Amos Kim

“Practice: Remembering Your Personal History How have your decisions and actions affected the person you are today? This prayer exercise helps you write your personal history of sin and salvation. The purpose is to see yourself as God sees you, not to pass judgment on yourself. If you find yourself slipping into self-judgment, return to the first step and allow your focus to rest again on God’s loving presence with you. 1. Let the silence deepen around you. Ask the God who has known you since you were in your mother’s womb (Ps. 139) to allow you to become aware of God’s loving presence that surrounds you like air. 2. In the presence of this loving God, review your life, simply and humbly noticing what has been. First, without judging yourself, allow the hurtful, isolating, negative, and sinful things you have done (as well as the positive things you avoided doing) to surface in your awareness. Note each of these memories in your journal, and, as you do, offer a simple prayer of sorrow. 3. Next, without judging or congratulating yourself, allow a parallel history to form, this time a history of significant blessings and graces you have received. As you note each of these memories in your journal, offer a simple prayer of gratitude. 4. Looking at these two lists, what would you now like to say to God? Say it in your own way, perhaps writing it in your journal. 5. Listen to God’s words to you: “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow” (Isa. 1:18). “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, [God’s] mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning” (Lam. 3:22–23).”
― Elizabeth Liebert, The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making

“GATHERING AND INTERPRETING INFORMATION Practice: Gathering Relevant Data The quality of a decision is directly influenced by the quality of the data gathered. That faulty data leads to less effective decisions is a truism whether or not the decision is made within a context of discernment. Just because we are discerning, we can’t presume that God will magically make up for not doing this essential step. But what sets discernment apart from other decision making is that we do assume that the very process of data gathering can be set within the context of prayer—and that is the goal of this practice. 1. Pause as you begin this reflection and each time you work on the task of gathering data. Ask for God’s gracious presence and help to seek out what is relevant to your discernment. 2. Ponder various kinds of information that will bear on your decision: —Information about yourself, your personality, history, life experience, spirituality. —Information about your relationships with family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and enemies that will affect or be affected by the decision you are contemplating. —Information about the groups, agencies, and entities that you belong to or interact with or that will be operative in the decision you are contemplating. —Information about the human-made and natural environment, that is, the wide external context in which the decision is set. —Other information that will help you make an informed decision in this particular case; including, for example, background leading up to the situation you are now discerning, knowledge of the players and their relationships, projected possible out-comes—that is, anything that could impact the decision or its outcome. 3. Imagine how you can gather this relevant information. Make a plan about what information you need to gather, and outline the information-gathering process in your journal. 4. Begin gathering necessary information. As you do so, keep a record of what you find out, assembling the relevant information in a form and in an appropriate place where it will be accessible to your continuing discernment. (This process of data gathering may continue throughout your discernment.) 5. Offer this reflection and the sometimes tedious homework of data gathering back to God. Record in your discernment journal how the growing amount of data affects your discernment. Speak to God about what it reveals: about the situation, about you, and about your relationships, especially with God.”
― Elizabeth Liebert, The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making

“PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER: SEVEN STEPS FOR DISCERNING A DECISION How does one go about making a decision by means of discernment? I propose that discerned decision making proceeds in seven interwoven steps, which represent the components of a decision made by way of discernment. The steps represent a logical progression from the beginning to the end of a decision arrived at through discernment. Events in real life, however, can be less of a straight line and more of a circle; with discernment, you may expect to find that the progression of these steps is less linear than I suggest here. More importantly, some steps must be repeated regularly (1, 4, 6, 7), and some can change midstream (2, 3). Nonetheless, as you’ll discover, these seven steps will always be part of your discernment: 1. Seek spiritual freedom, the inner disposition upon which discernment rests and which creates the climate for discernment. Indeed, without this basic intention of seeking spiritual freedom, discernment collapses into self-assessment, self-improvement, or decision-making techniques—all of which can be good and helpful, but they are not discernment. The”
― Elizabeth Liebert, The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making

“Practice: Framing Your Discernment Question Clarifying the scope and content of your discernment can simplify the subsequent steps of your discernment process. This exercise sets that clarifying and winnowing of your issue or question within the context of a prayer that God will help you see clearly where you should focus your discernment. 1. Let the silence deepen around you. Enter into it. Ask God for the desire to follow God’s call in and through the decision you will be making. Do not rush. Simply turn your attention to God, as you experience God, and address your desire to God. 2. Describe the decision that you wish to discern. 3. Elaborate in your discernment journal the aspects of this decision that seem important to you at this point. 4. State as concisely as you can the decision before you. It will be helpful if you can formulate your issue in a question that can be answered yes/no (for example: “Should I begin to work outside our home?”). 5. Bring the issue and the process you’ve engaged in thus far to God and attend to any thoughts or feelings that arise in you. Note these stirrings in your journal. Your first statement of the decision before you may shift; if so, repeat steps 4 and 5 until you sense that you have as clear and concise a statement as possible at this point. STARTING”
― Elizabeth Liebert, The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making