Charles Stanley (June-10-2024) Daily Devotional: Into the Great Depths of God.
We discover the best of God only through first-hand experience.
Psalm 119:97-99 - O how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, For they are ever mine. I have more insight than all my teachers, For Your testimonies are my meditation.
Spiritual discernment is the ability to see things from the Lord’s viewpoint. That means being able not only to separate truth from error but also to grasp the finer distinction between what is good and what is best. But how can we acquire such a skill?
In his classic work My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers gives us the answer. He writes, “Put everything in your life afloat upon God, going out to sea on the great swelling tide of His purpose, and your eyes will be opened. If you believe in Jesus, you are not to spend all your time in the calm waters just inside the harbor, full of joy, but always tied to the dock. You have to get out past the harbor into the great depths of God, and begin to know things for yourself—begin to have spiritual discernment.”
Trusting obedience is the first step to understanding, and it is something only God can bestow on us (1 Corinthians 2:12 - Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God). However, if we submit to our heavenly Father’s teachings and “cut the lines that tie [us] to the dock” as Chambers encourages, we will be blessed (John 13:16-17 -``Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. ``If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them). This is God’s desire for us. How could we want anything less?
