Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] The following is a legacy recording from the archives of the C.S. lewis Institute. While the audio quality of these recordings may vary, the content remains vital to the mission of the institute to develop disciples who can articulate, defend, and live faith in Christ through personal and public life.
[00:00:24] In talking this morning on the scope and the nature of spiritual discernment, perhaps we can turn to Ephesians chapter four.
[00:00:39] And we read in Ephesians 4:17, Paul is speaking. He says, I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking.
[00:00:55] They are darkened in their understanding, separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.
[00:01:07] Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more.
[00:01:20] You, however, did not come to know Christ that way.
[00:01:25] Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.
[00:01:33] You were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your mind, and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
[00:01:58] And then the apostle goes on to add more practically some of the consequences of such a life that we have to live as we face the end of the 20th century.
[00:02:14] I think that this particular civilization that we belong to in the Western world, and especially here in America, is now in a stage of fatigue.
[00:02:26] It's an old age, it's tired, and many of us feel as Christians that we're burnt out and we're part of that culture that we belong to.
[00:02:39] One of the surveys that has just recently been made of the Episcopal Church in Western Canada has indicated that the priority number one for the leaders of the church is how to cope with burnt out pastors, and that there's a loss of nerve, there's a loss of direction in the leadership within the church.
[00:03:02] What is true, of course, of that situation is very much true of our whole leadership in North America today.
[00:03:11] We're only too aware of the moral bankruptcy that we're seeing all around us. As Art was reminding us last night of this article in Time magazine, the challenge is really where the ethical values and the ethical leadership, the moral leadership that we have in our nation today.
[00:03:31] And so I think that we're going to find that as Christians, we are in the process of requiring A whole new perspective. Even as Christians, you see, our perspective that we've come from is that what we do determines who we are.
[00:03:53] And that therefore, if we're efficient as functional man, then we will have a source of identity, security and significance.
[00:04:02] And we're finding in our contemporary situation that that is simply not true.
[00:04:09] And so there is a tremendous hunger and desire in our generation for a switch from doing to being, that no longer we should define our Christian life in terms of our actions and our activities and our programs and our organizations, but in the reality of what it is to be in Christ Jesus.
[00:04:37] And this, of course, is something that the Fellowship movement itself has been pioneering in for many years, in this whole question of a covenant life in Jesus Christ.
[00:04:49] The subtlety is that we can have a covenant life in doing relationships as much as in doing other things.
[00:04:57] And the consequence, therefore, is the tremendous need for us just to perhaps spend the time in the desert, spend the time with God, and recover some of the basic values which are needed.
[00:05:10] I became very interested in this whole area of spiritual discernment some years ago when I was invited to Conference of Leaders, Christian Leaders in America.
[00:05:20] And it was really amazing that 25 group of about 25 men who were all presidents of the various parachurch organizations in America, to discover that probably about a quarter of them were at that time as evangelicals seeking spiritual direction from Catholic directors.
[00:05:44] It was as if to say, there's a bankruptcy in the evangelical faith that we know about, and we don't know where else to turn than to the traditions of the Catholic Church for it.
[00:05:57] Now, I believe that the reason why spiritual direction has been such a focus within the Catholic Church is because of really the neglect of the Word of God.
[00:06:09] And that really, it's because neither in our Catholic tradition or indeed in our contemporary evangelical tradition are we men and women of the Word.
[00:06:21] And so the problem that we face today is that we may have a great deal of information about Scripture.
[00:06:29] And the Protestant traditions have been very strong in being informed about Scripture.
[00:06:35] But we're not formed by Scripture.
[00:06:38] We're not shaped by the Word.
[00:06:41] We don't have that kind of Torah piety that we find in the Old Testament.
[00:06:46] And just recently, as I have been going through Psalm 119 in my own meditation, I wept because I realized how cheated I have been by my culture, my evangelical culture, but also how I've cheated myself in the arrogance with which we approach the Scripture, with which we see that we know it all.
[00:07:14] There's nothing that today is more of a fantasy than the idea that if you want to do a church, a ministry for God, you go to seminary and you get an M. Div. Degree, and with that piece of paper, you're then a man of God.
[00:07:28] The fact is that it's more likely than not you'll lose some of your faith and the ardor and the fervor of being a man of God. While you're there, you'll probably pray less.
[00:07:40] You'll probably find that the whole attitude that you develop there is something that will take years. It's like a poison that will take years to get out of your system.
[00:07:51] And so the consequence that we're facing today is very much expressed in this first diagram I want to pass around for you to look at.
