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

“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

“Practice: Awareness Examen The Awareness Examen helps us look for the traces of God’s actions in our daily life. It is usually done in the evening looking back over the day, but you may also use it to pray about any other meaningful period of time (such as a week or a year), or discrete event (such as a meeting or a class). Allow between five and fifteen minutes for this spiritual exercise. This prayer is very flexible. You may use only the roman or italic lines, or you may use the entire prayer.”
― Elizabeth Liebert, The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making

“1. Begin, as always, by preparing your body for relaxed attentiveness, and also gathering your concerns and then letting go of them for the duration of this time of prayer. 2. When you are sufficiently quiet, inside and outside, ask God for the grace you desire: to remember and reexperience a moment in which God was clearly present to you. 3. Allow such an encounter with Holy Mystery to surface, waiting for it without anxiety and with anticipation. If other kinds of memories surface, set them aside. 4. When a memory of an experience of God does come, recall the experience in detail. What was the quality of the freedom you experienced then? Reexperience that freedom now. Record it in your journal. 5. If possible, find a time to relate this experience and the quality of freedom to another person: a friend, spouse, pastor, or spiritual director, for example. 6. Give thanks to God for the grace God gave you at that moment.”
― Elizabeth Liebert, The Way of Discernment: Spiritual Practices for Decision Making