How to Be a More Discerning Woman

Melissa Kruger: I’m going to start with prayer that the Lord would meet us.

[I’m terrible about keeping my mouth close to this thing, and I like to move. I feel like Britney Spears or something. My husband and I always joke; we’re like, “Did you get the Britney boom mic?”]

So let me start us with prayer.

Father, we desperately need Your help. So many things are coming at us in the world today—so many pathways claiming to be life that are not life, so many people claiming to have the way, the truth, and the life who are not the way, the truth, and the life. Lord, we pray that You would shine Your wisdom into our hearts and make us women who can discern truth from error, fact from fiction. Let us be wise, godly women who love Your Word and have learned the secret of being discerning women. Help us to do that; give us wisdom, we pray. Be with us now; may your Spirit speak. Lord, we love You. Let us follow You well. It’s in Your name we pray, amen.

When I was twenty-one I was sitting in my college apartment, and I had what felt to me like a terrible decision to make. I was engaged to my college boyfriend; we’d been dating for three years. I had a ring on my finger, and I was terrified. I didn’t know if I should marry him and I didn’t know if I should give the ring back.

We talked to our pastor, we talked to our friends, we sought wise counsel, and my pastor looked at me and he said, “You’ve been dating long enough; you need to make a decision.” I kind of wanted to perpetually live in indecision. He said, “You need to give this guy his life back and let him go on if you’re not going to marry him.”

So he came over that night, on the night we had decided this was the night of decision, and I gave him the ring back.

I can say even standing here, it was probably the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life, all those years ago—I don’t know how many years; I can’t do the math that fast, but it’s been a while. I look back and I remember how completely lost I felt. There were no big red flags. There was no situation of, “This isn’t a Christian; I should clearly not marry him.” He loved the Lord, he loved me. He was a great guy. But I knew in my heart I felt this deep unsureness.

I can remember in those moments thinking, “Lord, if You would just tell me! If it was just in the Bible: ‘Please marry this person.’ I would do it! I totally would do it.” But there was no such revelation, no such light from heaven, and I felt like I was walking in darkness as I was trying to make that decision. I am sure as women today you have felt the same thing. I’m sure you all have decisions in your life that are not clearly defined by Scripture.

Let me start this talk, as we move into talking about discernment—the very first thing: if the Bible says it, do it, okay? We’re not going to talk about that stuff today. That doesn’t take discernment, that just takes obedience. That’s just old-fashioned—Jesus said it; you need to do it, because it’s really going to be the best for you. It’s not like some law to put on your back. It’s not like you have to earn your salvation. It’s life. Let me just start by saying that. The first thing to discern is God’s Word is true and it is what is always best for you. That’s the first thing.

But then we get to these places in life, like, what are you going to spend your time on today? Are you going to come to True Woman, or are you going to watch TV? I mean, it’s not like watching Netflix is a sin, necessarily. We have questions like, how are you going to use your gifts for the church? Where are you going to volunteer? Where are you going to move in life? What are you going to spend your time on during the day? What are you going to spend your money on during the day?

There are a lot of questions in our lives that there’s no magic scroll coming down from heaven saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” We wish there was for a lot of these decisions in life, but there aren’t.

What I want us to talk about in this talk is, how do we become women who make wise choices as we deal with a marketplace of life? In this life—let’s just be honest—people are screaming at us all day long. “Hey, you need this! Hey, this will make your life better! Hey, this will make you look better! Hey, this will solve all your cleaning problems!” There are voices crying out to us every day.

In fact, I think we can say—I’m always a little bit hesitant to say, “This is the error that has never been before.” I’m always a little bit nervous to over-dramatize, “Oh my goodness, life has never been like this.” But I think I can honestly say we have never had access to as much information in human history as we do today. I think that’s just an honest appraisal. While there is nothing new under the sun, there are new ways to find out things. So the reality is we have a gazillion things coming at us all the time, and it’s super hard to know what is true and what is false. It’s really hard as we look at the world before us.

Yet, at the same time, I think what we can know about the world, while there are new modes of information—it used to be you at least had to type in Google something; now you’re just like, “Hey, Alexa!” You don’t even have to type anymore to get information. “What’s the weather today? What’s the capital of Finland?” Whatever—I can ask Alexa anything and she tells it. She keeps my tea timed perfectly; she’s amazing. She’s like my best friend.

