To See Clearly

Psalm 119:121-128

Verse 125  I am Your servant; give me discernment that I may understand Your statutes.

    We talked yesterday about how important single focus is to an abiding life.  Discernment is an important teammate of focus.  It helps us know when our focus is getting out of sync with the Word.

    Reading the Bible is of great importance in our lives and it aids us in discerning truth from almost truth.  This is a bigger problem in Christian circles than we may think.  There are many folks out there that, while being quite sincere, are misleading people in the Church by interpreting Scripture in ways that fit the wisdom of the world.  They try to make the Bible be politically correct and it isn’t.  The truth is that the Gospel is offensive.

    Our society says that it is unloving to offend someone, but Paul says in the famous love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13 that love always tells the truth.  Of course, this truth must be relayed lovingly, but the truth is not to be left out to keep someone happy.

    This is one place discernment comes into play in our abiding.  Abiding in Christ means we are learning the truth from Him.  The Holy Spirit will give us wisdom as we read the Word.  When we want the truth of the Word and the meaning behind the words, we need to ask His guidance because He is wanting to help us discern the truth.

    The Psalmist knew that being God’s servant requires obedience and obedience requires knowing what to obey.  His prayer in our key verse is asking for discernment so he knows exactly what the Word means so he can obey it fully.  If we are to truly make Christ the Lord of our lives, we must know His ways.  We need to learn to discern what He is saying from what the world is saying.  We need to be single-minded about wanting to know what God is trying to teach us.  We should be praying as the psalmist did that God would give us the discernment to obey His commands.

Making It Personal

    What is something you believed about God or the Bible and then found was not truth?  What was the last truth you learned from the Bible?  Is discernment something you want in your life?

Making It Personal Kids

    What do you think discernment means?  Is it hard to know what is truth and what is pretending to be truth?  Did you know Jesus wants to help you know the difference, you just have to ask Him?

Closing Prayer

    Father, thank You for caring so much about truth that You want us to know about it too.  The world is full of thoughts that try to imitate truth, give us discernment to know what full truth is.  In Jesus’ name, amen.