How To Navigate A Discerning Season
The seasons are interesting. In one part of the country, the leaves rustle, the wind is chilly, and winter is approaching. In another, it’s biting in the mornings and still 70–80 degrees in the afternoons. Same “season” but different locations. How can it technically be Fall everywhere, yet still Summer? Or Winter everywhere, but still feel like Spring?
Navigating a discerning season is not unlike this.
You may feel out of sorts. You will have to grapple with dichotomies, paradox, and complexity. Strategy may be necessary to pray for.
The nature of a discerning season is that everything doesn’t come together at once. I was telling a girlfriend of mine this the other day. Sometimes, discernment is a process. It can take hours, weeks, months, or years to discern one thing. It’s a myth that discernment is required to happen on the spot. That isn’t its nature. It’s more of a slow burn, romance, and love affair.
To truly be discerning, we have to fall in love with the process of it all. We can’t be in a hurry to always know. The tracks….they veer.
However, the Spirit of God doesn’t move how we move. Our timing isn’t His timing, and He specializes in acceleration.
Whether things are scoped to move fast or slow, here’s some ways to navigate your discerning season:
1. Start asking for the pieces
This is about being open, having spiritual senses, and clearing space to receive the downloads. When I start asking God for the pieces, I heighten my attention to everything — conversations I overhear, billboards, email marketing subject lines, social media memes, book titles, threads or patterns, repetitive phrases, and so much more. I pay more attention to my dreams, my visions, and my thoughts.
Don’t ask for the pieces then go about your day-to-day tasks as if the season is the same. The season is bound to start changing when you ask for it, so pay attention.
2. Observe
Once God starts showing us the pieces, we tend to get bogged down in overthinking or overanalyzing (if you’re anything like me). But mostly, it’s human nature. Instead, I want to admonish you to observe what you’re shown, almost like you were in a museum and those pieces were hanging on the wall, making themselves plain to you. Observe the things you start to notice and see, invest in observing how revelation makes you feel in your nervous system, your spirit, and your mind.
God is metaphorical, brilliant, and all-strategic, so you’ll need to sharpen your observation skills to start to even know what He is showing you.
Discernment isn’t a game, but it is strategic.
3. Pray
Prayer always goes here, because you’re going to have to die to self, so you can do the actual decisioning. This is completely opposite of what New Age spirituality teaches, which focuses heavily on self-reliance and what I call “narcissistic spirituality.” We cannot depend on ourselves and we were never meant to carry everything or be our own gods. The essence of faith is that we must trust in something much greater than ourselves. Who better to trust than the one who created us?
This is the part of discernment where we surrender ourselves, not pressure and stress ourselves. It’s where we lean on covenant, pray about what we need to discern or test, then open ourselves to hear and listen to what is revealed.
4. Deciphering/Decisioning
Discernment involves distinguishing or dividing between 2 or more things. It can be 2 people, 4 options, 3 strategies, 2 evil spirits, or 2 potential situations. Di = 2, so discernment is always about deciphering between things.
While we’re here, let me also say that this is not the same thing as intuiting something (intuition). Intuition is just that — seeing INTO something or intuiting from something. It involves just the 1 — you. It is the inner knowing, the “something is off” thing. The gut check. It is not the distinguishing between things. That is the work of spiritual discernment. Intuition can certainly help us with the discerning process, but it’s not the whole story. (Refer to step #1 — it’s just a piece).
This is the step where we actually trust ourselves that we hear God. It’s the step where we take all those pieces we’ve observed and prayed about and we start to strategize and make decisions based on what’s been shown to us.
Discernment requires self-trust, God-reliance, and copious amounts of faith.
5. Radical Acceptance
Radical acceptance, my friend. Radical acceptance. Of what is shown to you, what is revealed, what is necessary.
We have to relinquish control of what is discerned. This is the unattractive part of the work.
This is accepting someone is who they’ve shown you they are. It’s accepting that the answer isn’t yes like you wanted. It’s ending the relationship, the friendship, the connection, or the job. It’s not only being able to take swift, decisive action, but it’s also knowing and trusting that you’ve been through the discernment process and it’s time for the season to change.
Whether something is blooming, the sun is coming out after the rain, the air is getting chilly, or everything is dying, this is the part where we trust the season we’re now in.
Radical acceptance at the end of a discerning season is like waking up to completely different weather on a beautiful morning — you know something has to be different and will be. You’re ready now.
