January 18, 2026
• Rev. Mindie Moore
Pursuing God’s Will Together Week 3: Foundational Beliefs for Discernment
1 Corinthians 2:11-12; 1 John 4: 10-12; