Written
by Jean Murphy
Part
2: Living In Discernment, W.I.S.E. E.Y.E.S.
Part 3: Thriving From Discernment
Your
journey of pursuing discernment first required that
you establish a W.I.S.E. foundation. This is done
as you chose to Worship Jesus as
your first priority, to have Integrity
become your life's standard, to Saturate
your minds with the truths of the Bible and Establish
a prayer team/family. You need to commit to establish
this strong and wise Biblical foundation in your life
so that you can accurately test and determine truth.
There
are four more building blocks that will help you develop
W.I.S.E. E.Y.E.S. to discern God's
good, pleasing and perfect will.
E.
Enter into His presence. Through
your wise foundation, you already know the importance
of God's Word and prayer. As you pray and study, you
must enter into his presence in such a way that you
are met by the living God. In His presence, the Lord
will use His Word to refresh, encourage, and redirect
your thoughts. This can take several minutes or several
hours. I read and pray until I am brought into conversation
with Him. I read until I have something to thank Him
for, repent of, or to specifically pray His Word for
someone else or myself. Plan to spend time in the
Word each and every day. Stay in the Word until conversation
with God flows through prayer. Journaling these precious
times is also very helpful.
Not only is it wise to have a personal time of Bible
study and prayer, but it is of utmost importance to
also enter into His presence with a community of believers.
Romans 12:3-20 discusses God's plan for believers
to come together in community as one body, belonging
to one another. You are to be dependent on one another
as God will use other believers in your lives and
you in theirs. When I study the Bible and pray with
my sisters in Christ, He uses them to touch my life
with loving compassion, encouragement, correction,
insights, and wisdom. In my Bible Studies, the discernment
of others helps direct my paths with discerning steps.
Y.
Yield to God each morning. Yielding to another
involves us consciously admitting they are first in
our life, so this does not come naturally. In humility,
you must decide to surrender your will and submit
to the Lord. Being in the Word is an important aspect
of you yielding to the Lord, as the Bible reveals
Christ in such a way that you can know He is totally
worthy of your surrendering to Him. You may need to
say to the Lord each day, "You are God and I
am not. You alone are Creator, Sustainer, Master and
King. I am yours and I purposefully yield my day to
You." Romans 12:1 says you are to offer our bodies
as living sacrifices. This is complete surrender of
your whole being to God. You are not only His child,
you are His property by the right of creation and
redemption and it is reasonable that you yield your
worship and your service to Him all through your day.
As you yield to God, you are ever conscious of his
presence and authority in your life. As you learn
to live surrendered to Christ and filled with His
Spirit, you learn to live a life the way God meant
you to function, which is pleasing to Him.
E.
Entertainment and exposure to the media needs to be
monitored.
We already discussed that God's truths need to saturate
your mind, but you need to also think about monitoring
what enters your mind through your eyes and ears through
entertainment. Your entertainment, especially that
which you choose when you are relaxing and not guarding
your mind, can return your mindset back to the carnal.
Philippians 4:8 gives a wonderful list of what the
Lord wants you to put into your minds. You are to
think about whatever is true, noble, right, pure,
lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. When
I read the TV line up for tonight, I don't see many
shows that pass this standard. We think the media
is harmless, but we are told in Romans 12:2 not to
conform to the pattern of the world. Yet the patterns
of this world through media can unconsciously affect
our mind. You need to be alert and screen what your
eyes and ears receive. It is not hard to give up this
type of entertainment when you are doing so for freedom
from sin. Jesus tells us in John 8:32 that if you
abide in His Word, you are His disciples and you will
know the truth and the truth will set your free! Saturating
your minds in His truth, purity and excellence enables
you to live freely in Him!
S.
Sacrifice the lies and follies of this world.
This is another aspect of not conforming to the pattern
of this world. For example, the world falsely says
we have many rights, such as the right to be happy.
The world's definition of happiness revolves around
being preoccupied with our own self interests and
fulfillment. This is so far from the life Christ commanded
us to live of denying oneself (Matthew 16:12) and
living within the joy of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).
Today's concept of happiness is also far from the
definition of our forefathers who believed that "happiness
is a life well lived, a life of virtue and character,
a life that manifests wisdom, kindness and goodness.
Using this definition, we see that happiness and discernment
both come from living out Romans 12. The world's current
self-indulgent definition of happiness seldom truly
satisfies and is often the root cause of discontentment,
divorce and depression. An example of sacrificing
the follies (senseless behavior) of this would be
to sacrifice our flesh desires to the Lord, such as
the desire for premarital/extramarital sex, drunkenness,
over eating, under eating, or cheating, and instead
choose what He reveals to us in His Word to be of
true value, such as purity, self control, and honesty.
Every time you don't act on an impulse of self-gratification
when you know it is not God's best, you are actually
dying to self, offering your body as a living sacrifice,
holy and pleasing to God.
God
created us to live life to the full that abundant
life starts with a foundation and then builds walls
and a roof in which to live as you studied today.
Chose to daily live with W.I.S.E. E.Y.E.S., and you
will see the potential to thrive is more than a possibility
it will become your reality.
PART
3: Thriving from Discernment
The
last four building blocks to have WISE E.Y.E.S.
were to be willing to Enter into
His presence and enter into fellowship with other
believers, Yield to God each morning,
Entertainment and exposure to the
media needs to be monitored, and to Sacrifice
the lies and follies (senseless behavior) of this
world (not conforming).
God's
Word has given you both a foundation and the building
blocks in which to pursue developing the wise eyes
of discernment to examine your situations and surroundings
and see things not just as they appear, but as they
actually are in truth. My prayer is that in your new
college or employment adventure or just in your new
day, that you will stand with your feet firmly planted
in God’s truth. How seriously you want discernment
will be seen by how committed you will be to following
His truth. As our journey together comes to an end,
I hope you find encouragement as you see that you
have already grown in understanding the truths of
Romans 12:1-2 as you reread the verses in three additional
translations.
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters,
by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as
a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed
to this world, but be transformed by the renewing
of your minds, so that you may discern what is the
will of God — what is good and acceptable
and perfect. (NSRV)
I APPEAL to you therefore, brethren, and beg of
you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make
a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting
all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice,
holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to
God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent)
service and spiritual worship. Do not be conformed
to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted
to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed
(changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by
its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you
may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and
acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing
which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His
sight for you]. (Amplified)
So
here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take
your everyday, ordinary life — your sleeping,
eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life —
and place it before God as an offering. Embracing
what God does for you is the best thing you can
do for him. 2 Don't become so well-adjusted to your
culture that you fit into it without even thinking.
Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed
from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants
from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the
culture around you, always dragging you down to
its level of immaturity, God brings the best out
of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Message)
Part
1: Beginning With Discernment
Works
Cited:
1. All Scriptures taken from the NIV
(Biblesoft's New Exhaustive Strong's Numbers and Concordance
with Expanded Greek-Hebrew Dictionary. Copyright ©
1994, 2003 Biblesoft, Inc. and International Bible
Translators, Inc.)
2.Merriam-Webster Online. 14 July 2008 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discernment>
3.J.P. Moreland and Klaus Issler. Lost Virtue of Happiness
Discovering the disciplines of the Good Life. (Colorado
Springs, CO: NavPress, 2006)
4.Jean Porter, Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory
of the Natural Law (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005)
141-230
5.NRSV
6.Amplified
7.THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language
© 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.)