[00:08:03] And you'll see that when we look at our lives societally today, what is true of our church life, what is true of evangelical parachurch life, is just exactly the same as what is in industry called the S Curve.
[00:08:26] And what I'm giving you now is the story of our Christian organizations.
[00:08:32] It's also the story of really what we might call the structures of social spirituality.
[00:08:42] That is to say that we go through a founding phase when we see the significance of an enterprise that we're going to do for God.
[00:08:57] It may be a missionary society, it may be a local church, it may be a new college, all sorts of things.
[00:09:07] And on those founding myths, we seek identity and then a more collective entity and then a more collective expression of it.
[00:09:16] And from that, we then launch out with our goals, and we have these objectives, and those goals become more fashioned in strategies, and those strategies more embodied in actions.
[00:09:31] And the whole belief system that has formed that unquestioned organizational emphasis is then launched into orbit.
[00:09:44] But the process is that eventually we go by the manual, by the organizational chart, we go by all the emphasis on our success that is very blinding because we don't realize that human success is moral bankruptcy. Very often, the very nature of success is its reductionism that eliminates any side effects, any side consequences, and therefore, we can't afford. You speak to people who are specialists in organization, and they're so specialized in organization that they have no time for psychology.
[00:10:24] They have these blinkers that, you know, you just have to face it that way if you're a technologist the same way.
[00:10:30] There's nothing more blinding than simply ruling life as a technician.
[00:10:36] So the problem of our life is that we may be wise in skills and very foolish in relationships.
[00:10:43] And at any rate, the consequence of all of this is that there's A utopian flaw.
[00:10:50] And the utopian flaw is always the assumption that with the skills that we have and the history of success that has been ours, that things are going to go on just as they were, only bigger and better.
[00:11:04] And of course, the bigger or the better in America today, then that is the criterion of it being the best.
[00:11:14] And so we then discover that we don't just simply live in a world of solutions and problems or problems and solutions. This is the whole flattening of contemporary man that is so blinding that the attitudes of the mindset that look in those ways are of course, not aware of mystery. They're not aware of evil, they're not aware of principalities and powers that rule in the heavenly places and which are going to create the downfall of any of our systems.
[00:11:44] And so, as you can see from the rest of that graph, we then move with operational doubts.
[00:11:51] We then enter into ideological doubts as to really whether this we know what we're doing, whether we have a vision. After all, what's happened to the original vision has got lost.
[00:12:03] And then we begin to have ethical doubts, doubts about the way we raise money, doubts about the way we handle people, doubts about the operation itself.
[00:12:16] And unless there's repentance, then it will lead to its demise in absolute doubt.
[00:12:24] And this has been the rise and fall of societies, of organizations, of churches, of denominations, of every human enterprise that we do, whether it's in the name of God or whether it's purely secular.
[00:12:42] So that is one kind of background that we have to the need for discernment to recognize it. Societally, we're not fully there.
[00:12:53] Now. We also have to have discernment about our own private life. And so here is another diagram that reflects on our own attitude to the presence of God.
[00:13:13] And we might say the presence of God in his word, especially in the light of what we're doing this weekend.
[00:13:22] And you will see there that the way that our own personal attitudes are towards God are of course, cognitive. We need to have mental ability and skills by which to recognize the truth of, for example, sound doctrine.
[00:13:39] But at the same time, we need to have effective hearts. We need to have an expression of loving response to God in our lives. So we have a north, south axis.
[00:13:49] But then also we recognize that the presence of God in our lives is both attentive and aware.
[00:13:59] And we might say the difference between the aware and the attentive is the difference between being a actually physically or spiritually aware that we're in the presence of God and being attentive to God in His absence.
[00:14:13] So whether we're viewing it in terms of really more being intimately aware of his presence or more attentive of the fact that God is everywhere and we're not experiencing anything very close to him. But nevertheless we're seeing him through signs and symbols. And through perhaps just reading His Word.
[00:14:34] We also have that axis.
[00:14:37] Now, what I've done here, and I talked about this on a previous occasion. Is to divide up the way in which our attitudes to God are related to four quadrants.
[00:14:48] To the way that we verbalize our relationship with God as we do in saying our prayers and verbalizing.
[00:14:54] Or the way in which we attend to God in meditative prayer, and especially meditative prayer around the Word of God.
[00:15:03] But then in the ineffable recognition, what seems to be more mysterious, because he's actually there, we don't need to talk about Him. We don't need to describe his attributes. He's in the room. We only describe his attributes when he's absent from us.
