Why is discernment important?

“Teach me good discernment and knowledge for I believe in Your Commandments.”   Psalm 119:66  Darby

Every person has the right to have spiritual discernment.  You received this as a birth-right. The fact that you possess life provides evidence that you also have the right to allow the Holy Spirit to emerge from within.

The gift of discernment is the ability to recognize what is genuine from what is pretence; what is of God from what is not of God.

People, apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, act from natural urges, fears, worries, jealousy, hatred, envy, selfishness and bitterness.  They lack the power to self-rule and cannot live life from a root of wisdom.

The Holy Spirit often hides spiritual things to keep them from the unwise and reveals them to the contrite and humble.

A proud person blocks himself from comprehending spiritual things.  God resists the proud and gives grace or favor to the humble.  A proud person cannot be taught.  A humble person will never stop learning.

The Light shines brightly within the spiritual person.  The non-spiritual person, regardless of his or her religious convictions, walks in darkness and does not know even that.

Those who lack spiritual discernment have difficulty even understanding what spiritual means. Words can convey the truth, but discernment comes from within.

Discernment is a way of listening and paying attention to God's leading.  It is an avenue to bring God into our decision making.  Discernment begins with putting God in the center of everything we do as individuals and the Church.

We have to be willing to change, to put God's desires above our own and to trust that God wants the best for us. We also have to be willing to deepen our relationship with the Triune God knowing that God loves us, Jesus walks with us and Holy Spirit acts as our guide.