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LearningDiscernment

Spiritual Direction Training Program Phase II

Retreat September 17-19, 2004

Session I

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When I was growing up, I was taught that emotional

people are superficial people, and that deep people are those

who think rationally. This kind of teaching is so contrary

to the witness of the Scriptures that people who live from

the depths are people who attend to what is happening to

them emotionally. Actually, the basic question when it

comes to discernment is: What is happening to us

emotionally? In discernment, we would like to hear the

voice of Jesus and discern whether it is genuinely his voice.

When we attend to the voice of Jesus, we need to respond

intentionally to the witness of the Spirit in our hearts, in

our lives, and in our midst.

I find it helpful to identify the witness of the Spirit in

having four particular expressions: the Spirit assures us of

Gods love; the Spirit calls us to repentance; the Spirit calls

us to truth; and the Spirit guides us in times of choice. I am

going to address each of these four expressions emphasizing

the matter of emotion.

The Awareness that We Are Loved

The whole of the Christian life, I cannot overstate this,

is lived out of a confident assurance that we are loved. The

whole text of Romans 5:1-8 builds on the phrase God loves

us while we were yet sinners. This is the heart of the

Assures Us of Gods Love

TheSpiritGordon T. Smith

Transcribed and edited by Waichu Luk

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First Evangelical Church Association Bulletin April 2005 5

Gospel, that God demonstrated his love for us by sending his Son to

the cross while we were yet sinners. There is nothing that you can

do to make God love you more. He loved you even before you were

born. I remember when my wife and I were flying to Regina before

my third grandson Riley was due to be born, it dawned on me on theairplane that I loved Riley. I never met him; but I loved him, and I

could not love him more. Why? Because he is my grandson. In a

similar way, God loves you for the very simple reason that you are

his.

I had another experience that captured this dimension of Jesus

relationship with us. On the day after my son Andrew got his drivers

license right after he turned 16, he borrowed my van for the evening,

bringing along his younger brother Micah, driving out by themselves

the first time. They promised to return home by midnight but were

not home until 2:00 am, and they did not bring the key. Before I

went down to open the door, my wife said to me, Bless them. So

as I opened the door, I had two alternatives. Alternative A: I am

angry. I grant them the furrowed brow. They are going to feel my

disappointment because they violated the mutual understanding.

Alternative B: I love my sons dearly. Now they are home, so I

embrace them both. I make them hot chocolate and then send them

off to bed.

John 21:1-17 brings us to the stunning exchange between Jesus

and Peter. What did Peter do after he denied Jesus? Peter, perhaps

feeling he could not face the resurrected Jesus, went back to fishing

with six other disciples. They went fishing all night and caught

nothing. In the morning, somebody standing on the shore told them

to cast the nets on the other side. When John, the other disciple,

recognized that it was Jesus, Peter immediately jumped into the

water. He made it ashore and discovered that Jesus was making

breakfast for them. Then Jesus asked Peter three times if Peter loved

Jesus. Here is my point: Jesus did not ask if Peter loved him until

he had first demonstrated to Peter I love you by making breakfast

for him, which was the ancient practice of acceptance. Why is that

so important? Because we cannot live the Christian life unless we

know that Jesus loves us.

Almost every time I tell that story about my sons, people would

say, You needed to discipline them and tell them what was right

and what was wrong. But what is the problem if I embrace them?

Is it the great danger that they will not be formed morally? This is,

in a sense, Pauls concern in Romans 6:1 when he says, Shall we

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then sin that grace may abound, because we know that grace is there?

Pauls concern is to demonstrate that unless the Christian life is

lived out of the awareness that we are loved, it is legalism and an

affront to God. God loves us. This is the point of departure in the

Christian life, and the whole of the Christian life then becomes alwayscoming back to this point, to know and to live in the awareness that

I am loved.

The Inner Work of the Spirit and

the Assurance of Love

Have you ever heard people say, I know that I am loved, but I

dont feel it? The problem is if they do not feel that they are loved,

then it makes no difference in their lives. If I dont feel that I am

loved, then somehow it does not connect with the inner recesses ofmy life and it does not really transform me. Whereas Romans 5:8

demonstrates the evidence that God loves us, notice in verse 5 what

leads up to that: and hope does not disappoint us, because the love

of God is poured into our heart by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit

pours the love of God into our heart, such that I will stress again and

again that what really leads to a Christian life that is anchored in the

love of God is particularly the emotional awareness that I am loved.

How do we get this? We respond with the great liturgical phrases of

the last 2000 years: Lift up your hearts to the Lord. We lift

them up to the Lord. In modern language, it means: Open yourself

up to God.

Lift up your hearts to the Lord. But it is all too easily to keep

my heart closed. Henri Nouwen points out that all of us have been

wronged and wounded. For people who have been betrayed by their

spouse, parents, teachers, authority figures, or anybody who should

by right demonstrate love to them, their inclination is to close down.

But dear people, we will not live in a dynamic awareness of the love

of God unless we start to unclose and let the Lord touch our hearts.

How do we do this? There is the simple spiritual practice of

thanksgiving.

The Knowledge of Gods Love

in the Midst of Difficulty and Suffering

Romans 5:5 tells us, hope does not disappoint us. It actually

begins after a comma, which is linked directly to perseverance in the

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First Evangelical Church Association Bulletin April 2005 7

face of difficulty and suffering:Rejoice in tribulation, for tribulation

leads to perseverance, perseverance leads to character, and character

leads to hope. It is a very nave Christian who does not realize that

suffering is integral to the Christian life. Indeed the words of Jesus

in John 16:33 are these: In this world you will have trouble. Ourlives in North America tend to be almost impervious to suffering.

We think that every time we have difficulty, we can fix it with

technology, money, or modern medicine. But the actual fact is that

this is a fallen and broken world. Suffering intersects our lives.

Who you are as a Christian will ultimately be determined by the

quality of your response to suffering.

Every time we experience difficulty, we are essentially faced

with a choice, like a Y in the road. Will you go this way or that

way? Will it lead to perseverance, character, and hope? Or will it

lead to anger, bitterness, and cynicism? What leads us down one

side or the other? It is thanksgiving that makes all the difference.

We give thanks in all circumstances, except for evil. There is no

circumstance of our lives where we are not able in the midst of the

darkness even to give thanks for the little point of light that is there,

because God never leaves himself without a witness to his goodness.

The Practice of Thanksgiving

In the hardest chapter of our lives, during those four months of

harassing phone calls and even death threats in the Philippines, the

standard question my wife asked me everyday when I came home

was: What was it today? But what was intended by her question

was: What was the sign of Gods goodness today? It is all too

easy to describe the brokenness of the world, but a discerning

Christian is one who is attentive to the signs of Gods goodness.

So when we gather for worship, we do not divide between those

who have had a good week and those who have had a bad week.

We all gather together to give thanks to the Lord for he is good. We

live out an awareness of Gods goodness to which we give thanks,

and then God in his good pleasure by the witness of his Spirit

grants us the emotional awareness that we are loved. How do weknow what we are experiencing is indeed Gods love? The two

indicators suggested by Jonathan Edwards are: Gods love humbles

us, and Gods love empowers us to love others as we have been

loved.

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