Houston Graduate School of Theology
CS 501 Introduction to Christian Spirituality
What is discernment?

Sources
 Chan, Simon. Spiritual Theology, chapter 11
 Smith, Gordon T. The Voice of Jesus:
Discernment, Prayer, and the Witness of the
Spirit. Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press.

Discernment Defined
 Insight – the capacity to see something clearly
 Discretion – the capacity to distinguish between
good and evil and good and better
 Judgment – assessment informed by knowledge
and understanding
Discernment
Through the regular practice of
discernment, a person grows in wisdom,
which becomes increasingly evident in
the quality of one’s choices
 The ability to discern the voice of Jesus
is a critical spiritual skill, basic to our
capacity to make vocational and moral
choices

The exercise of discernment
External – concerning the veracity of
events, situations, and people; God’s
work in the world and one’s participation
in it; and extraordinary phenomena
 Internal – determining the source of
inner impulses has always been difficult
and may be the reason why most of the
work on discernment has concentrated
on this area

Dynamic tensions
Divine
initiative
and human
response
The voice
of Jesus in
prayer and
in the world
Context of
life and the
particularity
of Jesus’
voice
The
individual
and the
community
Divine initiative/human response
God is always the initiator
 Christian spirituality is a spirituality of
response
 In spiritual discernment, the believer
learns how to respond to God’s initiative
 Discernment rests in the tension
between the priority of God and the call
for genuine human action and
responsibility

Context of life/voice of Jesus
God speaks into the particulars
 We learn to be attentive in the details of
our lives
 We have a greater capacity to listen to
Jesus if we are frank with ourselves
about who we are, where we have come
from, what we have experienced, and
what we hope for.
 As a result, we develop the ability to
attend to the inner witness of the Spirit.

Jesus’ voice in prayer and in the
world
A discerning person learns to be alert and
attentive to the voice of Jesus in every
context of life, even through unexpected
channels of communication
 Effective discernment requires an openness
to surprises, to the strange and wonderful
ways in which God may choose to speak
 We will not recognize Jesus’ voice unless
we listen to the Spirit while in prayer

The individual and the
community
The community is both a threat and an
indispensable aid to discernment
 To foster spiritual maturity, the community
enables individual Christians to hear the
voice of Jesus and encounter the living
bread and water for themselves
 Though a believer learns discernment for
oneself, it is not learned by oneself

Critical affirmations
The Role
of
Leadership
The Voices
of the
Members
The Gift of
Discernment
The role of leadership
The leader finds a responsible place
within the process, as part of the group
 Leadership is one of the gifts given to
the community
 The community takes seriously the
perspective, skills, and gifts of the leader
 The leader listens to the community and
to the voice of the Spirit through the
community

The voices of the community
Each member plays a significant role
 Communal discernment seeks to affirm
the appropriate voice and contribution of
each person, corresponding to each
person’s giftedness and role within the
community

Gift of discernment
Individual contributions that enable the
group to discern well.
 Varieties of expressions

 Seeing beyond the immediate (vision)
 Understanding the issues and facts (critical
analysis but beyond rational analysis)
 Identifying the emotional dimension
 Sharing of wisdom and insight (sage)
Conditions for Communal
Discernment
Common
Purpose
Good
information
and Good
Research
Clearly
Framed
Matter for
Discernment
Resolve to
Decide
Together
Mutual
Regard and
Acceptance
The meeting to discern
Open Discussion
Threshing Meeting
Issues, concerns, observations, and perspectives are
freely expressed
Prayer and Silent Reflection
Meeting for Clearness
Extended time of listening prayer
Discussion toward Resolution
Moderator asks for comments and observations that
have arisen out of prayer
A “sense” may emerge that there is more agreement
among the group than originally thought possible
Spiritual Direction
Freeing and empowering others to know
with greater confidence what God is saying
to them
 Empowering others to hear more clearly the
voice of Jesus
 Distinct from both counseling and mentoring

Distinctions

Counseling
 The agenda is set by the emotional needs of the
one being counseled
 Spiritual directors and mentors know that when it
comes to emotional pathologies, they are well
advised to refer others to trained counselors

Mentoring
 The agenda is set by the one who mentors
 One has a set of skills and trains the other in
those skills
Distinctions

Spiritual direction
 The agenda is not so much emotional
needs, nor is it a training program
 The witness of the Spirit determines the
course of the conversation
 Fundamental posture is in being with the
other in a manner that enhances the
capacity of the other to know how God is
speaking
Peterson’s assumptions
God is present and at work in each
person’s life
 A wealth of spiritual wisdom exists on
which we can draw as we seek to
respond to the work of God
 Every person is different, therefore,
directors should not work with a
predetermined outcome

The Bottom Line
Spiritual direction is not a ministry of
giving counsel about decisions
 Rather, in spiritual direction, one of the
most effective ways in which we can
serve the other is by probing to see how
the other can choose well, in intentional
response to God
