January 25, 2026
• Rev. Dr. Rob Fuquay
St. Luke’s UMC
January 25, 2026
New Year Series(4)
Pursuing God’s Will Together
The Process of Discernment
Selected verses from Acts 15:1-21
How many decisions would you say you make in a day? Before you consider your answer know that researchers at Cornell University found that we make roughly 226 decisions a day on food alone! I thought that was ridiculous until I had a breakfast meeting the other morning. I made my order, and the waitress asked, “What would you like with that, greens, fruit or toast?” I said, “Toast.” She said, “white, wheat, rye or sour dough?” Uh, wheat. “Dry or with spread?” Spread. “Butter or margarine?” Margarine. “With jam?” Sure. Regular or sugar-free? That was five decisions related to toast alone!
So perhaps its not so crazy that this Cornell study found that we make roughly 35,000 decisions a day. Most of those are ones we don’t consciously think about, but the brain is still calculating. Decision-making is active part of what it means to be human.
Ruth Haley Barton writes in her book Sacred Rythmns:
Life is full of the need to choose. Sometimes the choices are momentous—choosing a marriage partner, entering a vocation, having children, what to do with a marriage that’s not working. Other choices are not quite as momentous, but they are important nonetheless because they give shape to our life. Where to pursue further education, what church to attend, whether to move to a new geographical location, how to care for aging parents…,
When faced with life’s choices, we become aware of another facet of the soul’s deep longing: we want to know that we are making our choices in God, that we are living out our life according to the purposes for which God brought us to this particular time and place.” (p115)
So far this month we have been talking about spiritual discernment using the works of author and teacher, Ruth Haley Barton. We culminate this series with Ruth who will be here in two weeks to lead a morning workshop for the entire church, Saturday Feb. 7…
Today, we dig into the practical methods of doing discernment, and to help us identify features of discernment we look at a significant story from the Book of Acts.
Following persecution to Christians in Jerusalem by Saul, before he became Paul, Christians migrated north to the city of Antioch. They formed a church and it exploded, but the growth also created a crisis. Non-Jewish people, or Gentiles, began attending. In fact, the Holy Spirit came upon them in an evident way. Up to this point the church was still a Jewish movement, which mean Jewish dietary laws, circumcision and Sabbath keeping were maintained. Well, Gentiles were good with two of three of those. So more orthodox members of the church demanded that they not be allowed to participate in the worship of the church. Paul and Barnabas defended the inclusion of Gentiles. So they were sent to Jerusalem to meet with the apostles and others leaders for a decision on the matter. Acts 15 is about this first meeting of a church council.
What happened at this meeting is a helpful demonstration of spiritual discernment. In this story we see a number of Features of Discernment beginning in verse 6, “The apostles and elders met to consider this question.” (Acts 15:6) The first feature of discernment is Clarifying the Question. Sometimes it helps to write out the question. This is especially helpful when discerning with others. Clarifying helps eliminate confusion or differences people might have around just what the central issue.
Once you agree on the issue and can state the question as simply as possible, you are ready to move forward. But the other reason this little exercise is important, is that it gets at the what the real question is. This process forces you to consider how God’s will is a part of the issue. Not every decision is at that level. What clothes to wear? What car mechanic to choose? You can do some simple fact-finding to make those decisions, but ones that make you consider how God’s will is at stake, surface as you determine just what the question is.
Listening to Others. Again notice in the story how, “The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them.” (15:12) They listened to each other. Community is a significant part of discernment. Having people we trust care as much about seeking and doing God’s will as we do, helps us discern better what God is saying to us.
Notice how it says the assembly “became silent as they listened.” How different is that from so much of our communication today. No talking over each other. No pretending to be listening when you’re really just forming your response while the other person speaks. No, being silent. Listening to what another says. This is spiritual community.
Bishop Reuben Job said, “Christians at their best are good listeners, and the Christian church, when most faithful, is a listening community.” (Pursuing God’s Will Together ,p201)
I think of that amazing play in the national championship game Monday night when Mendoza scored the touchdown toward the end of the game. The IndyStar ran a story the other day breaking down all that happened before that call. First the field goal unit went on the field, but Cignetti didn’t feel right about that. He talked to his Offensive Coach on the headset and asked what play they could run if they go for it. They discussed a play they had practiced just for Miami. When that was presented, something in Cignetti said, “That’s the play!” As the article said, “Cignetti listened to his gut.” The offensive coordinator said, “He trusted our guys to go get it done.” Then the call went to Medoza. Listen to his words about it, This quote will go on the bottom of the picture of Cignetti “Big constant that we’ve really had for ourselves this year is always bet on ourselves…Whenever Coach Cignetti, Coach Shannahan called that play, we knew, hey, we’re going to better ourselves one more time.” Picture of Mendoza diving over the line.
Throughout the article it tells how they trusted each other and listened to each other. Now, I know that’s football discernment, not spiritual discernment, though many IU fans would say God was definitely in that play, but spiritual discernment works that way. It works like a great team that comes to trust each other, that believes in one another, that listens for God speaking through each other.
