Do you ever have trouble making decisions? How do you weigh the pros and cons of a difficult choice?  Many of our decisions are not that significant in the big scheme of things like where should I go to lunch.  Other decisions have more lasting impact for us.  For awhile it was very popular to wear WWJD bracelets and shirts which was a good process to think about what Jesus might do in a particular situation.  Paul prays that we might have discernment so that we know what is best when we are faced with difficult choices in life.  Let’s look at this prayer one more time today. 

3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. 7 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. 8 God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

The thing about this type of discernment is that it comes from knowing God’s word and His will.  The only way we can accomplish that is to spend time with Him regularly.  When you spend lots of time with someone you get an idea what they might do in a given situation.  The only way for us to understand what Jesus would do is to spend lots of time with Him.  When we do that we don’t need a bracelet to remind us WWJD it just comes naturally to us.  I pray that we all would have the type of discernment that Paul is asking for and it would come naturally from the time we spend with Jesus. 

In His Grip,
Pastor Dave