We have all this access to information, but the reality is there are still two voices that cry out to us. I know we think we have a thousand voices, but honestly they all fall into one of two camps: the voice of wisdom or the voice of folly.

If you have your Bibles, or if you need to open your screen I totally understand, because you’re on vacation, and I know you wanted to bring the shoes instead of your Bible. I kind of did too, okay? I’ll be honest. I was like, “It’s on my phone . . . it works, right?” I really did have this discussion. Did anybody else have that discussion?

So, turn with me to Proverbs 9. I’m going to read you this passage; it’s very telling. I’m going to read verses 1–6 and then I’m going to read 13–18. Proverbs 9:1:

Wisdom has built her house;
   she has hewn her seven pillars.
She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine;
   she has also set her table.
She has sent out her young women to call
   from the highest places in the town,
“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
   To him who lacks sense she says,
“Come, eat of my bread
   and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Leave your simple ways, and live,
   and walk in the way of insight.”

That’s Lady Wisdom. Now let’s contrast that; skip down to Proverbs 9:13.

The woman Folly is loud;
   she is seductive and knows nothing.
She sits at the door of her house;
   she takes a seat on the highest places of the town,
calling to those who pass by,
    who are going straight on their way,
“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
   And to him who lacks sense she says,
“Stolen water is sweet,
   and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”
But he does not know that the dead are there,
   that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

We have two contrasting voices, Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly, and they are both in the marketplace and they’re both calling out. They’re both preparing a feast. I want you to compare verses 4 and 16. Do you see anything interesting? They’re calling out to the same people.

Okay, here’s our reality: we’re simple. They’re not calling out to—Wisdom’s calling out to the smart people and Folly’s calling out to the not-so-smart people. No, that’s not what we have. We have, “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” The only option is that we’re simple. That’s our option. We are simple, but two voices are calling out. 

They’re both inviting us into their homes, and look at verse 6. “Leave your simple ways.” One is an invitation to leave the simple life and what? Live! And look at verse 18. “But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.” What’s Sheol? The place of death.

Wisdom—she’s there! She’s saying, “Come! Live!” She’s out. She’s actually on Instagram, you all. She’s on Twitter. She’s there. There are voices in every marketplace calling out with wisdom, and there are voices in every town and every marketplace that are folly. The difference between the two is life and death. Discernment is a very significant thing. Both are calling out.

It would be one thing if we were just talking about culture. I think we can believe it about culture. We can look at culture and say, “Yep. For sure there is folly being spouted out every day in culture, and there is wisdom. There is genuine wisdom that’s also being spouted out.” We all believe in common grace as Christians. Even non-Christians can have some wisdom sometimes. It’s not like they’re all just putting out bad things. There’s wisdom out there and there’s folly, and the biggest question is, how do we discern the difference?

Here’s our second problem. I wish I could just say, “Go to church! All you get in church is wisdom.” Or, “Follow all those Christian influencers on Instagram. That’s all they’re putting out, is wisdom.” The reality is it’s not just culture that has a problem. Scripture warns us that the church has a problem. We need to pay attention. Our problem isn’t just society; the church actually has a problem, too. This is where I think we get into some real trouble as women.

Here’s the thing: false teachers in the church look like Christians. Jesus talked about this problem, Paul talked about this problem, and Peter talked about this problem. This is not new. Sometimes I think we think, “They were all good guys in Acts. They were all great.” No, Paul regularly talked about different people who had totally left the faith altogether. We’re just not reading our Bibles sometimes.

Listen to what Jesus said. This is Matthew 7. Jesus said, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits.”

Notice they look like real Christians. They are going to claim to love Jesus. They are going to do spiritual things. They will probably be pretty likable, or else people would not follow them. These false wolves, these people in sheep’s clothing who come into the church, who invade your life, they are Lady Folly, and they are trying to get you to choose the path of death. Even though they look like one of the sheep, they are there.

