The Discerning Spirit

By Tim Bossenbroek

When I accepted my call to my current church 22 years ago, I had to turn down another call. I believe that both search committees truly sought to listen to the Holy Spirit in discerning whether or not to call me. I believe that they both felt led by the Spirit to do so. We often think that God has one specific plan laid out for us and that the job of discerning his will for our lives means figuring out what that plan is. But that is a very pagan idea. It leaves our own responsibility out of the equation. 

When my wife, Roxann, and I discerned which call to take, we did feel led to accept the one call rather than the other. But in no way did we feel like we would have been unfaithful to God or to his “plan for our lives” if I had accepted the other call. It seemed to us that God gave us a choice. We could have been faithful in choosing either option. While God may have a plan for our lives, I believe that plan is mainly a plan for us to be formed and shaped into the image of Christ. There may be many paths by which we can follow that plan. God can work with us without overriding our free wills or our need to be responsible. What I reject is that God has a secret plan for our lives which he tasks us with figuring out, as if this plan were a means to test us. Rather, God reveals in Jeremiah 29 that he has a plan for God’s people in order to comfort them and encourage their trust in his goodness and fidelity, in order to give them “hope and a future.” 

At a recent retreat at which we discussed the contemplative spiritual disciplines, the topic of discernment came up. Specifically, as we seek to listen for and to God, how do we know if what we are “hearing” comes from the Holy Spirit? In her book, Sacred Rhythms, Ruth Haley Barton lays out several questions that can help us bring clarity to our process of discernment: How does a choice fit with the general calling of our lives? Does the choice bring us into a closer relationship with God? What are we hearing when we read Scripture? Does it conform to the life of Christ and the fruit of the Spirit? Does it conform with what is eternal rather than what is passing? And, finally, do others who know you well confirm your choice? 

While all of these questions are helpful for the process of discernment, in this essay I explore how scripture emphasizes that the Spirit always works to conform our lives to Christ and produces in us the fruit of the Spirit. To that end let us consider four biblical passages that speak of the Spirit’s work in our lives. 

In Ephesians 3:14 ff., Paul prays that God would strengthen the church with the power of the Spirit. The result of this power is the knowledge of God’s love – it’s height and depth and breadth. The knowledge of this love comes from Christ dwelling in our hearts and being filled with the fulness of God. It is the God who is love who is filing our being. The knowledge of this love therefore has two dimensions: it is to know God’s love for us, but also God’s love for others and the whole creation. 

David Benner argues that all spiritual transformation begins with the knowledge of God’s love for us (see Surrender to Love).  In Invitation to a Journey, Robert Mulholland teaches that the end of spiritual formation is that we be transformed into the image of Christ for the sake of others. In seeking to discern God’s will, we must look for the signs of God’s love in whatever choice or option we are considering. Does this option confirm God’s deep, deep love for me or us? Does it demonstrate the eternal love of the Father for others and the creation? Does it move us and enable us to demonstrate God’s love for others? If the option you are considering does not conform to the love of God, it is not from the Spirit of God. 

Second, Paul also speaks of the Spirit in Philippians 2:1-11. Paul prays that if the church has “any common sharing in the Spirit” that it would “make my joy complete” by being united in purpose and in spirit. The church unites in purpose and spirit through the humility that comes by sharing in the Spirit. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of others.” In other words, Paul says that a sharing in the Spirit leads us as individuals and as a community to have the same humble mindset of Christ. We are, as Jesus himself says in the Gospels, to die to ourselves for the sake of others and the gospel. 

The Spirit of Christ will always lead us through paths of humility. All boasting about being led by the Spirit or forcing your perspective on others by saying, “The Spirit told me such and such, so it must be so,” is suspect behavior. The Spirit will always produce in us a spirit of humility that demonstrates a greater concern for others than ourselves and an openness to the perspectives of others rather than an insistence on our own perspective and interests. If you think you have heard from the Spirit, but it doesn’t lead you to have a humble stance and demeanor, you have not heard from the Spirit. 

Paul fleshes out these two virtues of humility and love when he describes the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” While love is obviously the chief virtue which displays itself in and through all these other virtues, humility is the midwife of the virtues. It births the other virtues and brings them to bear. One needs humility to show patience and kindness and goodness in difficult times or in difficult relationships. It takes humility to be constantly true to others (faithfulness). It enables you to put aside your agenda and desires for the sake of others rather than forcing yourself on others (gentleness). It directs you to follow God’s will rather than your own (self-control). Humility also enables us to trust in the love and faithfulness of God which helps us develop a deep-seated contentment in all situations (joy) and the hope that all will be all (peace). Unless the option you are discerning leads you to grow in the fruit of the Spirit, you have not heard from the Spirit.  

