The Wheat From the Chaff

Many of us have no value for discernment. We have judgment down, whether we admit to it or not, but we resist the opportunity to discern. Discern means to perceive or recognize (something) or to distinguish (someone or something) with difficulty by sight or with the other senses. The act of discernment is defined as the ability to judge well or (in Christian contexts) perception in the absence of judgment with a view to obtaining spiritual direction and understanding,

I believe there is a grittiness to discernment that we miss. In Matthew chapter 3, John the Baptist confronts the religious leaders of his day when they come to be baptized in anticipation of the arrival of Jesus. In response to their fear, for that is how he perceived it as they had been abusing their power over the people, he told them that the master was coming, and that he was going to the threshing room floor to remove the wheat from the chaff. To remove that which is worth something and worth preserving, keeping or growing, from that which hinders those very things.

I believe there are very important things we can learn from the threshing room floor. We learn that there is work involved and what is worthy of preserving may often be found amongst and intertwined with those things we may let go to the fire. So that means we have to apply ourselves and seek to understand, and I believe we have to be armed with a willingness to heed the inner voice and strengthen the influence of the spirit by learning to listen for it more often. The more we listen to the influence of ANYTHING, the stronger that influence becomes in our lives.

From that we learn that sometimes messages of worth may come from a messenger we deem or who has proven themselves not honorable. Later in Matthew, Jesus tells the disciples to listen to what the religious leaders teach, but don’t do what they do. He told his own followers, that what they teach is good stuff, but their behavior is worthless. How often do we dismiss wisdom or potential breakthrough because we deem the messenger to be worthless or dishonorable. Many of us use the dishonesty of preachers and priests as a valid excuse for not exercising in those things we’ve already determined would be beneficial for not only our personal growth, but also the growth of our families and communities.

We are responsible for what we are able to discern. We have the ability to respond to whatever we’re able to see, cause oftentimes it is ours to respond to, to aide in the solution to the things we’ve discerned. One of my favorite quotes is, There is no one coming, God sent you. Many times our lives, homes, families and communities suffer from the neglect of our lack of action in response to what we’ve discerned. I challenge you if you’ve happened upon this to work out what your response is to the truths you’ve discerned in your day to day life. A lot of times we don’t move because we feel we have to make some grande gesture in order to solve it, but sometimes it is so simple as alerting the right person who can solve it, but is not aware of it. We make things like this so very complicated, again, to justify our lack of action with things such as, I don’t have time, or ‘they’ (whomever that is) will take care of it. What is it to them if they don’t know, and who will tell them, if you see and do nothing.