JAC Online

The Cultivation of a Discerning Heart
by Carla Evans

I’ve never forgotten what my teenaged friend Paul said one day when we all were hanging out as usual. He was talking about how he was tired of living for the future. Now just hadn’t seemed to do it for him – he thought he would be happy once he got his driver’s license, or his first car, or his first job to have his own spending money. Yet he realized that these things never satisfied and always left him looking for the next thing, the next season of life. I’m not sure that I personally reflected on this notion for long at that time, however, as I thought of living with God, day to day, this memory recently came to mind. “There must be more than this” is often the cry of our hearts as we are desperate to have our souls satisfied. God has spoken to me through a song by Matt Redman entitled Seeing You that expresses the idea that our hearts and praise are awoken to only what we have seen and experienced:

This is a time for seeing and singing

This is a time for breathing You in

And breathing out Your praise

Our hearts respond to Your revelation

All you are showing, all we have seen

Commands a life of praise

No one can sing of things they have not seen

God, open our eyes towards a greater glimpse

The glory of You, the glory of You

God, open our eyes towards a greater glimpse

Worship starts with seeing You

Our hearts respond to your revelation[1]

Now is the time to see and sing, to breathe Him in, and to respond in a life of praise and obedience that is prompted by love. I hope to express in this reflection that in order to live a life of fullness we must be attentive to God. In every activity we can habitually discipline ourselves to recognize and worship God and finally, that submission to God brings peace and internal transformation.

As I read through Brother Lawrence’s Fourth Conversation it struck me as he notes: “That the end we ought to propose to ourselves in this life is to become the most perfect adorers of God we possibly can, as we hope to be His perfect adorers through all eternity.”[2] Our relationship with God begins here, on earth, and is developed from a base of a loving encounter with Him. William Barry suggests that “Only when people believe in such a God and experience such a God will they be able to reform their lives in accordance with the demands of being true to that relationship.”[3] This orientation of life as adorers of God sounds so appealing to me and conducive to a life of knowing God’s will and being in tune with it.

Thomas Kelly wrote, “For sole preoccupation with the world is sleep, but immersion in Him is life.”[4] We can walk around, spiritually asleep if we have not “seen” God and oriented our lives towards Him. This attention and orientation is a life task and depends fully on Him. As people created in the image of God, meaning and fulfillment are found in a habitual divine orientation towards our Creator. John Ackerman writes “That image of God may become the center of our life more and more as we surrender to God, and as Christ dwells in our hearts by faith. Our ego is not destroyed but reconfigured, recentered, remade.”[5] In her foreword to Ackerman’s book Alice Mann explains that attention to God is also “the source of all authentic ministry and the basis of spiritual authority.”[6] In order to live well, in relationship with Him and in an outward life of compassion and ministry, we must be attentive.

Why do we often seem so far from this regular attentiveness, as individuals and as a Body? I have wondered why so many of us are off track, growing up with an expectation that the things of this world will satisfy us, or ignorant that there is a more fulfilling way to live. “There has been little or no room to accept the fact that our lives are God-breathed and God-loved” Jeff Imbach offers. “We are in touch with God inside, and the fundamental outworking of our Christian growth is from the inside out.”[7] It is from this understanding of God as our Creator and one who breathes new life within us that we cultivate this orientation.

Brother Lawrence wrote so simply and plainly about this continual life with God. What exactly, though, is a habitual divine orientation? He explains “it consists of renouncing once and for all everything that we know does not lead to God, so that we might accustom ourselves to a continual conversation with Him, a conversation free of mystery and of the utmost simplicity.”[8] Further, he said it is to “concentrate on being always in His holy presence; I keep myself in His presence by simple attentiveness and a loving gaze upon God which I can call the actual presence of God or to put it more clearly, an habitual, silent and secret conversation of the soul with God.”[9] In every activity we can habitually discipline ourselves to recognize God’s movements and distinguish them from our own.