[00:15:21] So that's why theologians are very fond of talking about the attributes of God. Because they're talking about a God that's not with them in their studies.
[00:15:30] So they're describing somebody as hearsay. You think this is what we hear about Him. This is what we've read about him, you see, not what I personally have experienced of him.
[00:15:41] But the act of contemplation is the act of touching hands, holding hands together.
[00:15:47] It's the recognition that he is closer than breath, nearer than hands or feet.
[00:15:53] And, of course, this leads to great ecstasy in our lives before God. Now, I've given you these two diagrams just to give you some idea of the scope of what is needed in spiritual discernment.
[00:16:07] Whether we're thinking about things societally and therefore culturally. Or whether we're thinking of things personally and therefore very intimately in the light of our own spiritual being before God.
[00:16:20] I want this morning, very briefly, to divide up our talk then into three parts.
[00:16:25] And the first is why we need spiritual discernment.
[00:16:30] Secondly, how we receive spiritual discernment.
[00:16:34] And then thirdly, what is the life of spiritual discernment?
[00:16:39] Why we need spiritual discernment. How we receive spiritual discernment.
[00:16:45] The life that we should be living in spiritual discernment.
[00:16:49] In the passage that we read in Ephesians 4, Paul is reminding us that we live with great need of spiritual discernment.
[00:16:58] Because we live in a fallen world.
[00:17:01] And we live with illusion all around us as well as within us.
[00:17:08] That, in fact, that as we are reminded by Paul elsewhere, that the Spirit of man does not know the Spirit of God unless he has the Spirit of God within him.
[00:17:19] And the Spirit of man will only know the things of a man, and that we need the Spirit of God by which to discern those things which are spiritual, because they cannot be, but spiritually known.
[00:17:36] God has made us not to be instinctual beings, animals are instinctual, but God has made us to be spiritual beings, beings that are attuned to him, made in the image and likeness of Himself.
[00:17:54] And the consequence, therefore, of all our attentions is because we are not simply lions or eagles or even snails that instinctually behave in the patterns of life which are instinctual to their way of life and to their nature of life.
[00:18:11] But God has made us, with all the uncertainty of being relational beings.
[00:18:18] If one puts it in technical terms, if you're flying a great circle route as a pilot around the earth, such is the nature of a great circle that you would need to adjust the instruments, every moment of flight to keep on that great circle, because it won't be the propensity of the aircraft to follow a great circle route.
[00:18:40] And all the life of the Christian is a life of living in a way that's contrary to our natural inclination, so that there's not a moment when. When we're safe in our navigational control.
[00:18:57] But we need to every moment live by the word of God.
[00:19:01] And so that's why Jesus reminded the devil in the temptation against him, that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
[00:19:14] And so spiritual discernment, therefore, is this awareness that guidance moment by moment for all our life, and that we see that the roots of illusion that are within us are always the illusion of self help and of self control and of self will.
[00:19:41] If there's anything more blinding and more evidence of our fallenness and sin, it is the lust for self control.
[00:19:52] One of the things that, tragically, we see all the time in Christian ministry is that when you look to see what is the basic struggle and the conflict between individuals, it's in the conflict for power.
[00:20:07] Because the nature of the human being is to live on a diet of power, to control, but the life of the Spirit is to be controlled by him.
[00:20:23] So that there's nothing more basic for spiritual discernment than self abandonment to the will of God, the humility to see that central to all spiritual discernment is the abandonment of self for the glory of God, for the will of God in our lives.
[00:20:46] And so, as you look back on your life and you think of your successes and failures. And as you think of the struggles that you've gone through, you can reduce it all to the struggle between individuals to control power.
[00:21:00] It's as simple as that.
[00:21:03] And so the roots of illusion are that I can do it and probably I can do it better than anybody else.
[00:21:12] And the consequence of that illusion is therefore the exaggerated self esteem that we may have.
[00:21:21] Or if we're thinking also in power, images of the low self image that some of us may have.
[00:21:27] Because as a child we were told I couldn't do it and I'm going to live a lifestyle that really fulfills the prophecy of my unthoughtful parent who told me that.
[00:21:38] So whichever it is, we live with illusions.
[00:21:44] And one of the dilemmas that we face is that where we think that we have freedom of action, we discover that so much of our life is really controlled by neurotic desires and drives that we're really not in control of.
[00:22:05] So that some of the people that are most successful in life in terms of the secular world or even the Christian world, have got there because of neurotic drives that really still empower them and fetter them so that they're captives in their success to things which are falsifying their whole being as they should be before God.