We have to remember the story of Judas in the New Testament. Here’s what always strikes me about Judas. You remember at the Last Supper when the disciples are sitting around and Jesus says, “One of you is going to betray me”? Notice what they don’t all do. They don’t all start side-eying Judas. “Mm-hmm, I’ve been wondering about him the whole time.” That is not what they do! What do they all say? “Is it I? Is it, Lord?” That should make you feel a lot better about your faith, because I’d be like, “It’s probably me. It’s probably me!”

But what they didn’t know . . . they didn’t know it was Judas. You remember Judas? He went out with the 72, and when they came back saying, “Look at all the miracles we performed,” Judas was there. When they went from town to town and saw the miracles and ate the bread when there were only five loaves—he was there! He heard all the same sermons, he had his feet washed. He was there. He saw and he heard and he never believed. He never believed. He had an outward association with Jesus but had no inward affection. It’s the most terrifying life to live, because you’re probably lying to yourself and you’re lying to everyone around you. He had an outward association with no inward affection, and that is what ravenous wolves will have. They will use Jesus as long as it works for them, and then, when it no longer works, they will drop Jesus.

Secondly, people are going to want what false teachers are giving. I think sometimes I see things happening, especially in our online world—here’s the thing; you used to go to one church and you heard from one pastor and you took what he had to say and you listened. Now we have thousands of people influencing us faith-wise. There are some good things to that and there are some bad things to that, but here’s the reality: people want what false teachers are giving. 

Here’s what 2 Timothy tells us. Paul, writing to Timothy, says, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

That sounds a lot like what’s happening today, doesn’t it? People do not want sound teaching, they do not want historical Christianity: “So let’s find somebody who will tell us what we want to hear anyway!” They will accumulate—here’s the thing. It’s not just that there are wolves going after you, it’s us. We want to accumulate teachers for ourselves who will tell us what our itching ears want to hear. We have to be on guard against those who might come in to seek to destroy us, but we have to be on guard against our own heart that might deceive us and tell us what we want to hear.

Here’s the good news—eventually, their fruit will expose them. I have to say this: I think sometimes when someone is exposed as being a false teacher we get so upset at ourselves. We’re like, “Why was I duped? Is something wrong with me?” Just remember, none of the disciples knew Judas. We can’t know what’s in someone else’s heart, and we shouldn’t be walking around with our judging stick saying, “Yes . . . mm-mm . . .” We don’t have to live that kind of life. We have to be aware that it’s a reality without personally judging individually until fruit is exposed.

Here’s how that fruit is going to look. This is in 2 Peter 2:1. “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.”

This is a stern warning, but I want you to see three things and three ways they deny Jesus.

First, they deny Jesus by their pride. They will deny the Master’s teaching. When you blaspheme the Word of truth, that is essentially saying, “Yes . . . I know Jesus said this, but I think He meant this.” They’re going to do this. They’re going to play with God’s Word and suit it to fit their own needs.

The second thing that’s going to expose them is usually going to be sex. They will be sensual and they will invite others into their sensuality. That’s going to take a lot of different forms. It might not be their actions, it might be their teaching, but it’s going to be part of the false reality that goes out.

The third thing is money. There’s going to be greed that will eventually be exposed. I think when I look around at false teachers who have been exposed, usually all three are present. You will usually see pride, sex, and money as they are exposed.

Let me clarify one thing. When we’re talking about false teachers, it’s not the same thing as a teacher who is wrong sometimes—or else, I will get off the stage and quietly exit, because we are all wrong sometimes. Every teacher who’s teaching at this conference looks back on something she’s said and says, “Ooh, that was not right! That was not good! Oh my goodness; I can’t believe I said that that was about this and it was clearly about this!” We all have those moments where we have taught incorrectly.

In fact, we see this happen in Scripture. In Acts there was a Jew named Apollos, and he was a gifted teacher, and he was teaching. But the Scriptures tell us that he only knew about the baptism of John, so he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. What they didn’t do was shout, “You’re a false teacher!”

We’re not going around looking at everyone to make sure they pass our theological test, okay? Not everyone who gets something wrong theologically is a false teacher. This is really important for us to grasp; it’s actually part of discernment, to be able to understand we can have a mistaken teacher, but that’s not necessarily a false teacher. We throw around “false teacher” on Twitter way too fast. None of us would stand in the Day of Judgment on Twitter. There is just this condemnation that can come that is not what I see in Scripture.