Going back to our story in the Book of Acts, notice what happens after they listened to each other. James, who is believed to be the brother of Jesus, spoke up. He said, “Simon has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this…” (15:14-15) And then he goes on to quote from the Book of Amos, and he puts the question they had in the context of God’s wider story. This is another key feature of discernment, Connecting our Question to God’s Story. This puts the issue we are wrestling with in the context of the story God is telling and wants to tell through us. In spiritual discernment our questions are never just about us, but what God wants to do in and through us.
This is what makes scripture an indispensable tool in discernment. It helps us hear from God. So learning the Bible and understanding it better helps this process. But don’t think you have to become a scholar. Sometimes our knowledge of the Bible can get in the way, because we assume we know what God wants to say.
Ruth Haley Barton tells about a time she was on a retreat with a great Bible teacher. He led the participants in lectio divina, a way of studying the Bible in community, where you hear the story spoken several times, interspersed with silence to sense what stands out to you. Well the story the leader picked was Jesus walking on the water and Peter asking Jesus if he could come to him. She thought immediately, “I have studied this story so many times, there’s not possibly one insight I haven’t had,” but she settled in with the others to listen and reflect. What came to her was a word she had never really paid attention to. It was Jesus word, “Come.”
She felt Jesus literally saying to her in that moment, “Come to me.” Don’t study me. Don’t prepare a lesson about me. I want to be with you, Ruth, come.” It brought tears to her eyes. She realized she had been so busy doing the work of God she was missing connection to God.
Once we connect our question to God’s story, then we listen some more. This feature of discernment is about Listening to God. We take what we have heard, how we feel it connects to God’s story and we bring everything before God to listen what God is saying. The key question here is: What is the mind of Christ on this matter? And we pay attention in silence to what we feel and sense. We maybe imagine different responses and notice what happens in us as we play out those thoughts.
Ignatius of Loyola identifies two important elements of discernment he calls “Consolation and Desolation.” Consolation is the feeling of rightness, harmony, peace that feels closer to God. Desolation is the feeling of emptiness, troubling in our spirit that feels like moving away from God. Sometimes as we listen and pay attention to what is happening inside of us we get feelings of consolation or desolation. We can sometimes sense where God is leading us by doing the Cignetti thing, paying attention to our gut.
(missionaries flipping coin to determine whether to go back)
And this brings us to the key point of Synthesizing. James suggested a direction to the assembly. To declare that Gentiles were welcomed in the church without needing to be circumcised. BUT, they should still be required to keep other key requirements, not eating food offered to idols, keeping sexual purity codes, and not eating meat with blood in it. This may all seem odd to us now, but it was an important concession. First of all, for the Jewish orthodox in the assembly, not requiring men to be circumcised would have felt like throwing out the very core of their faith to ignore such laws. In fact, an uncircumcised person who entered the temple could be arrested and maybe stoned to death. It was that serious. But James shows they weren’t willing to disregard other important elements of their faith.
And so James offers a way forward. He puts forward a suggestion to see what would be done with it. I worked with a senior pastor years ago who had this expression when someone had an idea. He would say, “Run it up the flag pole and see if anyone salutes it.” This is part of the way we sense God is working in something, the way others come along.
Now, that doesn’t mean you only do what everyone is for. If that were the case we would have never had a civil rights movement. We would still have segregated schools and restrooms and water fountains. But when you choose an action, the ones you see who are willing to salute the idea, often gives you a confirmation, that even if facing resistance, this is where God wants you to go. And you will know, as you go.
Finally, look at one last observation about the story of the Jerusalem Council. Once they had agreement on what to do, they created a letter to be read to the church. “So the men were sent off and went down to Antioch, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message… After they had been there for some time, they were sent off in peace” (15:30-33) This probably seems like an overly, obvious point to make, but they acted on their decision. But the final step of Acting on what we have discerned is the most important part of discernment.
In her writings Ruth Haley Barton makes the point that the aim of discernment is not to have enlightenment, or even transformation. Both of these are meant to lead us to action. As she points out, “It does no good to discern the will of God if we are not committed to doing it.” (p56)
So notice words that describe the mood of the council at the beginning: They had “sharp dispute and debate.” Clearly, they were divided. But notice the descriptions of the mood at the end: They were “glad…encouraged… peace.”
Clearly, discernment helped them overcome differences so they could move forward more united. But I can’t imagine that meant everyone agreed on the outcome!
Again, Barton points out that discernment should bring about unity, but this doesn’t mean unanimity or even consensus. “Friends find unity on what is best for the community on a particular issue, even though they may disagree…Unity requires all to reach the same conclusion about what should be done in the name of all, even when opinions still differ. They believe that what is more important than the decision itself is the quality of their life together. (p.219)
Now next week we will look at the single most important factor in doing spiritual discernment. It is the spirit that determines a group’s ability to discern together. It is the deal maker or breaker.
But for now, let’s consider all these features of discernment:
· Clarifying the Question
· Listening to Others
· Connecting Our Question to God’s Story
· Listening to God
· Synthesizing
· Acting
These are not meant to be steps followed in order. But they are aspects of discernment that find their way into the practice of discernment.
I want to invite Mindie to come back and tell us what this has looked like in the life of the Midtown community…picture of Midtown