The Key to Discernment

Dannah Gresh: Do you delight in God’s Word? Here’s Melissa Kruger. 

Melissa Kruger: It’s not enough just to put a bank in your head of Scripture. We actually need to love God’s Word. We need to believe that in His pathways are the way of life. That’s going to help us be discerning women, because we’re hungry to know it more. We want to live in it, and that always involves obeying it. We will learn more about the truth of God when we actually obey what it says. We will understand differently what it means when we actually obey it and we build our lives on it.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast for January 24, 2023. I’m Dannah Gresh with our host, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, co-author of Seeking Him. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: In today’s culture when it comes to making decisions, we hear popular messaging such as, “Trust your heart,” or “Just believe!” But as Melissa Kruger shared yesterday on this program, left to ourselves, our hearts are sinful and deceitful. So we can trust our heart or just believe whatever! If you missed yesterday’s episode, you’ll want to go back and listen on ReviveOurHearts.com, or find it on the Revive Our Hearts app.

 We’ve been talking about how to become women of discernment, and one thing is certain: discernment isn’t something we can simply muster up on our own. It's not something we'll stumble upon ourselves. Discernment comes from God—He is the source. So with that in mind, what does it look like to be discerning from a practical perspective? Melissa Kruger explains in the second part of a message she shared at a recent True Woman conference. Here's Melissa.

Melissa: How do we become women of discernment? The first thing we need to know is: what is discernment? We need to make sure we know what we’re after.

First, what we need to know is that the source of our discernment is not ourselves and it is not others—the source is God. Here’s what I think is really interesting. If you’re still in Proverbs 9, we looked at the first section and we had Lady Wisdom. We looked at the second section, which had Lady Folly. And look what is smack dab in-between the two. Turn to verse 10. You want to know how to discern between folly and wisdom? You want to know how to choose between life and death? “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” You see that? Right in the middle of the passage, it says, “This is the answer.”

I want to clarify here, the source is not our experience, our age, or our understanding. Discernment is rooted in God’s wisdom, not our experiences. Let me say this: there are a lot of old women with terrible advice. Okay? Just because we are older, if we are not rooted in God’s Word, it’s just worldly wisdom. It’s just worldly wisdom. We have to guard our minds and put everything that’s told to us against the truth of Scripture and make sure that is what is guiding and what is leading us in everything.

It’s also something that Paul prayed for. This is really interesting. He prayed for the Philippians. Listen to what he said. This is Philippians 1:9:

It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

Listen to what he wants. He wants their love for God to be rooted in knowledge and all discernment. He doesn’t want their love just to be some affectionate feeling. It’s not that that’s a bad thing, but he wants their love to be rock solid, rooted in knowledge of who God is and with discernment of what He wants from His people. So the source is God, and it’s rooted in love.

The second thing for us to make sure we understand about discernment is that it is a skill that is developed. This is good news. Discernment does not just descend upon you when you come to Christ. It is something that we actually learn as we go through our lives. Discernment actually takes a lot of practice. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever had the exciting moment when you get in the car with a new driver who has just taken driver’s ed, and they think they know a lot. They have learned all the rules of the road, and they have watched those awful videos of what happens when you do bad things driving and they can tell you all sorts of facts about how fast you should drive, and they do start telling you, “Mom, you did not come to a full stop.” “Yes, thank you. I know that is the exact rule. I did not come to a full stop.” They have lots of rules.

But you get in that car with them and they start driving, and you’re like, “You were way too close to that white line. Why are you—you’re going to hit that car! No, it’s a yellow; keep going. Oh no, it’s yellow; stop!” What you realize is that all of our years of driving give us a lot of discernment. You kind of know just how you should move to park. You know when it is a yellow you should drive through or when it is a yellow you should stop on. That’s really hard to explain to a fifteen-year-old. It just takes practice.

The reality for us is that discernment in life takes practice, and we really do get better at it as we live life.

Hebrews talks about this. This is Hebrews 5:11. Here’s what he says.

