Holy Living: Discernment: Spiritual Practices of Building a Life of Faith

By Elaine A. Heath and Beth Ann Estock

"While physical training has some value, training in holy living is useful for everything. It has promise for this life now and the life to come." (1 Timothy 4:8 CEB) Christians crave a deeper, more intimate relationship with God. The spiritual disciplines are historical practices that can guide us in our daily walk, bringing us closer to Christ. The Holy Living series brings a fresh perspective on the spiritual disciplines, enabling us to apply their practices to our current lives. Practicing these spiritual disciplines opens us to God's transforming love.

Many believers are familiar with the fruits of the Spirit Paul wrote about in his letter to the Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Discernment is a contemplative practice that opens us to these gifts. It offers us the capacity to see more clearly and touch the depth of our holy existence here on earth. This book introduces us to this ancient practice and helps us discover how practicing it can lead us to moments in which we sense meaning and purpose in our lives by desiring what God desires and embodying the love that is God.

This is one of series of eight books. Each book in this series introduces a spiritual practice, suggests way of living the practice daily, and provides opportunities to grow personally and in a faith community with others who engage with the practice. Each book consists of an introduction and four chapters and includes questions for personal reflection and group discussion.

Other disciplines studied: Celebration, Confession, Neighboring, Prayer, Simplicity, Study, and Worship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: Aug 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781501877636

Beth Ann Estock

Beth Estock is a leadership coach and consultant. A contemplative by nature, she is also an ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church as well as a yoga instructor. In 2016 she co-authored, Weird Church: Welcome to the 21st Century. She is blessed with a loving marriage and 2 inspiring daughters. Beth lives in Portland, Oregon. To learn more, go to www.bethestock.com.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

What Do We Do Now?

Spirit can be known only by spirit—God’s Spirit and our spirits in open communion. Spiritually alive, we have access to everything God’s Spirit is doing, and can’t be judged by unspiritual critics. Isaiah’s question, Is there anyone around who knows God’s Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing? has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ’s Spirit.

(1 Corinthians 2:16, The Message)

We can each point to moments in our lives when we have had to make or will make big decisions about education, work, life partners, housing, children, health, or retirement. Then there are seasons in our lives when we are confronted with the reality of suffering as we face death, job loss, breakups, addictions, abuse, and family drama.

Add to these the life questions that confront us on a daily basis, from how to deal with a cranky coworker to how to handle our finances. Compounding all of this is the constant access to social media and a 24-hour news cycle that can keep us in a high state of anxiety. At times, this can feel overwhelming as we constantly wonder, What do we do now? How do I handle this?

I imagine this was what the disciples asked when they witnessed Jesus ascend into heaven as recorded in Acts 1. His last words to the 11 remaining disciples were, When the Holy Spirit comes on you, you will be able to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all over Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the world (Acts 1:8, The Message).

The disciples stood paralyzed, looking up at the sky. I can only assume that they were hoping that Jesus would come back down, that this was only a joke. How could he have left them the task of continuing the Jesus movement without him? How would they know what to do? This surely was a mistake.

Reading between the lines, it appears that the disciples were filled with a sense of dread. Their lives were on the line, and they knew it would be best for them to hide from the authorities. They feared that they were not ready to go it alone. They wanted and needed more time with Jesus.

The disciples didn’t have all the answers and had no clue what to do next. It was so disorienting that all they could do was stare at the sky until those two men dressed in white reminded them to go to Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit.

I can imagine that, once in Jerusalem, the disciples tried to hold their community together by going through the motions of what made logical sense. They did what they knew how to do. They turned to Scripture and found a reference they could link to Judas’s betrayal of Jesus: May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership (Psalm 109:8, New Revised Standard Version).

In a closed room, the disciples called a meeting and replaced Judas by casting lots between two men who had witnessed the Resurrection. In essence, they replaced their missing committee member. Their operating assumption probably went something like this: If it is up to us to fulfill Jesus’ mission, we need to have 12 men on our team just like Jesus did. But after that was done, it seems as if they were at a loss. I imagine them waiting in panicked prayer for enough courage to do something of which they did not know.

Have you ever felt stuck, as if you were in over your head or paralyzed by fear? Have you ever revisited the same themes in your life and felt powerless to respond in a different way? Maybe you felt the fear of making a mistake or being judged as not good enough. Maybe a voice of cynicism left you feeling hopeless and disconnected. Maybe you felt that tension in your body––a tightening of the neck and shoulders, a pounding in your heart, or an ache in the pit of your stomach.

