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8/14/2019 Learning Discernment Spiritual Direction Training Program Phase II Retreat
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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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