Discernment (3/3): Be Patient with God

So much of Christian culture today is about shortcuts. It used to be that books would say 21 days to a better prayer life. Now the numbers have gotten smaller: 7 steps to a better marriage, 3 tools that will transform your church. While some of those might work, I will say right now there are no shortcuts to discernment.

A lot of you are reading the bible in a year, and I am sure many of you have felt this at some point these last 2 months, “Well nothing’s really sticking, I don’t think I’m getting anything”. Of course comparatively reading the bible for yourself is not going to as easy or as exciting as sitting through a sermon at first. In a sermon, someone has gone through the trouble of digesting and researching and cross-referencing things for you, and everything comes to you in fast food Mc-Nugget form that is tasty and easy to get down. It does not help with discernment though. Think of it this way, getting someone else to cook for you when you are hungry certainly solves the hunger problem for a while, but it does not do anything for your inability to cook does it?

So you might have a hard time discerning what God wants to say, through scripture, QT, etc. You will inevitably have questions that you want answered, or things that you do not understand, and yes, you can find some middle-aged caucasian gentleman on Youtube that will give you answers for your issue. It feels good to have some answers, but in the long run if all you do is gather rumours, regardless or how trustworthy or substantiated, your discernment is never going to grow.

Discernment requires chewing on unchewed food, unchewed food requires patience, and real patience requires the humility to say that some things are too big for me to chew on right now.

John 16:12 I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

Jesus was saying this to his disciples, guys who have spent three whole years with Jesus in the flesh! Would it be such a stretch to think that maybe God does not want to tell us certain things for our sakes? Or could it be the more frequent response I get nowadays, “Ken could you read the next couple of chapters before you come pounding at me about it? Perhaps could you read the whole bible once before we take this up? At the risk of sounding too demanding, if you don’t mind, could you read the bible 2-3 times over before we get to talking about this?” And our answer usually is NO, I don’t want to wait that long, or read that much, I WANT MY ANSWER NOW! And then we go on Youtube, find the middle-aged caucasian gentleman who will tell us what to believe, and listen to him instead. Meanwhile God is thinking, “Really? Not that he’s bad, but I thought we were going to talk about this. I was looking forward to our time together before I revealed more to you.”

We are so quick to forget that God’s goal for scripture is not just knowledge, it is also intimacy. It is also about character, of which patience is severely lacking in most of us nowadays.

I have only tracked it this year but I have read the bible heavily in the last 2-3 years. Only now, probably 6-7 times through the NT am I remembering enough of scriptures for the Holy Spirit to be able to make connections for me. For you first time readers, I would be lying if I said to expect major nuances/insights on your first read through. You are really just trying to get in some raw material for the Holy Spirit to work with and bring to mind later. You will see connections begin to build more and more in subsequent reads through your entire lifetime as God begins to reveal to you His grand narrative out of this cloud of scripture in your head.

Yes, in the mean time you will not sound as smart as other kids who heard something amazing over the weekend service, which they will likely forget two weeks later, but yet will likely look at you like why do you not know these things. So what? Who are we trying to impress here? Will you be patient in your relationship with God, or will you tell Him you will tell me what I want to know or I am going to listen to someone else?

Discernment (2/3): Be Less Anxious about Being Wrong

Let's not be so worried about whether we're right or be so afraid of being wrong in our interaction with scripture. That sort of anxiety is the reason people clamour after teaching and become unwilling and unable to develop their discernment.

Here’s why.

Often discernment is defined as knowing what is right. But that definition tends to mislead us, because we then treat discernment as a gathering of knowledge, which nowadays just degenerates into a gathering of rumours because of our reliance on sermons and teachers. Rather, as we said yesterday, discernment is our ability to hear and understand what God is saying. Discernment is the ability to discover for yourself what is right in God’s eyes. Referring back to Bereans, if discernment really was just about comparing what Apostle Paul was saying to what they already knew was right, they would not have had to spend the time diving into scripture.

Again, you have no discernment if you rely on someone else’s.

So, if discernment is the development of a spiritual ability, rather than the collecting of correct ideas, then:

1. As I said yesterday, it has to come from God and your interaction with Him. And,
2. It is going to take time, and we are going to occasionally make mistakes and develop the wrong perspectives

Look back at Acts 17. We have already talked about how the Bereans did not look for someone else to affirm or refute Paul’s ideas; they were dedicated to figuring it out themselves. There is another important attitude that they demonstrate here. They were not worried or scared about spending a lot of time and energy engaging in and really digesting what could have been heretical ideas. The chapter here here makes it seem like Paul spent mere hours in Berea, but historically his missionary journeys took decades, with years at each stop. He could have spent weeks, months, in Berea. They could have been sitting around for that long working through Paul’s ideas which in the end could have been totally wrong. Yet the passage said they received Paul’s word with eagerness.

That brings us to the topic of risk taking. Allow me to throw some passages at you and we will put them together afterwards.

Firstly, the knowledge of God is something that God gives to us.

John 16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

Colossians 1:9 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.

Secondly, God wants us to make use of what He has given us.