[00:22:28] So it's an awesome thing to think of that those people that are hail fellow well met and esteemed in the eyes of the world, very often those primarily who are most imprisoned to their own neurotic drives.
[00:22:43] And of course one only needs to look today at the great thrust that there is. The thrustfulness of contemporary man to succeed and to express his abilities to recognize that really he's just a captive.
[00:23:03] So in the consequence of that, the apostle says we're to put off that old self which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires.
[00:23:13] And its deceitful desires are the consequence of living an egocentric life.
[00:23:21] This whole cult of self fulfillment is one of the biggest lies the devil has ever told any civilization.
[00:23:29] And we're deceived by it.
[00:23:32] We've been corrupted by it.
[00:23:35] We need to have discernment against it in our culture today so that we're made new.
[00:23:43] And so when we think about it, the error does not lie in faulty reasoning. Reasoning is simply an instrument of something deeper.
[00:23:55] Where the mischief lies is in our psyche. It's rooted deep within our being.
[00:24:06] And all that we're doing is simply extending and projecting the those false desires that we have been born with.
[00:24:16] And then we Also think of the ways in which we have emotional pressures that compound that misdirection.
[00:24:27] So the pressure of fear or the pressure of anguish or the pressure of anger or the pressure for success, these are all pressures that distort and create misjudgment in our way of life.
[00:24:52] And of course, back of them all is this tremendous tyranny of self will.
[00:24:59] Jonathan Edwards, when he thought of what is basic to the transformation of character for the Christian, he saw that it was really that the affections are expressive of will.
[00:25:12] And do we have Godly affections, gracious affections, God given affections, or are we seeking the affections of self control and self will?
[00:25:22] That he saw was basic to the discernment that we need about ourselves.
[00:25:29] And we're also aware, of course, of disobedience in our lives, that this rebellion to God, this control of self, this judging of everything from our point of view, so that today one of the most popular remarks of our culture is, it feels good.
[00:25:52] What does it mean to feel good? It means to go and have your own way in your lustfulness, your foolishness, in your lack of spiritual awareness.
[00:26:07] When Paul writes to the Corinthians, he's really writing to a group of people who are judging everything from their own point of view.
[00:26:17] And so the whole struggle that we find in the Epistle to the Corinthians that Paul is really dealing with, how when we don't look at things from God's point of view, the mess we get into, and that could be really a summary of what he's struggling with and describing in that situation.
[00:26:41] So when we're talking about spiritual discernment, as we're talking about wisdom, which is simply applying wisdom to our souls in a practical way, we realize that what lies behind the need of the human heart is the need of the recovery that God has made us in his image and likeness.
[00:27:01] And God's purpose for our lives is that we should be conformed to the image of His Son.
[00:27:08] And that therefore we have to see that our lives have to undo, as it were, through the redeeming grace of God, the consequences of man's grasping of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
[00:27:22] Because what man did in grasping for that fruit was, in a sense, to be godlike without God.
[00:27:31] That's primarily what it was, to be godlike in transcendent powers, but without the need of God and the need of God's grace.
[00:27:43] And if we look to see what is the antithesis of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that man grasps. For we find it in Philippians 2 that Jesus did not think it was a thing to be grasped at, to be equal with God.
[00:27:58] But there's a side of God that perhaps we have never seen before, like the other side of the moon, that we've never explored, and that is that there's one aspect of God that is profound, profoundly shattering, and that is that God does not grasp at Godhead, whereas man grasps for Godhead.
[00:28:22] And that's the difference between God and man.
[00:28:25] So within the Holy Trinity, we have this sheer mystery that each person of the Trinity is for the other.
[00:28:33] What's the identity of the Father for the Son?
[00:28:37] And what's the identity of the Son to be for the Father?
[00:28:42] And what's the identity of the Holy Spirit to make the reality of Father and Son real to our hearts?
[00:28:50] So there's no person in the Trinity that's for himself.
[00:28:56] And so we realize what a tremendous transformation is needed in our lives to see it from that perspective.
[00:29:06] Meanwhile, we live in ambiguity, as Bruce has reminded us. We live like people who are raw recruits on a mined battlefield.
[00:29:18] I've just been reading the book on the history of Vimy Ridge in the First World War, and what a gripping story it can be told about it. But most of the tragedy of that colossal loss of manpower, those lives, millions of lives that were lost in the First World War, was simply because there wasn't the relevant prudence to deal with the technology of warfare at the time.
