Discernment: 
        Finding God in all things  

(The KOINOS website also includes another page that looks at discernment from a different perspective.)

“God is always in conscious relationship with each one of us as our creator, our sustainer, dear father or dear mother, our brother, our savior; the Spirit who dwells in our hearts. …at every moment of our existence God is communicating to us who God is, is trying to draw us into an awareness, a consciousness of the reality of who we are in God’s sight. Whether we are aware of it or not, at every moment of our existence we are encountering God.”       
                                        William Barry, Finding God in all Things, 14.  

The Christian's task: to become more and more aware of God in all the ordinary moments of life  

“If God gave you nothing but Himself, would you be satisfied?  The answer reveals whether you love God for himself, or for what you hope He will do for you. When you find yourself no longer enjoying the presence of God, when you find your prayers are limited to asking for things for yourself, you are in a hurry to get answers for your needs, when Christian ministry becomes the all-important thing in your life, then there is a great danger that you are using God for your own ends.”                                                      Peter Lord, Hearing God, 194-95.  

DO WE NEED TO PRAY?

“We listen to lectures affirming the importance of prayer, but we really think that our people need actions and not prayer and that praying is good when you really have nothing else to do.  I  wonder if under the surface of our religiosity we do not have great doubts about God’s effectiveness in our world, about his interest in us—yes, even about his presence among us. I wonder if many of us are not plagued by deep, hostile feelings toward God and the idea of God without having any way to express them.  I even wonder if there are many religious people for whom God is their only concern… When we speak of our age as a secular age, we must first of all be willing to become aware of how deeply this secularism has entered into our own hearts and how doubt, hesitation, suspicion, anger, and even hatred corrode our relationship with God.”                                                                                                                                           Henri Nouwen, Clowning in Rome, 26.   

DISCOVERING GOD

“If we offer genuine spiritual disciplines with the intention of allowing God to do through them whatever God wants, to break the crust of our self in whatever way God wants, to nurture us in whatever way God wants, then there is a necessity of letting God do what God will do and not trying to take the control back to ourselves… When we consistently offer ourselves to God in this act of obedience as a true spiritual discipline…We begin to discover that God has worked in our being through the Holy Spirit to transform what we are so that the obedience we ‘do” becomes the outflow of our God-transformed being.  We have, at that point, become the word God speaks us forth to be.’                          Robert Mullholland, Shaped by the Word, 119-20

FUNCTIONAL vs. RELATIONAL 
USE OF SCRIPTURE IN DISCERNMENT  

“One of the primary means of such transforming encounter is scripture, but NOT when scripture is viewed as a ‘rule book’ for self-transformation or winning God’s favor or when scripture is merely the resource for a structure of relationship with God that entrenches the false self in its ‘control’ of God.  

Transformation occurs when scripture is viewed as a PLACE OF ENCOUNTER WITH GOD that is approached by yielding our own agenda, by opening one’s self unconditionally to God, and by a hunger to respond in love to whatever God desires.  

The PRIMARY questions of spiritual formation are:

• Are we operating on a functional basis, somehow trying to get ourselves closer to God or to what we think God wants us to be; or are we operating on a relational basis, where, in responsiveness to God, we are allowing God to draw us into genuine spiritual formation?  

• Are we seeking to use the scripture as  a means by which we can draw closer to God, a schedule of functional actives that will enable us to be what God wants us to be?  Or are we seeking to come to the scripture openly, receptively, responsively, yielding ourselves to whatever God may want to say and then obeying in such a way that our functional actives flow from our relationship with God?
  
• Do we come to the scripture seeking a technique, a methodology that will enable us to draw closer to God—a functional mode; or do we come to the scripture  to open, to yield, to submit, to humble ourselves, to bow ourselves in God’s presence and allow God so speak to us and then to be obedient?                 -Mullholland, 95.  

Discernment is based on our . . .  

1 –relationship with a living and relational God

2 –being ‘shaped by the Word’ (our healing and wholeness)  

How will you respond:

• to God's offer of relationship?
  

•  to God’s calling  you the Beloved?  
  
•  to God’s offer of healing and transformation through the Word?

Q -What spiritual practices will you attempt to offer as token of your love for God?  

GOD WILL NOT COMPETE FOR OUR ATTENTION

The human spirit or the ‘still small voice’ is primary subjective way God addresses us—in our own spirits—our own thoughts and feeling toward ourselves as well as toward events and people around us.                                                          - Dallas Willard, Hearing God, 99  

We discern God through:

• the ‘still small voice’ of God in our own spirits
• praying with  scripture
• stillness/prayer
• the voice of others
• journaling/drawing

Quality time spend in prayer 
enables me to hear God
 in all ordinary moments of my day  

True discernment: 
Being with God all the time
and hearing God everywhere

In prayer, God is more interested in transforming me than he is in doing things for me.  

How do we spend time with God?

1 – By daily sitting with nothingness, I seek no specific answers. I listen to God open ears

2 – When I allow God to be God, I reach a new depth of surrender. (This keeps me from manipulating God or people)

3 – I remember that God has made me ONE with God.

4 – I allow God to transform my perceptions.

Discernment is not about getting answers.

If you would like to delve further into the study of discernment, KOINOS offers seminars in discernment semi-regularly on site around the Seattle area.  NOW you can also take an entire course in Spiritual Formation online at the KOINOS website. Click here to begin this course.

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