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you still need someone to teach you the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the words of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Okay, this is someone who has moved on from milk. They’re not just drinking the milk of the Word, they’re eating the solid food of God’s Word, and then they’re constantly putting it into practice. They are working, and they are learning.

I don’t know if any of you like to cook. I can remember when I first started to cook, I always followed the recipe exactly. I’m not talking about baking; you should follow the recipe exactly in baking or you’ll have a lot of cake fails. I’m talking about when you’re cooking a sauce, and I’d be like, “Okay, it says a quarter of an onion.” I’d look at the onion and I’m like, “Well, that’s a big onion, that’s a small onion. Which quarter am I taking?” You’re trying to follow it so exactly.

All of a sudden you start to realize, “I can actually suit it to my taste. I can add a little oregano, some more garlic.” My husband would be like, “Oh, you’re going to add the garlic again, aren’t you.” Yes, this is going to be a lot of garlic and a lot of spice. I grow my own jalapenos; it’s always going to be hot. But I’ve learned through discernment what I like, and I’ve learned how to make that sauce taste like what I want it to taste. But I needed the recipes to help me know, “Oh, this is actually what goes into spaghetti sauce.” Then you start to play around with it.

That’s the reality—the Word is going to give you the basics. “Be loving, be kind, be gentle, be self-controlled.” It’s not always going to tell you what kindness might look like today. Kindness might mean you talk kindly to the lady in the line behind you at the grocery store. Kindness might mean you go volunteer somewhere. Kindness might mean you call your mom. You don’t know what kindness will look like. That’s going to be a discernment that the Lord’s going to teach you through practice, and it takes knowledge and it takes skill both coming together to have discernment.

Let’s get to a definition, because I’m halfway through this talk and we haven’t even had a definition yet. Tim Challies gives this definition: “Discernment is the skill of understanding and applying God’s Word with the purpose of separating truth from error and right from wrong.” I’ll say that again. “Discernment is the skill of understanding and applying God’s Word with the purpose of separating truth from error and right from wrong.” I have simplified that, and here’s what I like to say: “Discernment is wisdom making a choice.” Discernment is wisdom making a choice.

If you think about the Bible, especially Proverbs, Proverbs tell you this: “Reckless words pierce like a sword.” It also says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” So, how do you know if the words you just gave were reckless words that pierce like a sword, or maybe they were wounds of a friend? Discernment is slowly going to start teaching you that, and you’re going to know, “My heart—that was meant to be a reckless word that pierced like a sword. I was going for it.” Or you’re going to know, “No, that may have felt unloving to that person, but that was the kindest thing I could have told them.” You will start to know the difference the longer you live. “What am I doing with my words? Were they really kind, or were they actually really not very courageous at all?” You’ll start to know the difference as you interact with God’s Word and wisdom makes a choice.

Then the question—we looked at why we need it, we’ve looked at what the definition (wisdom making a choice) is, and now we have to ask—how do we get it? This is really important.

One of my best friends, Angela, when she first graduated from college, she actually went to work as a teller at the local bank down the road. While she was working there, they had to learn how to spot counterfeit money. She said for the very first month that they trained, the only thing they were allowed to do was look and study real money. They constantly looked at money and they taught them, “a dollar’s going to have this marking, and it’s going to have this watermark.” They taught them all these things about real money. Then slowly, after a month, they started slipping in counterfeit dollars. She said, “Immediately you could spot it.” They had looked at what was true money so much that when false money slipped in she immediately knew it.

She said, “They don’t teach you to look at counterfeit money because there are infinite ways you can be counterfeit. They teach you what is true so you will be able to see what is false.”

As women, if we want to be discerning women, there is one pathway. We have to soak, we have to bathe, we have to abide our lives in God’s Word. We have to search it as though it is treasure and eat it like it is honey. It has to be in our hearts every single day.

Two weeks ago I was in Indonesia with my husband, and we went to an island called Papua. This island is remote. There are 270 languages spoken in Papua; only six of them have a full Bible in their own language—six.

I watched a video of the exact place we went. We had to be flown in and land on grassy strips or water to get to one place. I saw the video of this one tribe receiving the Word for the first time, and if you could have seen the joy . . . it was just hands up, praising, “We have the Word! We are not lost any longer. We can study it for ourselves.”

I thought, I have an ESV, a CSB, an NIV, an NASB, all sitting on my shelf. Do I ever just say, “Thank You, Jesus, that I have Your Word!” or do I kind of sluggishly come to it: “God’s pretty lucky to have me on His team! Here I am reading it again.”

The God of all the universe spoke! He has spoken, and we do not listen! We do not listen.

The Barna study says that people in our country who read, use, or listen to the Bible four times a week or more is under twenty percent. This is in our country, where we have Bibles everywhere. We have no excuse, and we are Bible illiterate. We do not know the Word, so we cannot see what is counterfeit truth. We have to change our world. This means becoming women who believe in the power of the Word.

If our children spent as much time in the Bible as they do at baseball practice, think what they would know! But we are a culture that is chasing fame and money and scholarship, and we are saying, “Oh, no, we don’t love those things. We love Jesus.” You know what Kings tells us? It says that while the people of God were worshiping the Lord they were serving their idols, and their children and their grandchildren did the same exact thing. We are a culture who is worshiping the Lord and serving our idols, and we have biblically illiterate children to show for it. Then we wonder when they get to be teenagers and they are like, “I don’t know if I believe what the Bible says.” They don’t know what it says! We have to be women of the Word who pass it on to the next generation and to the next generation and to the next generation. We will not fail to tell them the deeds of the Lord, and we have no excuse. We have the time, we have the Bible, and we need to pass it on to the next generation. We need to know God’s Word.

Let me say (I was telling some women this earlier today), I used to be a math teacher. I love math; I’m actually way more comfortable teaching the quadratic formula than I am teaching about discernment. But I don’t think you are really here to learn that negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4ac—I don’t think you want to hear that!

However, one thing I learned when I taught math was I could teach it and their eyes were like, “Yes, I’ve got it.” And you know what? Then I give them some homework, and they don’t have it. They don’t have it. But we sit in church and we’re like, “Yes, I have it. I have it.” Then the homework assignment is called your life, and it comes, and you’re like, “No, I don’t have it! I don’t have it.”

Okay, so we need to be women who, yes, we’re listening in church, but we’re studying the Bible on our own. We’re studying the Bible on our own, because you know what? To be quite honest, we want to trust our pastor, but we have to make sure he’s saying the right thing, too. We have to be women who know their God, who display strength, and take action. We have to know what the Word says so we make sure we’re hearing the right things. 

We have to know it, we need to study it on our own, we need to study it with other people, and we need to teach it to others. Let me say this: when I really wanted to know if a kid understood a math concept, I’d bring him up to the front of the room and I’d be like, “Teach it to everybody else.” That’s the moment that child really starts to learn, because when you teach to someone else is when you learn it.

This is why Colossians says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom” (3:16). That’s not talking to the pastor. I need to be teaching you and you need to be teaching me, because I actually start learning when I start teaching. I will probably learn more from this talk than any of you, because I’m the one teaching it. That’s why we need to be teaching. You don’t have to teach in front of people, but you can teach your neighbor about Jesus. You can teach the child down the street about Jesus. You can teach anyone in your life about Jesus, because if you know Him you have eternal truths to give someone else.

First, we need to know God’s Word, and then we need to delight in God’s Word. You know, it’s not enough just to put a bank in your head of Scripture. We actually need to love God’s Word. We need to believe that in His pathways are the way of life. That’s going to help us be discerning women, because we’re hungry to know it more. We want to live in it, and that always involves obeying it. We will learn more about the truth of God when we actually obey what it says. We will understand differently what it means when we actually obey it and we build our lives on it.

First, we need to know God’s Word, we need to delight in God’s Word. We need to actually pray for discernment. James tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all, and it will be given to him.” So pray! Ask God to show you the way.