There is a big difference between being willing to be corrected versus someone who stands and says, “No. I know what God’s Word teaches, and I am trying to undermine it.” The purposefulness is very different.

Here are four signs of a false teacher that I want you to have in your mind. 

First, they do not respond to correction. Apollos started teaching what was right. He changed as soon as he found out. He didn’t know the full gospel. He changed; he started teaching what was right. So firstly, a false teacher will not respond to correction.

Secondly, they sit above God’s Word rather than under God’s Word. Positionally, how do you come to God’s Word? Are you looking at it and saying, “Hmm. I’ll think about whether I agree with that”? That’s what false teachers do. They kind of look at it and they’re like, “Hmm. That one I don’t like. I’m not going to talk about that one much.” Or do you sit under it and say, “Huh. I don’t understand what this is saying, but I know that’s a lack in me not a lack in God.”

When I look in the Word, there are confusing parts in there. We look at some parts and we’re like, “I am not sure why this was good. Why did God command them to do that?” We all have those moments. But what I have learned to say is, “I don’t understand it, but one day I will. God will fully make it right when I am right. I do not doubt that at all. My lack of understanding is just about a deficiency in me, not in God’s Word.” That’s sitting under the Scriptures. I am not in judgment of them, okay? I am trying to live life in front of them.

Thirdly, their growth in the faith usually means turning from historical Christianity. One thing my husband always says—he’s a professor at a seminary—he always says, “We are not trying to teach anything new here. We are trying to teach old truths in new and beautiful ways.” When you see somebody coming up with a new truth about Jesus, your red flag should be going up huge and saying, “Huh. No one in the church has ever thought this before? Maybe it’s not true.”

We are sola Scriptura people, but we are a people who belong to a historic church that extends back to when Jesus started calling His people. So we should listen to the history of the church. It’s a good thing to think through. It doesn’t mean the church hasn’t gotten it wrong sometimes. The church has gotten plenty of things wrong. But we are a historical body, and if somebody starts saying all of a sudden, “Yes, this is totally fine to God,” that no one in Christianity has ever said before, we should have big red flags going up in our mind.

Fourth, their lives will eventually demonstrate the fruit of their unbelief. It may take some time, but eventually their fruit will show forth.

Those are four signs of false teachers. These are the reasons that we need discernment. Just to put all this in a category, the reality is we have two voices calling out; we have Wisdom and Folly in the marketplace. But we also have false teachers in the church. So we are women deeply in need of discernment. What you cannot say is, “Well, I’m just going to trust what other Christians out there are saying.” You cannot trust even your own heart, a lot of the time, because we might be accumulating for ourselves what our itching ears want to hear.

How do we become women of discernment? The first thing we need to know is: what is discernment? We need to make sure we know what we’re after.

First, what we need to know is that the source of our discernment is not ourselves and it is not others—the source is God. Here’s what I think is really interesting. If you’re still in Proverbs 9, we looked at the first section and we had Lady Wisdom. We looked at the second section, which had Lady Folly. And look what is smack dab in between the two. Turn to verse 10. You want to know how to discern between folly and wisdom? You want to know how to choose between life and death? “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” You see that? Right in the middle of the passage, it says, “This is the answer.”

When we talk about the fear of the Lord, we’re not talking about a craven fear that’s running from God. We’re talking about what Joni talked about last night. Did you hear her talk about what she knew about God? That’s a fear of God. It’s a righteous, a right longing to honor Him with all of her life. Did you hear that deep hope in her? What she wanted to hear at the end of the day was, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” That’s the primal desire in her heart that was overflowing. That’s because she fears the Lord. That’s because she knows in his courts are the paths of life.

You know what she’s going to do when her pain is too much to bear, when she does not know how she’s going to get through the next hour? She says, “I’m going to cling to God’s Word and I’m going to cling to His promises.” That’s a woman who fears the Lord, who says, “I do not understand, but I will cling to the God who is ruling over everything.” That is fearing the Lord; it is saying, “I don’t know what is best, but I know You know what is best, and I will trust You, Lord.” That’s a woman who fears the Lord, and that is the beginning of wisdom. That is where it starts.

