1 Corinthians 2:14
The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
Humans do not like discomfort. This is not a new, deep revelation of the inner workings of the human heart. This reality is as unavoidable as breathing. We were created to engage in practices and procedures that make us feel safe and secure. At the same time, we are all programmed to avoid and retreat from anything that causes pain or discomfort. This “Fight or Flight” mechanism is God given and useful for staying alive. Yet, like all things, this God given safety mechanism was altered when sin entered the picture. Meaning, what was meant to draw us closer to The Father can many times pull us away from Him and inward towards ourselves. What was meant to confirm the goodness of the creator now, because of sin, produces fear and anxiety in the created.
Thankfully, God in His wisdom sent us the Holy Spirit. Through the justifying grace of the cross, we become eligible recipients for the Holy Spirit to abide within us. This is most commonly called the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. When we receive the Holy Spirit, we are given a new source code through which we discern and navigate the realities of life. This discernment is not relegated to the mystical. It is not confined to the abstract and unseen. It is the new DNA that rewrites every aspect of our being. Our body, mind, and spirit all become the “Rebirth” Jesus told Nicodemus about in John 3, and the “New Life” Paul spoke of in 2 Corinthians 5:16-17.
2 Corinthians 5:16-17
16 So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! 17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
This “New life” we have received means we cannot go back to the old way of thinking and evaluating ourselves and the world around us. We must learn to view every situation through spiritual eyes and not merely through our “human point of view.” This means that our human thoughts, perceptions and opinions must be deprioritized to make way for a new operating system that is based on the Spirit that is living within us. This is what we methodists refer to as “Sanctifying Grace.” The word sanctifying is a bit daunting, but it simply means the Spirit within us is becoming the primary way we see ourselves and the world around us. Everything we do, say, think, and discern is no longer sourced from our own thoughts, feelings, emotions, opinions, and understanding. We crucify our flesh daily so He can be the source of every aspect of our life.
So, what is discernment? Godly discernment is simply seeing things the way God sees them. We all have the ability and freedom to discern for ourselves as we go through life. We can educate ourselves to gain some level of understanding. We can discipline ourselves to improve our outcomes. We can evaluate our experiences to gain some measure of wisdom. We can get pretty far down the road using the tools of the flesh, but we will always fall short of the NEW LIFE we have been promised if we never allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to us what is beyond our own understanding.
You will be faced with hundreds, if not thousands, of decisions today. Each one of these moments is an opportunity to lay down your own understanding and trust the Lord with all of your heart. Like everything in life, the first steps are the hardest. Your mind and body will scream in an effort to gain control of the situation. Your palms will sweat and your heart will race. Anxiety will trigger a series of chemical reactions in your nervous system that will feel like certain death is imminent. Welcome to Spirit filled discernment.
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