[00:29:43] There were not the skills to be able to defend men's lives in that context of trench warfare that was so brutal.
[00:29:55] And consequently, as we look at life today, and we see it in those terms, we see how tremendously, how vitally important it is for us to have spiritual discernment.
[00:30:09] How do we receive spiritual discernment? That's our second point.
[00:30:16] We receive it as you look at that graph, that diagram that I've just given to you, in terms of seeking to know God, know His Word.
[00:30:31] And of course, we have to know it cognitively. We have to be able to memorize it. We have to be able to understand its literature. We have to be able to understand the intent of the writers in what they were writing.
[00:30:48] And the Reformation, of course, recovered a very strong cognitive focus on Reformed truth, as it was called, which of course can be a distortion too, because it isn't just simply cerebral. It has to be lived out in the life.
[00:31:04] So that knowing God in the Old Testament was a covenantal relationship. It was like the knowledge that a husband has of his wife that is both sexual as well as it is effective and relational in the deepest areas of life.
[00:31:22] So there has to be, therefore, this effective knowing, this knowing by love to know the knowledge of God.
[00:31:31] And yet we also know that God speaks attentively to us so that we will hear the Word from somebody else.
[00:31:42] Incidents that will happen to us in our lives that we pay attention to, and we recognize the importance of doing so.
[00:31:51] There are also mystical experience in our lives when we know just the awareness that he's beside me, that he's within me.
[00:31:58] And consequently, these are ways in which we know that God is with us. And so In John, chapter 14, we're reminded in verses 15 to 17 that the awareness of God's presence in our lives because he dwells within us.
[00:32:15] There's a chorus that sometimes we used to sing as children. He lives, he lives. Christ Jesus lives. Today you ask me how I know he lives.
[00:32:25] He lives within my heart.
[00:32:27] There's that awareness of the living presence of God in our lives that gives us this awareness of his presence.
[00:32:38] But we also know that God is speaking to us and revealing Himself to us because of the consequences of His Word in our lives.
[00:32:49] All the senses are described in the Old Testament as appreciating the presence of God and His Word in our lives.
[00:32:56] And so in Psalm 34, we're reminded in verse 8 that we're to taste and see that the Lord is good. Good.
[00:33:04] There's a tasting of His Word that is sweet. In fact, in Psalm 19, we're reminded that it's sweeter than honeycomb.
[00:33:12] And so there have been many of God's saints who've meditated on the word of God as a honeycomb, as the sweetness that we appreciate from the consequences of assimilating it in our lives. In first Peter, chapter two, verse three, again takes up this echo of the sweetness and the taste that we can have for the things of God.
[00:33:37] And then also we're reminded that we hear his voice. There are times when art no doubt, will be telling us much more about the voice of conscience and the way in which we can monitor and reflect upon that which we hear within our own hearts.
[00:33:56] And we're also reminded by the apostle Paul in chapter 5 of Ephesians, verse 2, of the fragrance of the presence of Christ in our lives, that sometimes it's like a sweet perfume.
[00:34:09] There's a fragrance about his presence in our lives.
[00:34:14] So there are many ways in which we have personally and long to experience more deeply the personal experience of the presence of God within us.
[00:34:25] Then also another way in which we know that God speaks to us is by our desires for God.
[00:34:32] And we discover that this desiring that God has awakened within us is in fact his desiring of us. We thought it was our desire. And the more we enter into the desire, we discover that it's his desire that really he has given to us.
[00:34:48] And so the psalmist can speak of it as a thirsting for God in Psalm 42:1.
[00:34:54] Or indeed it's a seeking of God as we read off in Psalm 63, verse 1.
[00:35:00] It's a knocking, it's insistent, as we are reminded by the Lord to have that as we seek and as we knock, and so we shall find.
[00:35:13] One of the things that is absent in so much contemporary Christian life is this faculty of desiring.
[00:35:20] We have so overstimulated the faculty of reason that we have inhibited the faculty of desire.
[00:35:28] You see, reason controls, but desire is vulnerable.
[00:35:34] Desire is open to the ways of God.
[00:35:38] And so one of the great needs that we need, which we find very much in the medieval saints monastic tradition, was recognizing that spiritual discernment will grow by desire. As a child, I used to have a fantasy that was recurrent in my early childhood. I used to have the conviction that if I had expressed in my inward heart what I was going to get as a Christmas present or a birthday present, then, darn it, I wouldn't get it.
[00:36:07] Better to leave it vague and uninhibited as a desire, and then I wouldn't be disappointed.
