Think about all the things you pray for and all the ways in which you've been told to pray. Of course, there's the Lord's Prayer. There's also the ACTS acronym of Adoration-Confession-Thanksgiving-Supplication. And for you early 2000s church folk, how could we ever forget the prayer of Jabez??
Oh yeah, those nostalgia juices are flowing now!
There's nothing inherently wrong with any of these prayers. In fact, I use the free Echo app to remind me every two hours to pray using the ACTS acronym. But as good as those prayer models are, there is something rarely called out. Something mentioned in the Bible over and over, yet we hardly ever make an explicit note of it.
That prayer is a prayer of discernment.
Discernment is called out in the Bible many, many times, and the web page behind this link will even show you 100 instances of this. Let's take a look at the first few verses listed by this site.
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether or not they are from God, for many false prophets have gone into the world. - 1 John 4:1
And 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 the Lord - Philippians 1:9-10
But solid food is for the mature, for those who have the power of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. - Hebrews 5:14
As you can see just from this small sample, the authors of the Bible certainly hold discernment in high regard. And because the Bible tends to be timeless, this certainly holds weight today. In fact, I could make a solid argument that a prayer for discernment is even more important today than it was in biblical times.
Why?
At least for us in the United States, we live in the digital age where opinion is protected by the First Amendment. That means anybody with a computer or a smartphone can share their opinion out there online. They could even create a blogging platform for themselves for free using a service like Blogger. (Hmmm.... know anybody that does that...?)
Truth certainly exists on the internet, but it gets muddied pretty quickly. This has become a huge topic recently even in the mainstream media. Heard the phrases "fake news" and "alternative facts"? Yup, people out there are recognizing that not everything on the internet is true.
Let me reiterate that truth does exist. Not everything on the internet is bad. I'll let you be the judge, but I would honestly like to think my own blogging platform aspires to be as truthful as possible in every post. I hope, at least amongst you regular readers, that I have earned your trust over these 100+ posts.
Anyway, trust is only earned after thorough discernment. Can we use logic skills to determine what is right and what is wrong? Absolutely. I think we all can agree that the Holocaust, for example, was a horrible event. But not everything is as cut-and-dried as the Holocaust. There is a lot of gray area in almost every situation, and logic skills can only take us so far.
I genuinely do believe the Lord has blessed me with a gift of discernment, and that gift has led me to where I am today. I don't think I'm the smartest person out there, and I've worked with folks that can certainly process things much more quickly than I can. I'm not a very good reader, nor did I have the best grades in high school. But I do believe God has led me to see the best truths in everything, and those truths have made me a better person because of it.
(I hope that last paragraph doesn't read as me being braggy. I promise I do not mean it to be braggy at all!)
The next time you pray, pray for discernment. Pray that the Lord guides you toward truth in this time of much information. I think you will find it will be one of the best things you can ever pray for.
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