Praying for Discernment

"And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ," Philippians 1:9-10

This was a fantastic verse to open up to this morning. There are a few things that sing out to me from this verse in Philippians, and the first one is the love. As I've been saying a lot lately, love seems to be the key to pretty much everything. When we can truly learn to love, then we will become more like Jesus. The bonus is that according to this verse, there are more perks to learning to really and truly love with the love of Jesus. As we use that love, and as we grow more in God's love, that love will help us in the art of discernment.

How many times do we stand at a crossroads and wonder which is the right decision to make? And I'm not just talking about the big decisions- even the small ones. Should we go to that meeting? Should we sign Junior up for Boy Scouts? Should we take down that tree that's hanging on the neighbors house? And the big decisions of course- which church should we belong to? Should we go into the missionfield? Is God really calling is to move to that part of the country? In all those things, we often seek God's direction. Which choice would he have us make? Discernment is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and it helps guide us to making the right decision. It helps us to see the evil intentions of the devil and to stay away from poor choices.

Still, there are times where maybe we don't make the best choice. Where we really felt that one choice was better than the other, so we made that choice, only to discover that it wasn't the best one to make. What happens then? We can take heart in knowing this:

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28

Even if we don't make the best choice for us at the time, God will use whatever choice we make for good things. God works in all things- not just the good things. He may use our poor choices to help teach us a lesson, or to help us desire the gift of discernment, so we don't make those choices again. Discernment isn't some life changing, light bulb moment. It's something that we grow into, and as we recognize the Spirit's nudging, that prodding towards one decision over another, we will learn from it.

I think it's pretty cool to know that as we grow in love and in God's Word, that gifts like discernment just naturally follow. It's even cooler to see another verse basically say that with love, things are possible. After all, love is what gives us heaven and the opportunity to live there in the first place. If I can spend my lifetime making choices that only help me to love more and learn to love more like Jesus, I think that's a lifetime well spent.