Matthew 25

14 “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants3 and entrusted to them his property. 15 To one he gave five talents,4 to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. 17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. 18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. 19 Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.5 You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 22 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Now let’s put those 2 together.

First off, what is often taught about this passage is that the last servant was scolded for being lazy. However, his slothfulness (inaction) did not stem from a desire to not do any work. Rather his inaction stemmed from his fear of risking his master’s money. The master recognized this too. He mentions that the servant could have at least chose a lower risk option such as a bank (which in those days had about the same reliability as the US banking system had in 2008), rather than burying it. God scolded the last servant because he was afraid, he sat, and he did nothing with what was given him.

At this point people will shout, YES! We need to risk our lives for God, whoever loves his life will lose it, etc. What they do not realize is that they will not even take the most basic risk of saying that “God said this to me” without someone else saying it first! How are you going to take risks for anything else if you can not even bear the risk or the responsibility of saying God spoke to you? How do you expect to establish any relationship with God at all if all you do is expect someone else to tell you what He thinks?

So many people are in that place. God could be revealing to them so much about Himself, about them, through the scriptures. He could be revealing things that could change their lives and bring them onto His destiny for them, for others even. But they are so afraid of being wrong that they will do next to nothing with these revelations unless someone with perceived authority teaches it first.

Looking at the servants with the 5 and 2 who doubled up, let me tell you, you cannot double(!) your money with no risk. Heck, I cannot even get 1/20th of that nowadays with no risk. I lost money on my 6% (projected) mutual funds this year. Investments with big returns requires risk, big risk at that.

Let’s be diligent and courageous with what God reveals to each of us, through scripture in our particular topic today. Let’s take a risk in pursuing it embracing it, applying it, sometimes be lovingly put back on track by God when that need inevitably arises in our development of discernment. Let’s not sit and do nothing but what other people say is correct, say is safe. You will not double your talents that way, you will not get good and faithful servant that way.

Practical things:

• Firm up. Do not be afraid of concluding an idea like “The NT apostles don’t use the OT scriptures very well in terms of the contextual exposition that people demand nowadays”. You are not discerning for yourself if you are unwilling to make your own conclusions.
• Speak up. It is hard for discern as a community if you are not willing to speak up to wrestle with issues and simply defer to the first opinion or first rebuttal. You also are not helping others discern if you keep the revelations to yourself.

Homework: In groups, answer the following questions: Was the Apostle Paul for or against the use of the sign gifts (tongues, prophecy, interpretation, miracles) in the public church meeting? If no, what were his supporting observations and his reasons? If yes, what were his reasons and what, if any, were his guidelines for their use? Scriptural references will be expected, but for the sake of this exercise, the scope will be limited to 1 Corinthians.

Discernment (1/3): Be Aware of Your Sources

This was our workshop on discernment for Winter Term Retreat 2012

Exercise: Gather in groups and talk about notable first impressions (or other people telling you who someone is like) when that has been wrong

First impressions stick. A long time ago I met this brother who at first meeting I thought was a little overly emotional/sensitive. Back then I was beginning to recognize that I was rather harsh with my tongue and my only solution at the time was to not talk to people who were sensitive so I avoided talking to this brother. At a distance I would observe this brother being exactly who I thought he was and why I should stay away from him. At one point he had to confront me about it and broke down crying in front of me, which of course did not help my mental image of him!  (No this was not Paul)

Back then people used to describe me as angry Ken. And people described me to other people  like that. That Ken is intimidating, he is easily angered, and quite harsh. And soon people started observing me from a distance and filling in all the reasons why my reputation is true. Well of course that caused everyone to keep their distance, just as I did with that brother. The only people who got to know the real me were the people who either were courageous enough or perhaps dumb enough to spend time getting to know me, who helped me become who I am today, people who I now have the privilege to advance the kingdom with at Westside Hamilton.

First impressions count for a lot don’t they? Especially when your first impression  is really just what someone else told you. Technically those are called rumours or gossip.

Weirdly a lot of the same happens with scripture in the modern day church. Our first impressions of scripture are rarely from God, or even from ourselves. Often it is a pastor, a book, or more popular nowadays, a Youtube video. Often we will say we know God, then maybe some of us will finally realize we just know a lot about God. Upon further inspection though, we are one step removed from even that! We actually only know many rumours about God.

What do I mean? Let’s say I want to play ball like Kobe. Sam comes to me saying that Kobe’s jump shot works because he kicks his shooting foot out in the follow through. Now whether I trust Sam or not that comment is just a rumour to me until I go look at a bunch of clips of Kobe playing, find out that yeah, he always kicks that foot out and it seems to help him square up to the basket. Then I would go and try that out for like dozens of hours, find out that not only does it help him square up, it also helps his balance, and draws fouls. Maybe then I could say I know a bit more about how Kobe shoots. After 1000’s of hours maybe I could even say I shoot like Kobe. That is the progression we would see if Sam and I actually cared for playing basketball, not just watching and talking about it.

A rumour is an unverified piece of information that is disseminated and received while still unverified. After that piece of information is verified or discerned, we would call that piece of information knowledge. And after that piece of knowledge has been applied, the results realized and the whole process internalized in our own lives, we could truly say we have learned it. So how much do you think a sermon, the primary source of feeding for most people nowadays, covers in this progression?

