Quotes About Discernment

If we need to press creases in reality to make sense of the world around us - turn grey into black and white - then how, precisely, do we know where to run our irons?

Take a moment to reflect on your life. Has God ever said 'no' to something you wanted? Are you able to see wisdom in that 'no' today? If God says 'no', you can be confident that there are times when you need to say 'no' too.

there's a certain wisdom in being skeptical. But we need to hold our skepticism lightly, with a willingness to explore before dismissing outright

False brethren don't show up at your church to be helped, they come to devour the flock. They are wolves. Wolves like to feed on lambs. You don't negotiate with a wolf. You don't counsel a wolf. You don't pray with a wolf. Read this carefully, the only thing you can do with a wolf is take them out, drive them out, and drive them away from your flock! This is what the leadership at Ephesus did, and Jesus commended them for it.

Your principle should be to see everything and say nothing. The world changes so rapidly that if you want to get on you cannot afford to align yourself with any person or point of view. Even if you feel strongly about something, learn to keep silent.

I was ever mindful not to allow open-mindedness to become gullibility nor to allow skepticism to become cynicism.

the God I love and serve hears all prayers. He answers all prayers. Sometimes it is yes. Sometimes it is wait awhile. Sometimes it is no. He knows best.

Being alone had one advantage: undisturbed time. She used it to read her Bible and study and pray. And think. In some ways, asking Jesus into her heart had been the easy part. Now she wanted to discern how His presence should affect her daily life.

Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see -- to see correctly -- and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye.

Judgment is more than skill. It sets forth on intellectual seas beyond the shores of hard indisputable factual information.

The problems come when it's time to put our faith in things other than the Lord. There's no doubt that other people can be tricky. But once again, it's all about listening to your heart. That don't mean you should ignore what your head's telling you. But your heart will do a much better job of helping you figure out who's good and who ain't. Who deserves your faith, and who doesn't. If you judge solely by evidence, you could wind up making some big mistakes.

The intelligent poor individual was a much finer observer than the intelligent rich one. The poor individual looks around him at every step, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people he meets; thus, every step he takes presents a problem, a task, for his thoughts and feelings. He is alert and sensitive, he is experienced, his soul has been burned...

He doesn't look like the type who's into cookies anyway.

Fear clouds our convictions and distorts our discernment. When we fill our minds with negative predictions or allow our thoughts to manipulate us into thinking about all the possible destructive outcomes of our mission, we invite fear to paralyze our progress.

Jack Taylor put it this way: "an idol is something you have to check with before you say yes to God".

Fear clouds our convictions and distorts our discernment.

The Holy Spirit is really good at revealing the root issues at the foundation of demonic strongholds.

The gift of discernment simply gives you the ability to distinguish what spirit or spirits are at work in a person or an environment.

Our eyes and ears are two of the main gateways to our souls. It is vital that we steward what we hear and see so that seeds of deception do not get planted in the soil of our souls.

Cautionary Moral: Don't let your heart overrule your head.

Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and the junk food as far away as possble.

there are "near enemies" to every great virtue—reactions that come from a place of care in us, and which feel right and good, but which subtly take us down an ineffectual path.

An idea handed to me in the earliest years of my life of conversation comes back with new resonance—the idea of a kinship between the spirituality of the scientist and the spirituality of the mystic: a constant endeavor to discern truth while staying open to everything you do not yet, cannot yet, know.

It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.