Questions from the Biblical Narrative to Help with Discernment

Discernment is key to spiritual growth and having an adult faith.
 
Rather than looking for someone else to "tell you what to do or believe," how does one sift through the options, choices and voices using Biblical wisdom?  Well let's give it a try.  

Pick an issue for discernment.  This could be the way you are currently praying or living, a choice or difficulty you're confronted with, options you're mulling over, a theological belief you're questioning, a relationship situation, or a change that's approaching.

Use the questions below. With your issue for discernment in mind, you're going to ask questions springing from the overall themes of Scripture.  It's true, one can pull any Scripture from its context to justify any belief or choice.  However, just as Jesus summed up the entire Law in two commands, there are what I call “summing up” Scriptures and stories that remind us of overall themes repeated again and again in the Bible.  Here is my current list of questions and their summing up references:

• Is it life-giving? Is it leading me toward life? Am I choosing life in this situation? (Even if it doesn’t look or feel like it right now) Deuteronomy 30:15-20; John 10
• Do I sense the fruit of the Spirit in the situation/person/words/particular choice? Galatians 5:22-love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness & self-control
• Does it lead me to a deeper and wider love of God with my whole self—heart, mind, soul and strength? A deeper and wider love of others? Of myself? Deuteronomy, Mark 12
• Is what I’m referring to or viewing as love consistent with how love is described overall in Scripture? Where might I be struggling at the moment? What might be absent? I Corinthians 13
• Am I acting with justice & fairness toward my neighbor? Is the way I am loving compassionate & loyal?  Am I walking humbly with God (not taking myself too seriously—taking God seriously)? The Prophets, especially Micah 6:8
• Does it seem consistent with the “way of Jesus”? Am I on a path leading toward/bringing me back to love, trust, freedom, forgiveness, compassion, peace and healing (or a path of/leading to fear, superstition, shame, etc.)? The Gospels
• Are both strength & tenderness present? Psalm 62:11
• Am I being “wise/cunning/sly as a serpent & innocent/harmless/inoffensive as a dove”? Matthew 10:16
• Am I able to see the person(s) involved as Imago Dei (made in the image of God)? Am I able to see myself and others as a mix of both darkness and light, rather than completely evil or completely good? Genesis 1:26, 5:1-2, Ephesians 6:12, Luke 23:34, James 3:5b-10
• Where might the pattern of running, hiding & blaming be playing out? Genesis 3- initiated by Adam & Eve and passed down thereafter

As I practice asking myself these questions and allowing them to run through my mind in spiritual direction, they become the unconscious filters through which I see, listen and think. Over the years I've added questions, been led deeper into the questions and discovered when/how I need to invite others into the questions (a dialogue that is different than having someone else make my decisions or tell me what to believe).  Such questions can also guide communal discernment.  May these questions be signposts and gateways along your path of discernment.

• What question(s) really spoke to your issue for discernment?
• What have you gleaned from asking these questions? Has a next step or way arisen?    

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