Bible Study: Easter 7 (B) – 2015

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Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

Trying to discern God’s will for our lives is a serious matter. We make decisions and choose courses of action all the time that we hope are for the best, but many of us would desperately love to know what God would have us do. Whether we are casting lots, randomly picking passages out of the Bible, or reading tea leaves, we are grasping at trying to make sense of our lives and to find some sort of profound guidance in an otherwise swirling sea of potential good choices and bad choices.

It is helpful to look at the approach the Apostles took in choosing their new member. Yes, they dearly wanted to know what God wanted them to do, but they tried to be in a kind of model of mutual discernment with God. Acts states that they prayed over their choice and worked to discern from all of their options down to two people, then they left room for God to work in their lives. It was a careful balance of not trying to wrestle control away from God but also not washing their hands of any responsibility. May we all strive to make decisions in such a way, holding lightly both the importance of our own discernment with trust in God’s grace.

• When do you find yourself trying to wrestle control of your life away from God?
• When do you find yourself letting go of responsibility for your own decisions?
• How can you try to hold self-reliance and trusting in God in balance?

Psalm 1

When trying to discern God’s will in our lives, there is a danger in thinking that outcomes are God’s judgment upon us. We are taught throughout the Bible that great blessings flow upon those who make choices that are pleasing to God, and great disaster befalls those who make choices that are displeasing to God. A side effect of this is a great number of people who feel like bad things happen to them because they did things in their lives that God did not like and God is punishing them for it. This can be disastrous for a person’s sense of well being as well as corrupting of his or her relationship with the church.

In our eagerness to see God’s will at work, we need to be careful in assigning God’s motivations to events. Instead, Psalm 1 teaches us that our own motivations to follow God lead us to delight. The psalm is an insight into our relationship with a God who loves us dearly and always wants what is best for us. God loves us, so if we “meditate day and night” on what God wants for us, God is watching over us.

• When have you felt like suffering was a judgment against you?
• Where have you seen other people struggle with feeling like God is punishing them?
• How can you be a part of sharing God’s love with those who are suffering?

1 John 5:9-13

The Johannine community from which this letter came was surrounded by very God-loving people who were also deeply divided with one another about how best to go about loving God. This letter came from a people who believed that they had discerned God’s will in the best way that they could and were trying to share what they had discerned with those around them. Other Jewish communities and fellow Christian communities alike sometimes took the approach of excommunicating them, cutting off their relationships, or undermining their teachings; yet the Johannine community’s proclamation of God’s love for us and God’s promise of eternal life through Christ survives to this day.

Sometimes after carefully discerning what you think is right, some people are still going to disagree with you and challenge you. This is particularly true when trying to discern what God would have us do. Struggling with doubts in the face of such adversity is understandable. When in doubt, know that if the path you have discerned has led you to proclaiming God’s love in word and deed, has led you to be a more loving person to those around you, or has helped open you to believing in God’s promise of life everlasting, then you can be confident that you have not been led astray from God.

• What do you do when others challenge what you feel is right?
• When have others saved you from making a mistake that you thought was right?
• What can you do to discern the difference between the two?

John 17:6-19

In his book “Thoughts in Solitude” (Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1958), Thomas Merton offers a very useful prayer for those trying to discern:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

This prayer includes the statement that we do not really know what the future holds for us or what God’s plan is, but that if we do our best to try to do what we think our part in it is, that God will be pleased with us for trying. Merton can express this in good confidence because we learn much of what God expects from us in the actions of Christ in the gospels.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus’ disciples make lots of mistakes; they try very hard to do what they think is best but fall short of perfection, just like the rest of us. In the end, Christ still calls them his people, still loves them, and still wants them to receive eternal life just for believing in him.

God does not expect perfection from any of us. If we try our best to discern God’s will in our lives, God will love us for doing our best. In the midst of a world where there is too much going on to make sense of it all and too many things vying for our attention all the time, remember to think of God’s love and our own call to love, and you will be dwelling in the world but being a part of what God wants for this world.

• When do you find yourself discerning what God wants from you?
• When do you find yourself discerning what God wants for you?
• How can you be what God wants for the world?

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