The Philosophy of discernment - Chambers, Oswald

Chapter IV

A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, and spiritual philosophy means the love of wisdom not only in our heart life, but in our heads the last place a christian gets to. Usually we leave our heads barren, we simply use our brains to explain our hearts experience. That is necessary, but we have to let our brains be guided by the holy spirit into thinking a great many things we have not experienced. That is, we are committed to jesus christs view of everything, and if we only allow our brains to dwell on what we have experienced, we shut ourselves off from a great deal we ought to be exercised in. Our heart experience always outstrips our head statement, and when the experience begins to be stated explicitly, our heart witnesses to it why i know that, but i never realised before how it worked. Discernment is the power to interpret what we see and hear.

The path of discernment

For without me ye can do nothing. ( john 15:5) . . . Mans knowledge should be so clear and perfect that he should acknowledge of a truth (that in himself he neither hath nor can do any good thing, and that none of his knowledge, wisdom and art, his will, love and good works do come from himself, nor are of man, nor of any creature, but) that all these are of the eternal god from whom they all proceed.

Have i learned to think what the testimony of my heart makes me state? We all say this kind of thing i know that in me . . . Dwelleth no good thing, but do we think it? Do we really think what jesus has taught us to know in our hearts, that apart from him we can do nothing? We all believe it, but do we think it? Over and over again god has to take us into desert places spiritually where there is no conscious experience at all. We have probably all had this in our experience we have had a grand time of living communion with god, we know we are sanctified, the witness of the spirit has proved it over and over again, then all of a sudden there falls a dearth, no life, no quickness; there is no degeneration, no backsliding, but an absolute dearth. This may be the reason the lord is wanting to take us to a desert place apart that we may get to this path of discernment. All the noisy things that fret our lives when we are spiritual come because we have not discerned what we know in our hearts.

(a) the discipline of negatives (1 corinthians 4:7)

Paul is talking about natural gifts as well as spiritual. What hast thou that thou didst not receive? But if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it? (rv). Have we learned to think when we see someone endowed with natural gifts, such as a fine voice, or a good brain, or any of the gifts of genius, that every one of those gifts has been received, therefore they cannot be consecrated? You cannot consecrate what is not yours. In thinking we do not really go along the scriptural lines our hearts go on. Watch your heart in relationship to god, you recognise that you cannot consecrate yourself to god: you give yourself to god, and yet in thinking we go along the line of consecrating our gifts to god. We have to get rid altogether of the idea that our gifts are ours, they are not, gifts are gifts, and we have to be so given over to god that we never think of our gifts, then god can let his own life flow through us. The discipline of negatives is the hardest discipline in the spiritual life, and if you are going through it you ought to shout hallelujah, for it is a sign that god is getting your mind and heart where the mind and heart of jesus christ was. Spiritual gifts must be dealt with in the same way as natural gifts. spiritual gifts are not glorified gifts, they are the gift of the spirit. Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit. None of the gifts paul mentions in 1 corinthians 12:811 are natural gifts. The danger is to say, how highly favoured i must be if god gives me this great gift; what a wonder- ful person i must be. We never talk like that, but the slightest thought that looks upon the gifts of the spirit as a favour to us is the first thing that will take us out of the central point of jesus christs teaching. Never look at the work of god in and through you; never look at the way god uses you in his service; immediately you do, you put your mind away from where jesus christ wants to get it. Gifts are gifts, not graces.

(b) the development of nobility (2 corinthians 3:56)

Paul is calling his own mind to a halt in order to explain to the corinthian church why what he says and does comes with authority. Our sufficiency is from god; who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant (rv). If you are right with god, you will be amazed at what other people get in the way of real spiritual help out of what you say; but never think about it. The temptation comes all along to say, it is because i brooded that god gave me that thought. The right attitude is to keep the mind absolutely concentrated on god and never get off on the line of

How you are being used by him. Even in the choicest of saints there is the danger. Whenever you feel inclined to say, well, of course that was not me, that was god, beware! You ought never to be in the place where you can think it. The teaching of jesus is, be absorbed with me, and out of you will flow rivers of living water. If we are paying attention to the source, rivers of living water will pour out of us, but immediately we stop paying attention to the source, the out- flow begins to dry up. We have nothing to do with our usability, but only with our relationship to jesus christ, nothing must be allowed to come in between. Have we allowed this path of discernment to be trodden by our feet? Are we beginning to see where we are being led, viz. , to the place where we are rooted and grounded in god? The one essential thing is to live the life hid with christ in god. The pain of deliverance and jesus called a little child unto him . . . And said, . . . Except ye . . . Become as little children . . . (mat- thew 18:23) for when the ain imagination and ignorance are turned into an understanding and knowledge of the truth, the claiming of anything for our own will cease of itself. A healthy man does not know what health is: a sick man knows what health is, because he has lost it; and a saint rightly related to god does not know what the will of god is because he is the will of god. A disobedient soul knows what the will of god is because he has disobeyed. The illustration jesus gives to his disciples of a saintly life is a little child. Jesus did not put up a child as an ideal, but to show them that ambition has no place whatever in the disposition of a christian. The life of a child is unconscious in its fullness of life, and the source of its life is implicit love. To be made children over again causes pain because we have to reconstruct our mental ways of looking at things after god has dealt with our heart experience. Some of us retain our old ways of looking at things, and the deliverance is painful. Paul urges that we allow the painlet this mind be in you, which was also in christ jesus; bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of christ. It is hard to do it. In the beginning we are so anxiouslord, give me a mes- sage for this meeting, until we learn that if we live in the centre of gods will, he will give us messages when he likes and withhold them when he likes. We try to help god help himself to us; we have to get out of the way and god will help himself to our lives in every detail. Have we learned to form the mind of christ by the pain of deliverance till we know we are drawing on him for everything? Are we sacrificing our holy selves to the will of jesus as he did to the will of his father? Are we beginning to speak what god wants us to speak because we are submitting our intelligence to him? The son can do nothing of himself. Our lord never allowed such a thought as, i have done that, in his mind. Have we spiritual discernment like that? If not, remember what the apostle james says, if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of god, that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

