers. The wisdom of God has contrived that there should be all manner of attractives in the benefits that Christ offers us.
Spiritual wisdom garnered through spiritual discernment by the Holy Spirit guides the wise into understanding the magnitude of God’s power as sourced in Jesus Christ of which there is not a hint of limitness. This power reasons us to discern the truth beyond the words as we hear the truth as in the spirit. Lord, please give us discernment to wait on you. Now, discern and decide your course...
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