[00:36:14] But to articulate desire was to look for trouble, look for disappointment.
[00:36:21] And I think in our whole culture today, with broken promises and littered lives and uncovenanted relationships, the consequence is that we are afraid of exercising the faculty of desire.
[00:36:37] One of the ways in which God would open our lives to him is to recognize that He's a God that's infinitely dependable and therefore ultimately desirable.
[00:36:51] And that the reality then is that desire is one way in which we will deeply experience spiritual discernment.
[00:37:04] Also, we will find, of course, that when God speaks in our lives, he speaks with peace and comfort.
[00:37:16] There are times when he breaks us and we feel very uncomfortable under the Word of God. And we are really hurting and deeply bruised and battered by the Word of God. And that's very necessary for us to have too.
[00:37:32] But that, we know, is only temporary, because the ultimate destination of the Word of God in our lives is in peace and comfort to our souls.
[00:37:42] It's a peace that passeth understanding and that fills us as Second Corinthians, chapter 1, verses 3 and 4 remind us in a marvelous way.
[00:37:54] And so the presence of his peace in our lives, as we'll come to in a minute, is very important as a manifestation of His Word, evidence of it for us.
[00:38:03] We'll also find that God speaks to us through the manifestation of Himself, that this knowledge of himself which Paul prays for the Corinthians, comes to us more deeply.
[00:38:21] Well, there are many other things that one could speak about the way in which God. We can discern the ways of God in our life.
[00:38:29] But the consequence of such discernment is that we live with a burning heart.
[00:38:38] We're like the disciples that walk to Emmaus, whose hearts burn within them Luke 24:32, while he talked with them on the way.
[00:38:49] It's the experience that the prophet Jeremiah had in chapter 20 of his prophecy, verse nine, when the fire burned within his soul.
[00:39:00] Augustine in his Confessions speaks.
[00:39:17] But all human perspectives and standards for our life.
[00:39:26] That is the cost of spiritual discernment.
[00:39:34] And it therefore means that there's no adequate evidence that we can ever master because it masters us.
[00:39:48] In the Scripture, there are three categories of people who are described. They're the same people, but in three different aspects, who have spiritual discernment.
[00:40:00] First, it's the humble who hear.
[00:40:07] It's humility.
[00:40:08] We're reminded in Proverbs 18:12 that even precedes honour, that to have a humble heart for God is in fact an essential prerequisite for the life in Christ Jesus.
[00:40:30] It's the humble who possess wisdom. Proverbs 11:2.
[00:40:37] We live in a culture that has no awareness of the moral significance of humility. Today, some of us learn it the hard way by being clobbered and broken, as Jim was reminding us. We have the choice of either being broken or alternatively seeking it.
[00:40:59] But there's a sense in which the natural man will never seek it.
[00:41:03] So we have to be clobbered.
[00:41:08] But we can be clobbered with bitterness or we can be clobbered with thankfulness.
[00:41:13] And so when there is the awareness that all things work together for good to those who love God, there's no circumstances wasted, and that in humility we accept them all as under the redemptive orchestration of our God, then we can see what a tremendous importance it is to have the humble ear.
[00:41:36] The second thing that is said as a criterion for spiritual discernment is the simple. See in the book of Zephaniah, chapter three, you'll find in verses 12 and 13, reference to this why is it that the simple see?
[00:41:53] Well, the reason is because pride is opaque, that pride is in fact a form of blindness, and that it is in fact the simple who recognize that their one desire is what is for the glory of God, what is for the purposes of God, what is for the will of God.
[00:42:19] They alone are coordinated so that they can see bifocally.
[00:42:26] That's to say, they see themselves in the sight of God.
[00:42:31] So this moral realism that comes from that simplicity is what is important.
[00:42:40] So in Proverbs 26:12, those who are wise in their own eyes, of course, are in a hopeless situation.
[00:42:47] They're blind because it's without the light of God, without the wisdom of God, we have no light, we have no wisdom.
[00:43:00] And so that simplicity of seeing is all important.
[00:43:05] That's why our journey as pilgrims and Chris has reminded us in chapel that we are all pilgrims, fellow pilgrims together.
[00:43:15] Our journey will be confusing when we have a multiplicity of desires, when we have a whole series of different conflicting attitudes, when we really are living with a conflict, mixed motives.
[00:43:38] We will never find the guidance of God in mixed motives.
[00:43:44] It's either for God or it's nothing at all.
[00:43:49] And so it's a simple who see.
[00:43:53] And thirdly, it's the obedient who are responsive.
