Discerning what is best - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing,
majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of
him and what came to my mind and heart in Philippians 1:9-11,

"And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in
knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern
what is best and may 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."

Discerning what is best is connected directly with abounding in love
with the resulting "knowledge and depth of insight" it brings. It is
within the confines of this knowledge and depth of insight that we are
enabled to discern what is best. Paul goes on to point to the purity,
blamelessness, the fruit of righteousness that is spawned by
discerning what is best. And, most importantly, his observation is
that the outworking of all this has a unique and magnificent aspect:
it all comes through Jesus Christ and results in the glory and praise
of God. Sounds important to me!

We often assign importance to what is best, even the little things in
life. Not everything is. We will all make choices today based on our
concept of what is best. It is best I go to work today, and not play
hooky to go fishing. It is best I finish this before starting on that.
I think I will go to this restaurant tonight because they have the
best Italian cuisine.

There are, however, those bigger things that have tremendous impact on
how we might consider if ours was a life well-lived when it comes to
an end. As all people do, we have our own free will to determine those
things we invest our lives in. If we live 60, 70 or 80 years, those
years will be spent doing certain things and not others. What is best?

This is exactly the point. It is only within the bounds of the love
the Holy Spirit brings that we will be enabled to ultimately discern
what is best. We can't make wise choices without an ability to discern
what is best and our best first choice is to participate in the
reservoir of love the Lord makes available to us. I am reminded of
Paul's words in Romans 5:5, "Hope does not put us to shame, because
God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit, who has been given to us."

Anything we can do to cultivate this love in our lives will reap rich
rewards for us. We all know of poor choices people make. We all know
too well of the poor choices we ourselves have made. As I think over
the years of my life, I can't help but think if I had been able to
discern what was best at crucial times, my life might have been better
lived. The wonderful thing is that regardless of what choices I have
made in the past, given where I am at today, if I abound in love I
will be enabled to discern what is best and I can make those choices
that will ultimately bring glory and praise to God.

We all have that ability given us in Jesus Christ. Pretty exciting, isn't it?!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share
what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to
hear from you!

Trevor Fisk
trevor.fisk@gmail.com