Exercising Faith II – Discernment

To draw the lens in just a tiny bit, I want to look more closely at discernment as a spiritual gift. I’ve been preoccupied with having a retreat day soon, but last night I was asking myself what agenda I have in seeking a retreat.

First, let me say that I do try to practice the discipline of retreat once in a while. Spiritual disciplines are an entirely different topic, but I need to give you some context for this one. The discipline of retreat is one that is not practiced nearly enough, in my opinion. We live in a world possessed of such incredibly diverse and seductive means of distraction from the Lord that I believe retreat to be essential, but I find, like many, that I’m just not sure how to go about it. Oh, I have some means – going ‘up the mountain’ literally is just one, long walks another – but what to do on days when you have to remain indoors or simply have no inner room into which you can retreat? And what defines a retreat?

Digression aside, I find that I’m in need of retreat in order to refocus myself, to find out where I should be directing my attentions and abilities, and to simply withdraw from things for a while.  The reason for this?  I’ve become unsure of things, as we all do and as we all must overcome.

Where this leads me, however, is to this:  Is a retreat going to be serving my purposes or God’s?  Or, in other words, what expectations must I have in order to retreat for the purposes of discernment?  Certainly, I have questions that I want to pray about, but am I praying with an expectation to hear what God has to say or what I want Him to say?

Discernment, I think, works the same way.  I think discernment, in its most relevant sense, is finding the will of the Lord in the circumstances which He has engineered for you.  If you are gifted in discernment, I think you have the ability to do this without thinking too much about it.  You can test and approve very easily, and Christ-mindedness comes more naturally to you.  I could be wrong; probably am, when it comes to gifts.  But that’s where I think discernment operates in retreat.  The difficult point is to come out of retreat, or away from a decision where discernment is required ready to act on what you’ve learned.  And I think this is one of the central purposes of prayer, as well; or at least, prayer for guidance.  We have a responsibility to do what we’re told, and not to simply toss it aside.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Heart-Sabbath

The phrase “heart-sabbath” keeps coming up in my mind, so I thought I’d look at it a tiny bit. Mostly, I’m just trying to figure out what it means. When it came up in prayer, I made a record of it, which I’ll return to now.

Hmm. Apparently not as clear as I’d like it to be. It came up in a discussion I was having, and the context was in the neighbourhood of letting the heart rest from depression. Spiritual depression, actually. I’m currently reading a book by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on spiritual depression, and it’s providing some unexpected insights into some of the things that have been coming up in my posts throughout this version 2.0. I’m going to be into version 2.7 with this post (pretty much a random number, by the way, but indicative of where on the scale of voice it fits.)

So. Heart-sabbath, as I’ve been thinking about it, is letting the heart rest in prayer and from the burdens it carries. It is also, in a sense, speaking to the discontent of the soul that seems to plague some who are in the church, or who call themselves Christian, but can’t find a crucial bit or an important piece of the faith. Holy and unholy discontent itself is a different topic, and I’ll look into that tomorrow, I think. In the meantime…

The problems that we cause for ourselves in opening our hearts to the wrong people are often avoidable ones, if we are discerning correctly (that is, by the Holy Spirit and through the Word). However, so often in life we are guided into error by those whose approval we seek, or those whose lives we want to try and emulate. We make small compromises here and there, which, taken apart, seem like nothing. But if put together, they become troubles that weight us down, and which can vex to no end. The Bible itself cautions, in Jeremiah, against the heart’s tendencies to error. Here’s Jeremiah 17:7-10:

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? ‘I the Lord search the heart, and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.’”

What really sticks out to me from these verses is the peace of a tree by quiet waters, the man whose trust is in the Lord. See, we often manufacture mistrust in our hearts because of poor discernment in offering up its contents, and then we are left with the consequences, which become burdens that we carry around. I say ‘we’, but certainly this is not the case in all. I (who I generally mean when I say ‘we’) have a habit of carrying around a great many burdens, and so I guess the real point of taking a heart-sabbath is to acknowledge that, and unburden myself.

Not really much on what it means to take a heart-sabbath, but therapeutic nonetheless. Perhaps I should simply rest beside the still waters, as in the oft-quoted Psalm 23.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

A World Apart – Prayer

There’s so much that we think we can handle on our own, under our own power, with our own resources…you know. But can you buy your way out of exhaustion, or conquer misery with a credit card? And what happens when we run out of steam, when we are destroyed by tragedies within our families or in our communities? Where is our own power in the hospital wards?

We can’t do anything when it really counts, when it really matters to the heart. We sit helplessly by and watch loved ones go through pain and torment in illness and in addictions. We try so very hard to be a friend to those who feel they don’t need it. How much, then, can we really do, and with what?

That’s the first step in prayer. Admitting that we need help, seeking to find it in talking things through with God and watching in amazement as the solutions to our problems seem to unfold. Acting on realizations and in poverty of spirit, calling on God to help and then crying as He does.

Who cares if people think we’re crazy…God loves the prayerful heart, because the prayerful heart is more and more capable of loving Him and giving Him glory.

Next time – We stand on His strength.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.