In short, the work of the Spirit in us as we discern God’s will leads us into Christ-likeness. While John 1:17 does not mention the Spirit, it does describe the image of God that Jesus revealed in the flesh, the image that is the goal of our own spiritual transformation. “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” We often hear these words juxtaposed against one another. As in, “Jesus demonstrated God’s love and mercy, but he demanded that we know, believe and follow the truth.” Perhaps this reflects a Lutheran division between Law and Gospel. But John himself already juxtaposes grace and truth against the Law. Rather than posing two opposing characteristics, John refers to the Hebrew word pair hesed and emet, loving-kindness and faithfulness.  In the Hebrew scriptures this is a word pair that often describes the most fundamental character of God. As a word pair, love and faithfulness do not stand over against one another, rather, they mutually interpret one another. God’s love, kindness, and mercy are demonstrated by his faithfulness, by his refusal to give up on Israel. Likewise, God’s faithfulness is an enactment of God’s love for his people. Over and over again God forgives his people and welcomes them back into his embrace. Jesus embodies the very character of God as revealed in the Hebrew scriptures. God was faithful to us and the cosmos through Jesus who enacted God’s love by taking up his cross. 

If the Spirit is at work in our discernment, we will be led to embody this same grace and truth, this love and faithfulness, as we follow God’s will. When grace and truth are juxtaposed against one another, they easily find champions on the different sides of various church debates. The “progressives” chant, “All you need is love.” The conservatives reply, “Only the truth will set us free.” When we take this word pair together and allow them to interpret each other, then both sides must modify their rallying cries. Truth modified by love means that truth is not merely an objective proposition we must follow, or a law we must obey. It certainly includes those things, but truth is better understood as “being true,” or “troth,” or, as so often in the Hebrew, “faithfulness.” Truth must be embodied and lived out. It must demonstrate a love that leads to the fullness of life for self and others for Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  

Love modified by truth means that love is not simply warm feelings towards others or rubber stamping what I myself or others choose to say or do. It is not blanket approval and acceptance of our desires. While we must have compassion for all and love ourselves and others even when we make bad and even evil choices, love desires truth, troth, and faithfulness to the ways of God. Love knows that God’s ways are the ways that are best for us. 

At the retreat in which we were discussing how one discerns the movement of the Spirit in one’s life, we spent a couple of times as a group praying together. In one of those times, we prayed specifically for the upcoming meeting of Synod. I began ruminating on that same word pair – grace and truth, love and faithfulness, hesed and emet, and I began to pray for them just as someone else began to pray. I stopped and let the other person pray, a person who has a very different view on these issues than me. I listened. Amazed. He prayed for the delegates to be filled with God’s hesed and emet. He prayed the very prayer I had been praying in my heart and had begun to share with the group. Later on, I told him about this experience. He expressed his frustration that God doesn’t simply spell things out for us and make it all crystal clear what is right and which side is truly following him. I wish I had been quick enough to think of it then, but upon reflection I have come to wonder if God has a bigger purpose in mind than us getting things “right.” If he simply made everything clear, we would not have to open ourselves up to the guidance of the Spirit. We would not have to wrestle with the scriptures. We would not have to listen to one another. In short, we would not have to go through the discernment process that teaches us to be humble, loving, gracious and leads us into faithfulness. In the end truth is a way of being more than a conformity to an abstract proposition or law. 

In the Gospel of John, Jesus assures his disciples that, although he must depart from them, he will not abandon them, but will leave them with the Spirit of truth, who will “guide you into all truth” (16:13). Jesus also prays that all those who will believe in him may be united as one as he and the Father are one. It is tempting in our modern world in which we are so influenced by a modernist epistemology that centers rationality to understand “truth” as right doctrine or clearly defined rules and laws. But Jesus also prays that God would sanctify his followers by the truth (17:17). He then prays, “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.” Sanctification (or our transformation into the image of Christ for the sake of others) happens not by knowing certain things intellectually, or getting laws and rules right, but by living out how we are sent into the world as Jesus was, as an embodiment of God’s love and faithfulness. 

As Synod meets and as local congregations and classes continue to discuss issues regarding human sexuality, I wonder what kind of unity Jesus would like to see in the church and what kind of unity the Spirit might lead us toward. It might just be the case that various individuals and congregations will be led by the Spirit into greater and greater loving kindness and faithfulness, into a deeper and deeper expressions of the fruit of the Spirit, and into greater humility, while yet arriving at different conclusions about how to love, embrace and disciple people with regard to their sexuality.