Category: Interior Life

A spiritual counselor is a treasure. A spiritual counselor is someone who has the knowledge, experience and maturity to accelerate your Spiritual growth. They are hard to find but they often make the difference between plateau or progress. If I had to choose just two channels of growth, one would be activational meditation on Scripture and the other would be a good spiritual counselor. A good spiritual counselor (whether they call themselves a coach, mentor, or director – we are not referring to counseling for psychological disorders) should hold you accountable in areas of purification and other commitments. They should know how to apply the principles of discernment (which we looked at in the chapter about exercising discernment) to your ideas or to any impressions you think you might have from God. A counselor who just affirms all the impressions you think you are getting from God is not helpful. Continue Reading →

Last week we gave some guidelines for discernment. This week we present some more specific guidelines for making a discernment decision. The greater the impact on our lives the more we should seek multiple confirmations. At the least there should be deep confidence or a big undeniable confirmation. Impressions from God are generally “gentle, light, and sweet, as a drop of water entering a sponge.” Impressions from evil spirits are “sharp, noisy and disturbing, like a drop of water falling upon a rock.” However, an impression from God can make us anxious, hurt, sad or afraid because of the content of the impression and our normal reaction to it. Thus, it may not bring peace at first and it may take us a while to surrender and accept the message. We should reflect on where the impression would eventually lead us. Is it a good end? Does it please God Continue Reading →

We have looked at some importance of discernment in two of our recent posts. Part 1 and part 2. Today we provide a list of some important guidelines for actually doing discernment. In order to improve our discernment we need to be open to impressions from God and step out in faith on the ones that pass the discernment process. In other words, we need to take some risks with ourselves (but be careful with others). Do not use one simple formula for doing discernment. Discernment is not simple and if we reduce it to a simple formula then the Enemy has a great opportunity to deceive us. Some people teach that if it sounds like a voice in your head separate from your voice then it is from God. This doesn’t work because your mind can create voices inside itself that sound like someone else is conversing with you. Continue Reading →

Last week our post on discernment was “Discernment is the guardian of the soul.” This post takes a look at discernment as described in the New Testament. Depending on the bible translation, several different Greek words are translated as “discernment” in the New Testament. The various words all have the sense of the word “judge” and most instances are based on the Greek word krino which means to judge. But aren’t we supposed to avoid judging? In Matthew 7:1 Jesus told his disciples not to judge lest they be judged. However, this does not appear to mean that we should never judge others, for in verse 5 he says that once we get rid of our own fault we can then see clearly (in other words, judge) to take the “speck” from someone else’s “eye”. Also, in verse 6 he explains that we shouldn’t throw our “pearls” (wisdom, etcetera) before Continue Reading →