Fourthly, we don’t get discernment alone. We do get discernment in community with others. So ask people in your life, ask wise people in your life for help when you are making decisions. Proverbs tells us, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm” (Prov. 13:20). There are a lot of verses about seeking wise counsel.

Let me say this, because discernment is not the avoidance of the world; it is the ability to go into the world and embrace good while avoiding the bad. We have to be in the world but not of it. We have to actually be people who don’t just segregate ourselves from all the bad things. That’s not actually discernment; that’s just separation. We have to be people who can go out into that marketplace, where Wisdom’s calling out and Folly’s calling out, and we can say, “The fear of the Lord is in me. I am going to follow wisdom.” We have to be there, because other people are going to be watching the choices we’re making, and they need to see what discernment looks like, lived out.

Lastly, what are the results of discernment? When I was that twenty-one-year-old and I gave the ring back that night in college, part of my fear, part of my deep desire for discernment, was I wanted a promise that if I married this person everything would go okay. Discernment is not a promise that everything will go okay. Jesus discerned that He had come to bear the sins of the world. He knew exactly what God was calling Him to. Discernment does not equal an easy life; it does equal a life that is lived, not death. We know that folly only leads to death.

But it doesn’t mean easy. The Bible never promises easy. We make up promises to ourselves that the Bible does not promise us, all the time. I do it. I’m like, “Oh, yes.” You read the Bible and you’re like, “Oh, yes, He keeps talking about suffering and hard things and carrying your cross. Oh yes, that’s what He said!”

Discernment might show us to choose really hard paths. It might not be what is easy, but it might be what is wise. I have a daughter right now who is thinking about going on the mission field. It’s not easy. She’s going to leave a lot of comfort. She’s like, “But Mom, I want to go!” I’m like, “Praise the Lord.” That’s a discerning woman, who can choose what is hard because she knows heaven rules. She knows there are people who will spend an eternity separated from God if they do not have someone come tell them the good news. So discernment might lead us to really hard things and really radical choices, and that is the wisest way to live. That is not foolish; that is wisdom.

Discernment—the passage we read earlier, when Paul prayed for them, it said that discernment will allow them to approve what is excellent. Here’s the thing. When you start to be a woman who is soaked in God’s Word, you’ll just start to smell that things are off. What I don’t want, especially if you’re a women's ministry leader, one of the worst things you can think is, “I need to read every Christian book so I can tell my women which ones not to read.” You need to keep putting the Word of God before them. Keep showing them truth, keep showing them truth, keep showing them truth. Then, when that counterfeit comes, they’re going to be like, “That is not right!” They are going to smell that it’s off. They’re going to know it’s bad.

There was a firefighter I read about—I love Reader’s Digest. I’m a mess. I really do love Reader’s Digest, and this was in Reader’s Digest. He was going to fight a fire, and immediately he got in there and he told his whole team, “Get out now.” As soon as they did, the whole floor fell in. He had fought so many fires, he just knew something was off.

We want to be women—raising women and teaching other women in our communities not every bad thing—we want to teach them every good thing so that they can know when there are bad things around. That’s what we want. We want strong women who can discern for themselves truth from error, fact from fiction. That’s what we’re hoping to do.

The second thing this passage tells us: so that we are “pure and blameless, filled with the fruit of righteousness.” Our goal for discernment is not an easy life, it is a life that looks like Jesus. We want to live a life that shows to the watching world we are being transformed day by day into the image of Jesus, so that we walk out into a world that is desperate and lonely and needy and we speak, “There is something better that has come, and there is a new kingdom. Come be a part of it.” He will make our lives shine to the watching world. We will be made pure and blameless, filled with righteousness, to the glory and praise of God.

The goal of discernment is not that we get the life of our dreams; the goal of discernment is that we glorify God with our lives. That’s the goal, that’s the path of life. That’s the way we really live. We live in His courts, we run in the path of His commands, because He set our hearts free! That’s life! That’s what we’re seeking to discern. We’re not discerning what’s the easiest, best life for me, we’re discerning, “What’s the best life to glorify God?” That’s our hope in all of this.

