In my previous post on discernment, we talked about how, when it’s time for a discernment process, we often think in terms of finding an answer to our question—of whether to choose option A, B, or C in a particular moment of our lives—but how, really, discernment is about something of a much greater scope.
It’s about the wholistic work God is doing in our lives — our lives seen in their totality, from beginning to end — as he seeks to conform us more and more into the people we actually are and the image of God we were created to bear.
This has helped me realize there is quite an element of mystery to embrace when we’re about discernment.
Think of it this way. Even when we wait and look and listen and discern the invitation of God in our lives toward a particular decision, we don’t know what will happen once that decision has been made. We may discern that, yes, we are going to accept that job offer — but even if we ascertain that job offer to be the next stone on our pathway forward, we don’t fully comprehend why. We only know that God is nudging us toward it. It aligns with the wholistic work he’s been about in our lives. It’s clearly the right choice for us at this point in our story.
But toward what end? Not simply for the job itself, but toward the end of it being used to further our formation. The decision was not a destination but part of a larger process — a process we cannot fully perceive or apprehend and never will. It exists in the mind of God.
Our part is to discern and follow, and in that sense, to be part of a great mystery that’s beyond us. It’s like this short string of words in Psalm 40 that reminds us of this truth:
More and more people are seeing this:
they enter the mystery,
abandoning themselves to God.
— Psalm 40:3, MSG
Life with God teems with mystery. He is so much greater than we are, and he is intimately acquainted with our life and our ways and our story. He knows the work he is about in us, and we see that work but dimly, simply following the next stone on the path.
What is it like for you to participate in something greater than your eyes can see about your life?
“Life with God teems with mystery…He knows the work he is about in us, and we see that work but dimly, simply following the next stone on the path.” How can I do anything other than agree wholeheartedly with this sound assessment of God’s movement in our lives? On many occasions in my own life and ministry it has been anything but clear the path I was to follow. In such situations I was given many gifts, signs, markers if you will, along the rocky way that helped point me, not so much in the “right” direction, but in the “best” direction. I can scour the scriptures seeking to see the face of God through the lives of the characters who have walked this way before me. I can draw from the rich bank of my own previous experiences, remembering how God has worked in my past. I sit in yearning silence waiting upon the tender leading of God. Mostly, I’m invited do so in community with others who have my best interests at heart.
And, in spite of all that, I am not guaranteed a complete clarity on the way forward. What I am given however is the restive assurance of God’s abiding presence and that, whatever way I go, God will tie the ends of disparate twines into a tapestry of redemptive color and purpose-even if in the short term it seems all has been lost.