Attaining such a constant state of awareness and attention to God seems lofty. As I read and began to set myself apart from the “superheroes” of the Christian faith I was deeply encouraged and affirmed as Thomas Kelly writes about the lapses and failures and returns in this life of orientation: “Lapses and forgettings are so frequent. Our occupations are so exacting. But when you catch yourself again, lose no time in self-recriminations, but breathe a silent prayer for forgiveness and begin again, just where you are. Offer this broken worship up to Him and say: This is what I am except Thou aid me.”[10] Amidst my self-recriminations, God has been reminding me that He is tender and gentle; wooing me like He was with wayward Israel as we see in Hosea 2:14, 15:

"Therefore, behold, I will allure her,

and bring her into the wilderness,

and speak tenderly to her.

And there I will give her her vineyards

and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.[11]

The orientation of fixing our eyes on Jesus worshipfully lifts us up out of self-condemnation and failure as we choose to live differently, to look to Him and pray that we see with new eyes. Discernment is “a gift that has been given all of us. We don’t create it; we don’t receive it from someone” Rose Mary Dougherty writes. “Perhaps we might say that we uncover it and nourish it. We uncover the gift and then we nourish it through the skillful means of noticing, through our prayer, and through our growing openness to God in all of life.”[12]

This growing openness to God is crucial and is grounded in freedom and love. As we draw near to God, He draws near to us and obedience is birthed in our hearts as we are transformed through the work of humility and holiness. David Benner writes in Desiring God’s Will that as grasping and willfulness and determination rule the ‘Kingdom of Self’, God’s Kingdom is ruled by release and willingness and transformation.[13] It seems the more we determine our course and even the ways we ought to change or improve in our life with Him, vitality is lost. I am reminded of my reading of Benedictine Spirituality last year where Joan Chittister wrote, “Change that is real is change that is not willed.”[14] Thomas Kelly echoed this thought as he exhorts: “Don’t grit your teeth and clench your fists and say, ‘I will! I will!’ Relax. Take hands off. Submit yourself to God. Learn to live in the passive voice… and let life be willed through you. For ‘I will’ spells not obedience.”[15] I am realizing that we cannot will ourselves to surrender to God’s love or to make spiritual changes on our own. We cannot finally will ourselves to choose God’s will over ours once and for all. We can choose to turn to Him in all things, to fix our eyes on Him, the author and perfector of our faith, and to give in to His love. Under the banner of His love we learn and grow to prefer God’s will to ours.

God has given me a deeper awareness of my own longings this year. I literally had to sit with them, staring me in the face, during a silent retreat I attended this year. Like my teenaged friend Paul, I finally recognized my strivings that needed to cease because they did not lead to satisfaction or peace. Benner writes:

When I desire nothing more than God alone, I experience a deep sense of well-being and connectedness. Paradoxically, this is a longing that leaves me feeling not empty but complete. It is a longing that draws me not only toward God but also toward others. It is a longing that leaves me feeling open and alive.[16]

I’ve been experiencing this kind of internal transformation. I see God more clearly and keep an ongoing prayer aflame in my heart while being infused with a spirit of worship and submission. Life feels simpler, clearer and joyful. I feel more confident as I sense and follow the Spirit, not only for action but also in rest and knowing. Thomas Kelly wrote that the real business of life is determined in the more profound level of life marked by “prayer and adoration, song and worship and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings.”[17] I liken this level of life to the undercurrent of the ocean that is typically opposite that of surface currents and tends to remain stable.  I desire that my inner life, my attention to God, and this process of internal transformation would be moving, counter cultural and steady.

Bibliography 

Ackerman, John. Listening to God: Spiritual Formation in Congregations. Herndon: Alban Institute, 2001.

Barry, William A. SJ.  Paying Attention to God: Discernment in Prayer. Notre Dame: Ave Maria, 1999.

Benner, David G. Desiring God’s Will. Downers Grove: IVP, 2005.

Benner, David G. The Gift of Being Yourself: the Sacred Call to Self-Discovery. Downers Grove: IVP, 2004.

Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God. Boston: New Seeds, 2005.

Chittister, Joan, Wisdom Distilled From the Daily. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishing, 1990.

Dawn, Marva J. Joy in Divine Wisdom: Practices of Discernment from Other Cultures and Christian Traditions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006.

Dougherty, Rose Mary. Discernment: A Path to Spiritual Awakening. New York: Paulist Press, 2009.

Imbach, Jeff.  The River Within. Abbotsford, BC: Fresh Wind Press, 2007.

Kelly, Thomas R. A Testament of Devotion. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1992.