(a) the plunge into god (1 corinthians 13:810)

Now when a man duly perceiveth these things in him- self he and the creature fall behind, and he doth not call anything his own, and the less he taketh this knowl- edge unto himself the more perfect doth it become. So also is it with the will and love, and desire, and the like. For the less we call these things our own, the more perfect and noble and godlike do they become, and the more we think them our own, the baser and less pure and perfect do they become.

The only way to learn to swim is to take the plunge, sink or swim; that is exactly the idea here. Will i cut loose from all moorings and plunge straight into god? It is what the new testament is continually urginglet go. Life goes on in a series of coveting the best gifts, but, paul says, a still more excellent way shew i unto you (rv)take an absolute plunge into the love of god, and when you are there you will be amazed at your foolishness for not getting there before. It is not the question of the surrender of a soul for sanctification, but the unreserved surrender of a sanctified soul to god. We are so reserved where we ought to be unreserved, and so unreserved where we ought to be reserved. We ought never to be reserved towards god but utterly open, perfectly one with him all through. After the experience of sanctification we have to present our sanctified self to god, and one of the greatest difficulties in doing this is considering the conditions other people say we have to observe. They themselves, . . . Comparing themselves with them- selves, are without understanding (rv). Watch how tied up we are with other peoples notions of what we should be. The only way to get rid of it all is to take this plunge into the love of god. We have to form the mind of christ until we are absorbed in him and take no account of the evil done to us. No love on earth can do this but the love of god.

(b) the participation in godliness (philippians 3:78)

We must cast all things from us, and strip ourselves of them; we must refrain from claiming anything for our own. . . . For whom i suffered the loss of all things (rv). To experience the loss of all things for anyone but jesus

Christ is mental suicide. Read what our lord said to the rich young ruler sell whatsoever thou hast, . . . And come, follow mereduce yourself until you are a mere conscious man, and then give that man- hood to me; and we read that his countenance fell at the saying, and he went away sorrowful: for he was one that had great possessions (rv). Do you possess a reputation as a christian worker? That will be in the way when the lord speaks to you. Are you rich in the consciousness that you are somebody spiritually? That will be in the way. You must first estimate and then experience the loss of all things and cast yourself on jesus, then participation in godliness will be yours as it never has been. When we do this, we shall have the best, fullest, clearest and noblest knowledge that a man can have, and also the noblest and purest love, will and desire; for then these will be all of god alone. It is much better that they should be gods than the creatures. The oneness jesus christ prayed for in john 17 is the oneness of identity, not of union. I and my father are one, and by the atonement our lord brings us into identity with himself that they may be one, even as we are one.

The plane of delight (2 corinthians 4:1618)

While we look . . . At the things which are not seen. (2 corinthians 4:18) but if our inward man were to make a leap and spring into the perfect, we should find and taste how that the perfect is without measure, number or end, better and nobler than all which is imperfect and in part, and the eternal above the temporal or perishable, and the foundation and source above all that floweth or can ever flow from it.

When we think of being delivered from sin, of being filled with the spirit, we say, oh, i shall never get there, it is only for exceptional people like the apostle paul; but when by gods grace we get there we find it is the easiest place to live; it is not a mountain-peak, but a flat tableland of delight with plenty of room for everyone. And i pray god your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blame- lessthat is not the life we are to live hereafter, but the life god would have us live now; most of us are far too diffident about getting there.

(a) the altitude of love . . .

The greatest of these is love. (1 corinthians 13:13 rv) a master called btius said, it is of sin that we do not love that which is best. He hath spoken the truth. That which is best should be the dearest of all things to us. Is it? Sometimes we crave for something less than the best, beware! We ought to love the most what is best. The spirit of god in us can teach us how to love the best, through faith, through knowledge, through everything till we are altogether in love with god, in absolute harmony with him, absorbed in the one great purpose of god. And in our love of it, neither helpfulness nor unhelpfulness, advantage nor injury, gain nor loss, honour nor dishonour, praise nor blame, nor any- thing of the kind should be regarded. 1 corinthians 13 is not an ideal, it is an identifi- cation which makes the ideal possible. Never put the ideal where the spirit of god does not put it. The ideal comes after the identification.

(b) the atmosphere of life

But the fruit of the spirit is love. . . . (galatians 5:22) now that creature in which the eternal good, most manifesteth itself shineth forth, worketh, is most known and loved, is the best, and that wherein the eternal good is least manifested is the least good of all creatures. In days gone by we all used to love the creatures that exhibit reflections of the eternal goodhonour and courage and strength, but when we are made one with jesus christ we find we love the creatures that exhibit the fruit of the spirit. A great alteration has come over our outlook; god is altering the thing that matters. Therefore when we have to do with the creatures and hold converse with them, and take note of their diverse qualities, the best creatures must always be the dearest to us, and we must cleave to them, and unite ourselves to them.

What communion hath light with darkness? The education god puts his children through in life is, first that which is natural; then that which is spiritual, until we are rooted and grounded in him, then there is no danger evermore to that life. It is always better further on through the natural to the spiritual. No wonder the counsel of the spirit through the writer to the hebrews is ye have need of patience.