DISCERNMENT AND GOD’S WILL

by Edmund Eh

Kinds of Guidance

  • Basic relationship with God: Daily prayer (Piety).
  • Spiritual Understanding: Knowledge and Wisdom.
  • Even with these, we still need specific direction from God.
  • Charismatic Renewal: Prompting from the Holy Spirit.
  • God does give specific guidance, and if we are willing to follow the promptings he gives us, we will often see results. We often need such direction and He is leading us. (Sharing about Joanne)

Ways Guidance Comes

  • We have to cooperate with Him, and we have to cooperate using our minds.
  • 2 temptations: neglected mind and the independent mind.
  • We should confront our thinking with Scripture regularly.
  • Read: Bible and Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), to know more about the Christian life.
  • After starting our Life in the Spirit, we begin to experience the Holy Spirit teaching us directly.
  • One of the most important ways we learn from God’s Word is through people teaching us, e.g. the Mass.
  • The Spirit also teaches us through our experiences. The more we live in the Spirit, the more God will use our experiences as an opportunity for learning. God wants us to learn how to meditate on His words to us and on the things He allows us to experience, like Mary.
  • After Life in the Spirit Seminars, a Christian who has been baptized in the Spirit will usually experience a sense of what God wants him/her to do: through Prophecy, or more commonly, promptings.
  • Sometimes, our own desires give us promptings. Often, our own desires indicate what God wants of us. Desires may not be an indication of what God wants. We have to learn the difference between the promptings that come from our own desires from the sense that comes from God’s Spirit.
  • We need the help of others to come to know God’s voice with certainty, especially if we are young Christians or still new in following the promptings of the Spirit.
  • Sometimes, we can ask for signs on our own initiative. When a person asks God to give him/her some indication of His will through the Bible passage he/she opens up to.
  • Special danger in asking for signs, as people often ask for signs too much. Also, danger in using circumstances too much as a sign of what God wants us to do. Circumstances are not always an indication of what God wants, because sometimes God wants us to go against circumstances. Usually, God wants us to deal with our circumstances with resolution and faith, and not let them determine our future. Discernment is needed to distinguish signs from obstacles.
  • Knowing that the Spirit speaks to us directly can lead to pride. We must realize that we can be wrong and that God can use someone else to speak to us.
  • The safest way is to check whether people we consult have the character of Jesus through manifestation of fruits. See: James 3: 14-17.

But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This wisdom is not such as comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish.

For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity.

  • Beware of over consulting and advice collecting.
  • Another great help is to belong to a Christian community, if we want to know God’s will for us: Gifts/Charism of Prophecy (message) and Teaching (understanding).
  • Authority is a basic principle of life of the Body of Christ. God often chooses to guide us through leaders, e.g. the Pope and his Bishops.
  • Christians should be joined to one another and be able to function united with one another à we have to enter into an interdependence. Every member of the body must be seeking God’s will and building up the life of the community.

Growth in Guidance

    1. Offer your life to the Lord à commitment and surrender.
    2. Have faith that the Lord will lead à faith in God’s guidance will grow over time.
    3. Pray for guidance à Ask, Seek and Knock.
    4. Study and meditate à Lectio Divina.
    5. Talk things over with others à Spiritual Direction.
    6. Always look for God à Discernment is an ongoing lifelong process.

      7. LECTIO DIVINA (prayer with Scripture)

      1. Select a passage and Read: e.g. Daily Readings, especially the Gospels.
      2. Meditate on what you have read à what strikes you?
      3. Pray about what struck you à ask God what He is saying to you.
      4. Contemplation à be still and enjoy God’s loving presence.