[00:44:01] One of the things that the monastic way of life certainly can teach us an awful lot about is the vow of obedience.
[00:44:12] We have very little of the exercise of obedience in our evangelical culture today.
[00:44:20] Everyone's doing their own thing.
[00:44:24] And the reason why there's so much incessant demand of the budget is because everybody needs a budget.
[00:44:31] And this obedience and interdependence in communal existence before God is what is needed in our culture today.
[00:44:45] So we will have no guidance without obedience to the word of God, to the will of God in our lives.
[00:44:55] And that's why all of this can be really summed up by what the apostle James says in chapter four, verse six, where he says, God resists the pride and he gives grace to the humble.
[00:45:08] And so it's in that context, then, that we are to seek such a life of spiritual discernment. In other words, a life of spiritual discernment, a life of wisdom is a life of godliness.
[00:45:23] You can't be wise and ungodly at the same time.
[00:45:28] It's impossible, because it's like the creature independently trying to live without the Creator of all things. How absurd.
[00:45:40] We see how the foolishness people today who are seeking to live rebellious lives against their parents and completely forget their parental heritage and their family background and completely blocking all of that out. What's going to happen to them? They're going to live very foolish lives until they understand the context of their background, where they came from, who they are, the consequences of their fallen parenting and all the rest of it.
[00:46:09] So even in secular terms, to be wise about oneself prefers reference to the foundations of life and likewise before God. Profoundly we need therefore this awareness. And so finally, I want just to summarize, what are the traits then of living a life of spiritual discernment?
[00:46:35] First, it's a trait of a God directed life.
[00:46:42] There are many people today who are both writing books and reading books about guidance, as if guidance was just some other switch that you switch that is not connected with the whole of the Christian life.
[00:47:00] This is an age when we analyze and separate various problems or ideas, concepts, and treat them in dissociation. We can't do it.
[00:47:12] And so if we're talking about spiritual discernment, we're talking about fundamentally a God directed life, so that our eyes are always upon the Lord, Psalm 25:15, or that we're always seeking him with all our heart. Psalm 119, verse 90.
[00:47:34] Even as we were saying at breakfast table, whether we eat or drink, we do it to his glory.
[00:47:43] So the way of spiritual discernment is the way of a God directed life.
[00:47:51] Secondly, the way of spiritual discernment is having a new love in our hearts.
[00:47:59] By this will others know who we are, John 13:34, 35, that we're his disciples because of agape love of Christ's love in our hearts.
[00:48:19] How wonderful it is to realize this transforming love that shapes and redirects our life.
[00:48:31] Thirdly, spiritual discernment will involve us being crossbearers, Having this denial of self and of the world, so that we take up our cross to follow him, and that we recognize that it's inevitable that to seek a godly life we will suffer.
[00:49:01] And we will suffer both within the Christian community as well as in the world, because the fallenness of man is not outside the Christian community.
[00:49:15] And consequently we have to accept that also. I think fourth trait of such a life of spiritual discernment is a life of frugality.
[00:49:32] That we are content with whatsoever state we're in.
[00:49:39] You see, if we're restive, if we are fractious and rasping with the slights that we think that we have in life, there'll be an awful lot of self pity that will generate around us and we will therefore be blinded from seeing things objectively.
[00:50:02] Poor me with bloodshot eyes can't see reality.
[00:50:10] And so spiritual frugality is being content with where we are and content with necessities, so that we ask our Lord for our daily bread, not for cake. But.
[00:50:32] But this will lead to a fifth trait of spiritual discernment, of a life of spiritual discernment.
[00:50:41] And that is that we live with inner freedom.
[00:50:49] The freedom from self interest, the freedom from neurotic drives, the freedom from false emotions that sober cloud the human race as we've seen already.
[00:51:09] And we usually find that the only place where this inner freedom can really grow is that we spend time in the desert with God.
[00:51:21] If you're seeking to always be hail, fellow well met, if you're wanting to live what appears to be socially a prosperous life, if you want to really live in this. These external kind of ways, then you will never find this inner freedom.
[00:51:44] God has to strip us in the desert to free us from the bondage of Egypt.
[00:51:53] You see, when our Lord himself In John chapter 17, in his high priestly prayer of verses 14 to 16, he prays that his disciples who are not of the world may be kept from the world.
[00:52:11] And the only way that we can sometimes be kept from the world is living in a moral desert for part of our lives, if not perhaps most of our lives.
[00:52:18] And to accept the rigors of such a life.
