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How to know what we don't know.

When I was a young boy living in the time where there was only 3 channels on a tube powered television, my imagination was left to it's own means.  In a manner of speaking, before I was corrupted, I always believed I could fly. How could this be? Where did this come from? I had never seen anybody fly. I had seen nothing of the sorts on television.  Yet, there it was. As I was talking about this to my wife, she replied "Because we were meant to fly."  My first reaction was, "Good point." My second was in the amazement of my wife's reply which brought me to discernment. What is discernment? It's really unexplainable.  The same applies to grace. I then started thinking about being a young boy and until I read the story of Jesus walking on water I had never thought about it.  Now why is that?

I was saved at the age of 8 years old. My bus driver at the time would offer to take us children to a local church after school. I had felt led to go. Though my mother was raised Catholic, my father and sister believers, this was not by their influence.  It was by my own choice.  Again, bringing me back to discernment.  After reading the story of Jesus, living about a hundred yards from a lake, I walked down to the water where there was a dock. At this time I had absolutely no doubt that I could walk on water.  Absolutely none.  That confidence and conviction I have yet to reach again.  At the last moment, there it was, doubt.    There was no fear involved.  There was a shoreline.  If I stepped off the dock, the water was only two feet.  The worst that could happen is that my clothes would get wet.

 Bringing me right back to discernment.  When I think about atheists I believe there are none.  I believe most of them are angry with God or people choose not to believe.  Which brings me back to the beginning of my story.  How did I know these things or feel this way?  Was it my imagination or was it discernment? A bit of a side track, on a funny note.  Why do people who feel like they can fly always feel the need to jump off something for instance a roof. Okay, back to reality. There is something called Ockham's razor.  This means  the simplest answer  in all probability is the correct one.  Stay with me, this is all adding up.  When the bible was written 12 men of faith were given many different scripts.  They were to go away in secrecy and come back on a specific date and time having to choose which of the scripts should be put in what we now know as the Holy Bible.  They all came back with the exact same books.   The writers of the bible, though are not questioned as to being real, they have been said to have made this up out of their own imagination.

 How and why?  The stories of the bible link so perfectly together that when taken out of context they may contradict themselves, but when read from start to finish they are in perfect alignment, so much so that the imagination could not have possibly created these words. And without discernment  there is no possible way that these individual men could have written stories on their own that would perfectly connect.  Understand? And as we all have seen the ugliness of human nature, why write stories  about men, other than themselves, about entities, about love, about God, about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit for the benefit of mankind, not for themselves.

So taking everything I've said from start to finish, from my childhood, from imagination, growing into a man, being corrupted, knowing things that should not be known from the beginning of my life.  Well, that is discernment.  It's not thought or instinct.  The interesting thing is that we all have discernment, but we still have to pray to understand it.

A couple of interesting facts.  I was watching a very famous man on television who said he has been blessed his entire life.  Interesting enough to me that he used the word blessed, not lucky. Continuing on, he had stated that because of the horrible things in the world, though he wants to believe in God, he can't.  What? That makes no sense at all.  When I listen to atheists, they spend a lot of time complaining and trying to disprove  someone and something they don't believe in. I don't believe in Santa Clause, but I don't feel the need to spend my time trying to disprove it to others.

The interesting part is, why are the most blessed, the ones who don't believe the most?  An atheist would say well when you're suffering you need something to grasp or hold onto. Well, when I was a boy I was not suffering nor ill.  I had no fear. I could never understand how people didn't believe.  Though I have had my moments of questioning.  So I ask you this, how many times in your life have you seen a person do something for someone else without having personal gain?  Why would a group of men get together and write such an elaborate story for the betterment of mankind?

When in human nature have you ever seen that done? There's so many points that I could bring up, my wife would be typing for hours.  So how do we know what we don't know? Because discernment tells us that we don't know it, which makes us want to. But remember, it is a gift. A gift that we have already been given, but may have never unwrapped and opened.  Some may be asking, well Joshua, there are people who do that today.  The simple answer to that is that we have a point of reference. We have the bible. A study guide, if you will, to look in to help give us answers to our questions.  So I ask you this, what other book, what other writing or script can you do this with? Because it was written and given to us and for us and knowing that, my friends, is the example of true discernment.


~Joshua Jet Vaughan~