Acts 17

10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. 12 Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.

The Bereans were viewed as people of noble character, and often taught as the prototypical model of discernment. Notice that the Bereans did not go find the nearest pastoral authority, or look it up on their favorite coalition’s website, or go find a video sermon. They read the scriptures for themselves! They went to the only divine source they knew of. They would have went to the Holy Spirit too if He were in them (He was not because they were not believers at the time). They were not satisfied with just letting Paul’s ideas remain unverified as rumours. They wanted to know for themselves, together as a community, whether what Paul said was indeed true. They did not elevated any human sources.

I am not saying that teaching is a bad thing. I am saying, as we see here with the Bereans, that teaching is a small part in a much larger process. Teaching here is only the initiator, something that piques our curiosity and draws us into further interaction with God.

I define discernment as our own ability to hear and understand what God is saying. Therefore discernment  cannot be based on non-divine sources, unless you believe that some person has the totality of God’s voice on earth today (technically according to the Catholics that is the pope). It is common sense, you have no discernment if you have to rely on someone else’s. You have no ability to hear and understand what God is saying if you have to rely on someone else to do that for you.

So discernment is not figuring out whether this teacher is good or bad, it is not about whether this sermon is good or bad, because all that is often just a comment on presentation style. Those sorts of concerns are of course worth addressing, but when it comes to discernment, it is simply about whether what has been said is indeed what God is saying, regardless how it has been presented.

Often we are so filled to the brim with other people’s impressions of scripture and theology that we think we are discerning when really we are just subconsciously recalling things taught to us. How much of what we know of God was revealed to you through your quiet time of reading and prayer, and how much of it was taught to you by someone? Nowadays we perceive that we had a spiritual epiphany if something “convicted” us from the sermon, that God “spoke” to me through the sermon. Frankly, that usually is not an epiphany at all, just that someone has effectively persuaded you of something, and it aligned with your innate, sometimes unrecognized theological biases.

Again, I am not saying teaching is bad. I am just saying teaching is of very limited help when it comes to discernment, when it comes to hearing and understanding God for ourselves. And because most of us has been taught so many things so often for so long, we need to be extra intentional in trying to discover things, discern things, especially scripture, for ourselves.

When Westside Hamilton fell apart and us leaders burnt out 3 years ago, I spent the years leading up to now not paying attention to sermons, not going after books or commentaries, not looking for mentors and teachers. I just read the bible, over and over, a concept that Mike first introduced when he first spoke at Hamilton years ago. Even though I had done that as a reaction out of hurt, that time of actively putting teaching aside, a teaching fast if you will, cleared my head and helped me recognize that I had significant sources/biases in my head that skewed my theological preferences; I thought I was being “conservative” by taking a certain stance when really I have just been isolated and ignorant. If we do not recognize that the windows are tinted red, we are always going to think that the sky is purple.

For example, I realized I preferred a theology and view of my relationship with God that focused on having things to do and working hard on them, being a soldier for Christ, because I come from a Chinese Christian community. Asians are taught to work hard, so the idea of rest as a good, Godly thing is very foreign, even frowned upon. After reading through Psalms, reading through Jesus’ life in the Gospels, I realized there were scriptures about rest that had never been focused on before, but carry such an intimate view of resting with God as part of our relationship with Him.

So some practical things as we begin to develop our discernment:

• Read the bible. I say specifically read not study. In churches today “studying the bible” often means internalizing some teacher’s take on scripture. Read to internalize the scriptures yourself and keep foreign impressions to a minimum until you have read the bible 2-3 times over and have a decent idea of the overall contents. For those who grew up in a church, do a teaching fast and read for obvious, face-value meaning.
• Manage your first impressions. Easiest way to do this in our teaching-centric world is to ignore things that do not immediately apply to you. Continue taking notes during teaching/sermons if you wish, but if you know you have a hard time with discernment and are convinced easily, feel free to not bother with the sermon contents until you have finished with your reading plan above.
• Recognize your sources. Spend a little time reflecting, especially for those who have been in church for a long time, on what your long time sources, influences, and bias’ are (I will do another series helping you understand the modern North American church landscape later on this year).

Homework: Read in one sitting all of 1 Corinthians, noting who/what are the sources of the interpretations you currently know

My psalm

Paul encouraged us to write our own psalm during the praise time today, here's mine.

I don't really have the words to say
The songs to sing
The things to bring
That'll ever express have much you've done for me
How you wouldn't let me be
Even when I didn't praise you
Even when I didn't want you

Yet now I stand before you
Clean
Risen
Chosen
My failures ever before you
Yet ever joyful
Ever thankful
Ever remembering that my life is not a surprise to you
My shortcomings are not a surprise you
My trespasses are not a surprise to you

That you've paid for them on the cross
That you've dealt with then at great cost
That all you want from me
Is to pick myself up off the floor
And keep living for you
Pursuing you
Praising you
Loving you

All that I will eagerly do
For your spirit has transformed me
To want your presence
To want your heart
To want your will

Unashamed I will ever lift my voice
Out of the depths of my heart I will praise your name