Listening and discerning

The Voice of Jesus: Discernment, Prayer and the Witness of the Spirit Gordon T. Smith. InterVarsity Press, 2003. 266 pages.

Some months ago, there was a discussion on MB Forum about the practice of contemplative prayer. In the course of it, some basic questions seemed to emerge: how does God speak to us, and how do we know it is God speaking and not someone or something else?

(A similar question – how do we know what God is saying today? – was recently raised for discussion in reference to the women in leadership ministry resolution facing the MB Conference.)

Gordon T. Smith, president of Overseas Council Canada, former associate professor of spiritual theology at Regent College in Vancouver, author of Listening to God in Times of Choice and Courage and Calling, and columnist at ChristianWeek, addresses these questions in his latest book.

Smith has absolutely no doubt that we can know “the voice of Jesus.” We know it because, as the Bible teaches, the Spirit is present in us.

He takes the question of “whose voice” we hear very seriously, however, for we are human and fallen and prone to any manner of error and delusion. Discernment is required “to make a distinction between the voice of Jesus and those competing voices that invariably speak in our hearts and minds.”

The “inner witness” of the Spirit, Smith asserts, is not something vague but can be defined. (By inner witness he means “a direct, unmediated impression on the heart and mind of the Christian believer,” which may come by various means.) It has two anchors: it is grounded in the “written witness of the Spirit” (the Bible), and “it is recognized by those who live in mutual submission within the community of faith.”

Upon this foundation of confidence that we can, just like the first disciples, “[learn] to live by the voice of Jesus,” Smith builds understanding of and tools for discernment. He addresses the role of emotion or “affect” in our spiritual lives. He finds in three key leaders in three streams of historic Christianity – Ignatius Loyola, John Wesley and John Edwards – a “remarkable congruency” that spiritual transformation comes to us “through what is happening to us affectively,” that is, through the “emotional dispositions of our hearts.”

Smith then examines in some detail four aspects of the Spirit’s witness in our hearts: the assurance of God’s love, the conviction of sin, the illumination of the mind, and guidance in times of choice. He writes about the importance of humility, “the principle of holy indifference,” true and false guilt, praying in order to hear, peace and joy as critical “indicators,” awareness of what St. Ignatius called “consolation” and “desolation” in our lives, and much more.

Several chapters are given to the matter of making decisions, both individually and as groups. For the latter, Smith proposes a process of “communal discernment” which sets aside both the democratic model of one vote per person and the hierarchical model in which leadership decides. (Consensus decision making is problematic too, he says.) Communal discernment affirms the role of leadership, the “appropriate” voice of each member, and the unique gift of discernment.

Smith’s treatment of the subject is solid, well-written (though not undemanding), and wise. The core of it will reiterate for many readers biblical teaching they know, but in addition there are many practical insights for application and bridges to contemporary interest in spiritual formation. There is no razzle-dazzle here and very few anecdotes, so this book probably won’t make it to the front of the store. That’s unfortunate, for this is good ground to walk (or, for the teacher, to lay) when learning to listen to the voice of Jesus.

Dora Dueck is associate editor of the Herald.