We know that God is the source of our discernment, God’s Word is the means of our discernment, and God’s glory is the goal of our discernment. I’ll say that again. God is the source (“the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”), God’s Word is the means by which we become women who are discerning, and God’s glory is the goal.

At the beginning of this talk I told you about the guy I gave the ring back to. You may wonder what happened to him. He has been married for twenty-five years; he has three great kids; he’s the president of RTS; his name is Mike, and he is my husband. (laughter) The good news about discernment and the good news about the fact that heaven rules is that the Lord will get us where He wants to get us. I thought I had a decision that rested on me, but God showed me, “I’m going to get you where you need to go.” Just like He led the Israelites by the Red Sea to get to the Promised Land, even though it was the most circuitous route and it didn’t make any sense, He had something to prove, and it was His glory. You know, I don’t know all the reasons why God led me on the path—and please, if you are trying to decide whether to marry, I cannot tell you if you should marry the person. I get all these questions. “Do you think I should marry . . .” Talk to someone in your local community who knows you. That’s what I always say. With discernment, you should talk to someone who really knows you and the person.

But the Lord led me on a path, and this is the thing about discernment: A “no” one day might become a “yes” another day. A “no” in one season might be a “yes” in another season. That’s the beauty of discernment. The hope of discernment is not that we know how it will turn out, but we know who will be there. Because heaven rules, we can open our hearts and say, “I do not know what to do, but my eyes are on You. I will go where You lead, and I will follow. I will say "yes" to Your commands, and I will run in Your ways. I may not know where that will lead, but I trust You, Lord.”

The Lord had to do work in my heart for me to believe I could say "yes" to marriage, not because I knew it would be easy but because God would be there no matter what happened. I’m thankful I said "yes." I’m super thankful; I almost tear up talking about it. So that’s the goal of our discernment. God’s the source, the Word is the means, and His glory is our goal. Let’s be women who pray. Let’s pray.

Nancy: I love that—God is the source of our discernment. The Word is the means, and His glory is our goal. Melissa Kruger has been speaking about how to be women of discernment. She’ll be back in a moment to pray. 

Melissa stressed that to be discerning, we have to be women of the Word. Are we soaking in Scripture? Do we know what it says? Do we delight in it? The more familiar we are with Scripture, the more we know and love God, and the more we’ll be filled with discernment that comes from Him. 

I want to tell you about the latest resource from Revive Our Hearts called the Savor and Share Scripture Card Set. We want to help you do exactly that—savor the truth, and then share it with those around you. 

Dannah: That’s right, Nancy. Each card has a unique Scripture verse on it to help you stay your mind on the truth. You can carry them with you or put them up in places you’ll see them around your house. They’re a great tool for getting you into God’s Word, and getting His Word into you. You can even share one with a friend, or gift them an entire set. They are enclosed in a fold-tab box, so it's erfect for on-the-go travel or as a gift. 

You can request your Scripture card set when you make a donation of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. Just visit our website, ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. 

When you’re busy, it can be difficult to find time to spend with God. Moms of little ones know this well. But there are opportunities for worship even in the midst of the dishes, diapers, and dirty clothes piling up. Join us tomorrow as some godly moms share ideas and strategies for spending time with the Lord in the midst of daily responsibilities.

Before we close today, Melissa Kruger is back to pray. 

Melissa: Father, we desperately need Your Word. We need a deeper fear of You. We need a belief that Your Word is life and joy and radiance. Lord, convict us to be women of the Word. Let us tell the next generation the goodness of the things that You have in store for those who love You. Let us be women who know Your Word, let us be women who delight in Your Word, let us be women who obey Your Word. Let it ooze from us in such a way that the watching world wants to know about the hope that we have.

Lord, we pray that You would make us discerning women so that we live lives that glorify and honor You in all we do. Lord, we thank You for Jesus. We thank You that He came to this earth and lived and died so that we might be able to walk anew with You. Thank You for answering all of our fears with the promise, “I will be with you.” Thank You, Jesus. It’s in Your name we pray, amen.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is helping you experience freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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