I want to clarify here, the source is not our experience, our age, or our understanding. Discernment is rooted in God’s wisdom, not our experiences. Let me say this: there are a lot of old women with terrible advice. Okay? Just because we are older, if we are not rooted in God’s Word, it’s just worldly wisdom. It’s just worldly wisdom. We have to guard our minds and put everything that’s told to us against the truth of Scripture and make sure that is what is guiding and what is leading us in everything.

It’s also something that Paul prayed for. This is really interesting. He prayed for the Philippians. Listen to what he said. This is Philippians 1:9: “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

Listen to what he wants. He wants their love for God to be rooted in knowledge and all discernment. He doesn’t want their love just to be some affectionate feeling. It’s not that that’s a bad thing, but he wants their love to be rock solid, rooted in knowledge of who God is and with discernment of what He wants from His people. So the source is God, and it’s rooted in love.

The second thing for us to make sure we understand about discernment is that it is a skill that is developed. This is good news. Discernment does not just descend upon you when you come to Christ. It is something that we actually learn as we go through our lives. Discernment actually takes a lot of practice. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever had the exciting moment when you get in the car with a new driver who has just taken driver’s ed, and they think they know a lot. They have learned all the rules of the road and they have watched those awful videos of what happens when you do bad things driving and they can tell you all sorts of facts about how fast you should drive, and they do start telling you, “Mom, you did not come to a full stop.” “Yes, thank you. I know that is the exact rule. I did not come to a full stop.” They have lots of rules.

But you get in that car with them and they start driving, and you’re like, “You were way too close to that white line. Why are you—you’re going to hit that car! No, it’s a yellow; keep going. Oh no, it’s yellow; stop!” What you realize is that all of our years of driving give us a lot of discernment. You kind of know just how you should move to park. You know when it is a yellow you should drive through or when it is a yellow you should stop on. That’s really hard to explain to a fifteen-year-old. It just takes practice.

The reality for us is that discernment in life takes practice, and we really do get better at it as we live life.

Hebrews talks about this. This is Hebrews 5:11. Here’s what he says. “About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you still need someone to teach you the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the words of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”

Okay, this is someone who has moved on from milk. They’re not just drinking the milk of the Word, they’re eating the solid food of God’s Word, and then they’re constantly putting it into practice. They are working and they are learning.

I don’t know if any of you like to cook. I can remember when I first started to cook, I always followed the recipe exactly. I’m not talking about baking; you should follow the recipe exactly in baking or you’ll have a lot of cake fails. I’m talking about when you’re cooking a sauce, and I’d be like, “Okay, it says a quarter of an onion.” I’d look at the onion and I’m like, “Well, that’s a big onion, that’s a small onion. Which quarter am I taking?” You’re trying to follow it so exactly.

All of a sudden you start to realize, “I can actually suit it to my taste. I can add a little oregano, some more garlic.” My husband would be like, “Oh, you’re going to add the garlic again, aren’t you.” Yes, this is going to be a lot of garlic and a lot of spice. I grow my own jalapenos; it’s always going to be hot. But I’ve learned through discernment what I like, and I’ve learned how to make that sauce taste like what I want it to taste. But I needed the recipes to help me know, “Oh, this is actually what goes into spaghetti sauce.” Then you start to play around with it.

That’s the reality—the Word is going to give you the basics. “Be loving, be kind, be gentle, be self-controlled.” It’s not always going to tell you what kindness might look like today. Kindness might mean you talk kindly to the lady in the line behind you at the grocery store. Kindness might mean you go volunteer somewhere. Kindness might mean you call your mom. You don’t know what kindness will look like. That’s going to be a discernment that the Lord’s going to teach you through practice, and it takes knowledge and it takes skill both coming together to have discernment.

Let’s get to a definition, because I’m halfway through this talk and we haven’t even had a definition yet. Tim Challies gives this definition: “Discernment is the skill of understanding and applying God’s Word with the purpose of separating truth from error and right from wrong.” I’ll say that again. “Discernment is the skill of understanding and applying God’s Word with the purpose of separating truth from error and right from wrong.” I have simplified that, and here’s what I like to say. “Discernment is wisdom making a choice.” Discernment is wisdom making a choice.