[00:52:25] But then also, of course, we realize that in being at odds with the world, it has a positive affirmation. And that is the lifestyle of spiritual discernment is living with sound doctrine.
[00:52:44] Now, you know, many of us might have put this right at the top of the list, but I believe what has happened in our culture is that sound doctrine has been isolated from a piety around the Scriptures, around the Word of God.
[00:53:00] So that there are people who cerebrally, rationalistically have what they think is sound doctrine, but it's not expressive of a lifestyle.
[00:53:12] And so sound doctrine has its place, very important place.
[00:53:17] But it's within the whole texture, the living fiber of living before God.
[00:53:24] So we are to guard the truth.
[00:53:27] We are to realize that it is discerning as the Word of God is discerning, like a sword.
[00:53:34] But the context of it must be within the whole living fabric of life.
[00:53:40] And finally we will find the verification of this way of life in three very wonderful ways.
[00:53:54] It's verified by his divine love.
[00:53:58] It's verified by the joy that fills our lives.
[00:54:05] It's verified by the peace that passeth understanding.
[00:54:12] This triad of love, joy, peace that we find Paul writing about is the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5 is something that I really believe is what gives cohesion to the wise life before God.
[00:54:38] You'll find that as the love of God fills our lives, as I'm finding myself today, that it has an affection, it has a.
[00:54:52] It's an effective quality of relationship with others.
[00:54:58] No longer do you see people as rivals.
[00:55:01] No longer do you see people competitively.
[00:55:05] But you realize that because of self abandonment to the will of God, that's why the love of God now fills your life.
[00:55:15] It's the expulsive power of a new affection, says Henry Drummond, that is really the manifestation that this love of Christ gives to our hearts.
[00:55:27] And that love itself is ecstatic in its joy.
[00:55:34] One of the things that we find about the world that we live in is that the world looks for pleasures and finds no joy.
[00:55:44] Because spiritual joy is infinitely more comprehensive than pleasures that we seek to identify.
[00:55:55] Because joy, in a sense takes the place of the need of pleasures.
[00:56:02] Because instead of feeding the appetite essentially as pleasures do, a joyful life is a transformed life.
[00:56:14] It's a life that's lived holy in God that's joyful.
[00:56:18] We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ as the apostle.
[00:56:24] And spiritual discernment brings that joy to our lives and peace.
[00:56:32] Shalom, this wonderful word that really in modern parlance might suggest a maturely integrated personality.
[00:56:43] Someone that has all their drives and all their gifts and all their needs in a proportionate, symmetrical life.
[00:56:56] So there's healing, there's integration, there's control, there's fruitfulness.
[00:57:06] All that stems from this peace that passeth understanding. Because the peace that passeth understanding is a life that is like Jesus Christ, is a life that's transformed for Jesus Christ.
[00:57:22] So, my brothers and sisters, this morning, as we think about this, what we're really saying.
[00:57:29] We seek for wisdom.
[00:57:32] We want to exercise spiritual discernment.
[00:57:36] What's the consequence?
[00:57:38] It's the most revolutionary thing we could desire.
[00:57:41] It's the most transforming reality we could ever imagine.
[00:57:47] It's something that perhaps we just simply are on the edge of and don't have any idea yet what it really is all about. Because it's really the heavenly existence that it's all about.
[00:57:59] Shall we just pray as we think of these things?
[00:58:05] Dear Lord, we realize today how much discernment we need in the midst of the folly and foolishness of our society and of ourselves without you.
[00:58:19] That truly you're showing us that without you we can do nothing.
[00:58:23] That indeed of you we live and move and have our being and that without you we are nothing.
[00:58:33] And so we just pray, O God, that this may be indeed the longing, this treasure that we've heard of that's hidden in the field, this priceless pearl for which you would have us give up everything to possess.
[00:58:50] We just pray, Lord, that you will give us those longings to possess it that become so insatiable that nothing else will do.
[00:58:59] And that as we rummage through life that all the time we have this taste for heaven, we have this awareness that to discern is to judge between pure gold and all else that is false in comparison.
[00:59:21] So give us, we pray, the discerning hearts that are not just simply wise in the affairs of men, but are kingdom wise because our hearts are in heaven.
[00:59:35] We ask it through Christ our Lord.
[00:59:41] The proceeding was a presentation of the C.S. lewis Institute in the legacy of C.S. lewis. The institute endeavors to develop disciples who can articulate, defend and live faith in Christ through personal and public life. For more information please visit our website at www.cslewisinstitute.org. thank you, Sam.