No matter what we say to ourselves during these times, self-doubt and fear seem to show up when we don’t know what to do next. When this happens, shame often rears its head, insinuating that something is wrong with us and demanding that we not appear weak or in need. Consequently, we end up feeling alone in the world, even though our faith reminds us that we are never alone. But in those moments of anxiety and disassociation, that promise can seem like a pipe dream.

I can only speculate, but I would like to believe that the disciples were right there where we often find ourselves. Of course, Jesus promised them a helper, but the only thing they could see was anxiety and unease staring them in the face. It must have been difficult to pray and to have hope when the world they had come to know no longer made sense and seemed without purpose.

Then, without any warning, as they sat together in prayer, it happened. The Holy Spirit blew in and swept the room clean of fear. That same Spirit opened their hearts and attuned them to a different way of being in the world. The shift in perspective was palpable; and for the first time, the disciples could see clearly that they were swimming in a sea of grace! A sense of freedom, born of trust, took up residence in their hearts. They realized intuitively that relying solely on their wits would not be enough for the life that Christ was calling them to live.

To be a witness of love and grace would mean to live a life trusting in that love and grace. This was the disciples’ own transfiguration moment in which they saw their inheritance as children of Love—good, whole, and beautifully made spiritual beings having a human experience.

Transfiguration is different than transformation. Transfiguration is a coming into awareness that we are divine beings incarnated in the world. The light and love of God shine brightly in each one of us if we choose to consent to being an instrument of that love in the world. Read Matthew 17:1-11 to see how Jesus invites us to claim our own transfiguration. From that moment, we see in the Book of Acts the unfolding story of how the disciples’ life practice became listening deeply to holy desire. And as it turned out, this was more than enough.

But that was then. Fast forward 2,100 years or so, and we wonder, Could it be that simple, or was that merely a story that helped the disciples make sense of their world? After all, this happened centuries before the age of reason and the scientific revolution. The disciples lived in a mythical-literal, three-tiered universe of heaven in the sky, the earthly plane on the land, and hell below the ground. Life for them was filled with magical signs from those realms.

In our technical worldview, the telling of events like this makes for a good story, but we may question the validity of the details. Even in the 18th century, John Wesley, the father of Methodism, struggled with the same question, that is, until his heart was strangely warmed during a Bible study on Aldersgate Street in London. He wrote in his journal that it was at that moment that he felt the unconditional love of God. He, too, moved from a sense of fear into freedom, and the Methodist movement was born.

We may not experience the same drama of Pentecost as we find in Acts 2; but if we listen to the stories of our own lives, we too can see glimpses of divine mystery breaking into our lives. We might chalk it up to a serendipitous moment or an unexplainable coincidence; but viewed through the lens of faith, we realize that it is amazing grace continually reminding us how thin the membrane is between our world and the kingdom of God.

Look into the eyes of a loved one, touch the fingers of a newborn baby, sit at the bedside of someone taking his or her last breath––these are the experiences of the vast depth of abiding Love. If we are honest with ourselves, it is these holy moments that we long for in our lives, moments in which we feel deeply connected to one another and to loved ones who have gone before us. Amidst the hum of our daily lives, we yearn for these moments that bring a sense of meaning and purpose to our lives.

GROWING OUR CAPACITY TO DISCERN

This is what discernment is all about: the capacity to see more clearly and touch the depth of our holy existence here on earth. Yes, I desire to desire what God desires, for God is love, and I desire to embody that love as I seek to know more fully what it means to be love, to be loving, and to be loved. When I am aligned with that desire, I am open to letting love have its way in my life.

This is what happened to the disciples on that day of Pentecost. It was as if blinders were taken off their eyes and they were able to see through the eyes of compassion. Step by step, they grew in their capacity to listen to and to watch for the Holy Spirit inviting them to participate in bringing about wholeness and healing among everyone they encountered.

If we listen to the longing of our souls, we embark on a never-ending journey of transformation or, as John Wesley would say, a striving for perfection that ends on this earthly plane as we take our last breath. Perfection for Wesley was love filling the heart, taking up the whole capacity of the soul. It is love rejoicing ever more, praying without ceasing, and in everything giving thanks.¹ It is a process of waking up to life so that we can drink deeply of every second in gratitude for all of it. This takes daily courage to face the realities of our lives––the pain as well as the joy, the heartache as well as the hope.

It requires us to let life have its way with us, as Rumi so aptly writes in his poem entitled "The