If you think about the Bible, especially Proverbs, Proverbs tell you this: “Reckless words pierce like a sword.” It also says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” So, how do you know if the words you just gave were reckless words that pierce like a sword, or maybe they were wounds of a friend? Discernment is slowly going to start teaching you that, and you’re going to know, “My heart—that was meant to be a reckless word that pierced like a sword. I was going for it.” Or you’re going to know, “No, that may have felt unloving to that person, but that was the kindest thing I could have told them.” You will start to know the difference the longer you live. “What am I doing with my words? Were they really kind, or were they actually really not very courageous at all?” You’ll start to know the difference as you interact with God’s Word and wisdom makes a choice.

Then the question—we looked at why we need it, we’ve looked at what the definition (wisdom making a choice) is, and now we have to ask—how do we get it? This is really important.

One of my best friends, Angela, when she first graduated from college, she actually went to work as a teller at the local bank down the road. While she was working there, they had to learn how to spot counterfeit money. She said for the very first month that they trained, the only thing they were allowed to do was look and study real money. They constantly looked at money and they taught them, “a dollar’s going to have this marking and it’s going to have this watermark”; they taught them all these things about real money. Then slowly, after a month, they started slipping in counterfeit dollars. She said, “Immediately you could spot it.” They had looked at what was true money so much that when false money slipped in she immediately knew it.

She said, “They don’t teach you to look at counterfeit money because there are infinite ways you can be counterfeit. They teach you what is true so you will be able to see what is false.”

As women, if we want to be discerning women, there is one pathway. We have to soak, we have to bathe, we have to abide our lives in God’s Word. We have to search it as though it is treasure and eat it like it is honey. It has to be in our hearts every single day.

Two weeks ago I was in Indonesia with my husband, and we went to an island called Papua. This island is remote. There are 270 languages spoken in Papua; only six of them have a full Bible in their own language—six.

I watched a video of the exact place we went. We had to be flown in and land on grassy strips or water to get to one place. I saw the video of this one tribe receiving the Word for the first time, and if you could have seen the joy . . . it was just hands up, praising, “We have the Word! We are not lost any longer. We can study it for ourselves.”

I thought, I have an ESV, a CSB, an NIV, an NASB, all sitting on my shelf. Do I ever just say, “Thank You, Jesus, that I have Your Word!” or do I kind of sluggishly come to it: “God’s pretty lucky to have me on His team! Here I am reading it again.”

The God of all the universe spoke! He has spoken, and we do not listen! We do not listen.

The Barna study says that people in our country who read, use, or listen to the Bible four times a week or more is under twenty percent. This is in our country, where we have Bibles everywhere. We have no excuse, and we are Bible illiterate. We do not know the Word, so we cannot see what is counterfeit truth. We have to change our world. This means becoming women who believe in the power of the Word.

If our children spent as much time in the Bible as they do at baseball practice, think what they would know! But we are a culture that is chasing fame and money and scholarship, and we are saying, “Oh, no, we don’t love those things. We love Jesus.” You know what Kings tells us? It says that while the people of God were worshiping the Lord they were serving their idols, and their children and their grandchildren did the same exact thing. We are a culture who is worshiping the Lord and serving our idols, and we have biblically illiterate children to show for it. Then we wonder when they get to be teenagers and they are like, “I don’t know if I believe what the Bible says.” They don’t know what it says! We have to be women of the Word who pass it on to the next generation and to the next generation and to the next generation. We will not fail to tell them the deeds of the Lord, and we have no excuse. We have the time, we have the Bible, and we need to pass it on to the next generation. We need to know God’s Word.

Let me say (I was telling some women this earlier today), I used to be a math teacher. I love math; I’m actually way more comfortable teaching the quadratic formula than I am teaching about discernment. But I don’t think you are really here to learn that negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4ac—I don’t think you want to hear that!

However, one thing I learned when I taught math was I could teach it and their eyes were like, “Yes, I’ve got it,” and you know what? Then I give them some homework, and they don’t have it. They don’t have it. But we sit in church and we’re like, “Yes, I have it. I have it.” Then the homework assignment is called your life, and it comes, and you’re like, “No, I don’t have it! I don’t have it.”

