The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment
By Tim Challies
I have to say, I am excited to finally be bringing you a review of this book. I’ve had it for a couple months now, but had a few other books I wanted to read first. I first heard of this book while at the Basics Conference this spring. Tim Challies was a speaker at some of the break out secessions and I heard him at secession on blogging. Tim helped inspire me to start what you see here at Ambrose Brothers, and I’m grateful to him for that. Tim Challies also runs one of the most successful Christian Blogs out there, and I encourage you to check out his site. (There’s a link to the left).
Anyway, Tim’s second secession of the conference was on Spiritual Discernment, which also just happens to be the topic of his first book. There are few books out there dealing with the topic of Spiritual Discernment, and in the days of Emergent, Seeker and Post Modern teachings filling the church we need discernment more then ever. We need to look discerningly at the books we read, at the websites we visit, at the messages we listen to, and the teachers we watch on TV. And in only 185 short pages Challies helps to equip us to do just that.
Now as we take a brief look at this book, you may be wondering what exactly Spiritual Discernment is all about. Tim Challies describes it in this way in chapter 3: "Discernment is the skill of understanding and applying God’s Word with the purpose of separating truth from error and right from wrong." Basically Tim suggests we hold all things that we would question, up against what we would know to be right; the Word of God.
Through this book, Tim masterfully breaks down discernment. He examines it from all the angles, starting us with our basic calling to be discerning people, and then looking at all the negatives of discernment. He examines motives of discernment areas we should be discerning, and areas we should be leaving alone. He looks at discernment as a spiritual gift, God’s will in discernment, and gives you a practical breakdown in chapter 10 on how to look at something with a discerning spirit. And in all these things, Tim isn’t merely spouting his own ideas, instead, he quotes ample scripture, along with many of the great theologians of our day, including MacArthur, Piper, and Tozer.
One quote I especially enjoyed was found in chapter 5 "To be people of discernment we must acknowledge the existence of both truth and error." We live in a culture where truth and error and going out of fashion and quickly. We know speak of individual truth instead of absolute truth. And error is completely gone, as how dare we ever tell someone there wrong. I want to say I appreciate Challies standing up and saying there is right, and there is wrong.
Well if you haven’t guessed it yet, I enjoyed this book, and would highly recommend it. Sometimes it does read a little slow, but that’s only because of the amount of information you take in. 1 Thessalonians 5: 21-22 tells us "21 Test all things; hold fast what is good. 22 Abstain from every form of evil." Our personal call to discernment. I encourage you to take a look at this verse, and this book and truly step out, and test everything so you may abstain from what is evil.
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