Discernment is the skill of seeing what is right from almost right. It’s the ability to recognize the truth about God and the gospel and recognize when it’s skewed. It’s one thing to do that for ourselves, it’s another to guide our children through it as well. It doesn’t need to be burdensome and fearful—rather, it can be rewarding and restful for the believer.

Our acts of faithfulness can at times seem so personal and pertinent to only ourselves, that over time our eyes slowly turn inward. Our self-centered hearts have a habit of turning us inward, even when something is meant to drive us outward to our neighbour and upward to God. How do we keep our gaze where it’s supposed to be in this daily plodding along?

Though I still blush at my overflowing emotions, I don’t dislike them as much as I once did. I can see the good in them, and I’m learning what it means to let them flourish while not letting them rule me. Our feelings are a part of God’s “very good” creation and a gift to be both acknowledged and stewarded to his glory.

Have you felt homesick before? Abraham likewise intimately understood what it was like to be uprooted from his home, but he learned to keep his eyes on the eternal promises of God.

Alzheimer’s took much of my grandmother’s memory, and I’m sure it took much of what she knew about God. After her death, I wondered what that forgetting meant for her. If she could forget me, if she could forget her own daughters, what did that mean for the spiritual things? Were they forgotten too? I laid awake at night and wondered at the same questions for myself. As I have grown older in both years and faith, I’ve grown to take comfort in God’s words of promise to His people.

What Corrie desires to show us in her book is that God is greater than any suffering we walk through, that the love and grace of his gospel permeates even the darkest places, like a Nazi concentration camp.

“Be patient,” has been our daily lesson lately. With newborn twins on the way, I especially wanted him to learn that it's okay to wait a few minutes before his requests were answered. And yet, at twenty-three years old, patience is a lesson I’m still learning. And like most lessons, to teach patience is also to exemplify patience.

As believers, we often give ourselves to things that can’t change us. Too often, we mix up the tender relationship between the law and the gospel. And just like my failed attempt at mastering water intake, when we confuse law and gospel it leads to frustration as well as discouragement.

We want peace. How do we tuck peace away in our hearts when we live in a sin-struck world? Where do we find “peace that surpasses all understanding” (Phil. 4:6-7) when our world feels anything but peaceful?

In those moments of trying to string words together into cohesive prayers, I came before God naked. I had nothing to show. I felt like a peasant in rags before the high king in his royal robes. Who am I Lord, to stand before you? None of my good works could carry me to his throne or make me presentable in his presence. Only Christ’s righteousness brought me there.

I have memorials in my home. I have pieces that provoke feelings, memories, and thoughts. For each one that brings grief, I have another that gives me a glimpse at eternity. But even these memorials are temporary. I also need something that doesn’t tarnish. Something everlasting. I need to treasure God’s Word in my heart. Perhaps in physical ways that I can see and tangible ways I can touch.

We often condemn fear, but is there perhaps a level of fear that’s good and God-given? Like the fear of animal attacks or our children running in the road. We’re told not to worry, not to fear, but to be bold and courageous. How do we reconcile these two? How do we know the difference between good fear and bad fear?

We often struggle in our relationships with believers we disagree with. What if it’s because we’re hanging on so tightly to our disagreements that we are unwilling to find a peaceful place to stand together? How do we learn to stand on the peaceful grounds of the gospel together despite our differences?

The night before the cross, Jesus took his friends to a common place: the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew His suffering, humiliation, and death were near, but He didn’t hide. Instead, He prayed and asked His closest friends to pray with Him. In this prayer, he instructs us how to pray in the midst of our suffering.

I often bristle at corrections from fellow believers who point out point out my faults, failures, or sins. My natural tendency (and probably yours too) is to be defensive. However, this doesn’t need to be our only reaction. God’s Word shows us another way.

Rich theology with it’s complex history has been abridged to memes, social media captions, and slogans. What was once discussed and believed from thorough exegesis and study can be summed up in pithy sentences on graphics. What took some years of study, question-asking, and many books from a variety of libraries to understand, others today can learn in thirty minutes listening to a podcast or two minutes scanning an article. While there are good things to be taken from these, I wonder if we’ve forsaken anything for them.

So many mothers struggle to breastfeed their babies. It’s crushing. For moms who already have hormones making their emotions turbulent, adding the difficulty of breastfeeding makes for heartache. Where is the hope of the gospel even in this battle with my angry baby and my engorged breasts?

False teachers are everywhere. How do we grow in discernment to know truth from error? First we must lay a foundation. Here’s how.

Just as the Old Testament saints and the Early Church had to watch closely for false teachers among them, so we still do today. We can’t rely on our pastors, mentors, teachers, or favorite bloggers to tell us who is false and who isn’t. We need to be equipped to discern for ourselves. Here’s how.

Discernment is good. Desiring to see God’s name honoured and his Word rightly divided is a righteous desire. But there’s a type of hunting goes beyond loving and gentle discernment. Like Miss. Morton from Northanger Abbey, they enjoy the adrenaline of the hunt.