Okay, so we need to be women who, yes, we’re listening in church, but we’re studying the Bible on our own. We’re studying the Bible on our own, because you know what? To be quite honest, we want to trust our pastor, but we have to make sure he’s saying the right thing, too. We have to be women who know their God, who display strength, and take action, just like we were talking about from Daniel last night. We have to know what the Word says so we make sure we’re hearing the right things. 

We have to know it, we need to study it on our own, we need to study it with other people, and we need to teach it to others. Let me say this: when I really wanted to know if a kid understood a math concept, I’d bring him up to the front of the room and I’d be like, “Teach it to everybody else.” That’s the moment that child really starts to learn, because when you teach to someone else is when you learn it.

This is why Colossians says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom.” That’s not talking to the pastor. I need to be teaching you and you need to be teaching me, because I actually start learning when I start teaching. I will probably learn more from this talk than any of you, because I’m the one teaching it. That’s why we need to be teaching. You don’t have to teach in front of people, but you can teach your neighbor about Jesus. You can teach the child down the street about Jesus. You can teach anyone in your life about Jesus, because if you know Him you have eternal truths to give someone else.

First, we need to know God’s Word, and then we need to delight in God’s Word. You know, it’s not enough just to put a bank in your head of Scripture. We actually need to love God’s Word. We need to believe that in His pathways are the way of life. That’s going to help us be discerning women, because we’re hungry to know it more. We want to live in it, and that always involves obeying it. We will learn more about the truth of God when we actually obey what it says. We will understand differently what it means when we actually obey it and we build our lives on it.

First, we need to know God’s Word, we need to delight in God’s Word. We need to actually pray for discernment. James tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all, and it will be given to him.” So pray! Ask God to show you the way.

Fourthly, we don’t get discernment alone. We do get discernment in community with others. So ask people in your life, ask wise people in your life for help when you are making decisions. Proverbs tells us, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” There are a lot of verses about seeking wise counsel.

Let me say this, because discernment is not the avoidance of the world; it is the ability to go into the world and embrace good while avoiding the bad. We have to be in the world but not of it. We have to actually be people who don’t just segregate ourselves from all the bad things. That’s not actually discernment; that’s just separation. We have to be people who can go out into that marketplace, where Wisdom’s calling out and Folly’s calling out, and we can say, “The fear of the Lord is in me. I am going to follow wisdom.” We have to be there, because other people are going to be watching the choices we’re making, and they need to see what discernment looks like, lived out.

Lastly, what are the results of discernment? When I was that twenty-one-year-old and I gave the ring back that night in college, part of my fear, part of my deep desire for discernment, was I wanted a promise that if I married this person everything would go okay. Discernment is not a promise that everything will go okay. Jesus discerned that He had come to bear the sins of the world. He knew exactly what God was calling Him to. Discernment does not equal an easy life; it does equal a life that is lived, not death. We know that folly only leads to death.

But it doesn’t mean easy. The Bible never promises easy. We make up promises to ourselves that the Bible does not promise us, all the time. I do it. I’m like, “Oh, yes.” You read the Bible and you’re like, “Oh, yes, He keeps talking about suffering and hard things and carrying your cross. Oh yes, that’s what He said!”

Discernment might show us to choose really hard paths. It might not be what is easy, but it might be what is wise. I have a daughter right now who is thinking about going on the mission field. It’s not easy. She’s going to leave a lot of comfort. She’s like, “But Mom, I want to go!” I’m like, “Praise the Lord.” That’s a discerning woman, who can choose what is hard because she knows heaven rules. She knows there are people who will spend an eternity separated from God if they do not have someone come tell them the good news. So discernment might lead us to really hard things and really radical choices, and that is the wisest way to live. That is not foolish; that is wisdom.

Discernment—the passage we read earlier, when Paul prayed for them, it said that discernment will allow them to approve what is excellent. Here’s the thing. When you start to be a woman who is soaked in God’s Word, you’ll just start to smell that things are off. What I don’t want, especially if you’re a women's ministry leader, one of the worst things you can think is, “I need to read every Christian book so I can tell my women which ones not to read.” You need to keep putting the Word of God before them. Keep showing them truth, keep showing them truth, keep showing them truth. Then, when that counterfeit comes, they’re going to be like, “That is not right!” They are going to smell that it’s off. They’re going to know it’s bad.

There was a firefighter I read about—I love Reader’s Digest. I’m a mess. I really do love Reader’s Digest, and this was in Reader’s Digest. He was going to fight a fire, and immediately he got in there and he told his whole team, “Get out now.” As soon as they did, the whole floor fell in. He had fought so many fires, he just knew something was off.

We want to be women—raising women and teaching other women in our communities not every bad thing—we want to teach them every good thing so that they can know when there are bad things around. That’s what we want. We want strong women who can discern for themselves truth from error, fact from fiction. That’s what we’re hoping to do.

The second thing this passage tells us: so that we are “pure and blameless, filled with the fruit of righteousness.” Our goal for discernment is not an easy life, it is a life that looks like Jesus. We want to live a life that shows to the watching world we are being transformed day by day into the image of Jesus, so that we walk out into a world that is desperate and lonely and needy and we speak, “There is something better that has come, and there is a new kingdom. Come be a part of it.” He will make our lives shine to the watching world. We will be made pure and blameless, filled with righteousness, to the glory and praise of God.

The goal of discernment is not that we get the life of our dreams; the goal of discernment is that we glorify God with our lives. That’s the goal, that’s the path of life. That’s the way we really live. We live in His courts, we run in the path of His commands, because He set our hearts free! That’s life! That’s what we’re seeking to discern. We’re not discerning what’s the easiest, best life for me, we’re discerning, “What’s the best life to glorify God?” That’s our hope in all of this.

We know that God is the source of our discernment, God’s Word is the means of our discernment, and God’s glory is the goal of our discernment. I’ll say that again. God is the source (“the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”), God’s Word is the means by which we become women who are discerning, and God’s glory is the goal.

At the beginning of this talk I told you about the guy I gave the ring back to. You may wonder what happened to him. He has been married for twenty-five years, he has three great kids, he’s the president of RTS, his name is Mike, and he is my husband. [Laughter]. The good news about discernment and the good news about the fact that heaven rules is that the Lord will get us where He wants to get us. I thought I had a decision that rested on me, but God showed me, “I’m going to get you where you need to go.” Just like He led the Israelites by the Red Sea to get to the Promised Land, even though it was the most circuitous route and it didn’t make any sense, He had something to prove, and it was His glory. You know, I don’t know all the reasons why God led me on the path—and please, if you are trying to decide whether to marry, I cannot tell you if you should marry the person. I get all these questions. “Do you think I should marry—”. Talk to someone in your local community who knows you. That’s what I always say. With discernment, you should talk to someone who really knows you and the person.

But the Lord led me on a path, and this is the thing about discernment: A “no” one day might become a “yes” another day. A “no” in one season might be a “yes” in another season. That’s the beauty of discernment. The hope of discernment is not that we know how it will turn out, but we know who will be there. Because heaven rules, we can open our hearts and say, “I do not know what to do, but my eyes are on You, and I will go where You lead and I will follow and I will say yes to Your commands and I will run in Your ways. I may not know where that will lead, but I trust You, Lord.”

The Lord had to do work in my heart for me to believe I could say yes to marriage, not because I knew it would be easy but because God would be there no matter what happened. I’m thankful I said yes. I’m super thankful; I almost tear up talking about it. So that’s the goal of our discernment. God’s the source, the Word is the means, and His glory is our goal. Let’s be women who pray. Let’s pray.

Father, we desperately need Your Word. We need a deeper fear of You. We need a belief that Your Word is life and joy and radiance. Lord, convict us to be women of the Word. Let us tell the next generation the goodness of the things that You have in store for those who love You. Let us be women who know Your Word, let us be women who delight in Your Word, let us be women who obey Your Word. Let it ooze from us in such a way that the watching world wants to know about the hope that we have. Lord, we pray that You would make us discerning women so that we live lives that glorify and honor You in all we do. Lord, we thank You for Jesus. We thank You that He came to this earth and lived and died so that we might be able to walk anew with You. Thank You for answering all of our fears with the promise, “I will be with you.” Thank You, Jesus. It’s in Your name we pray, amen.

All Scripture is taken from the ESV unless otherwise noted.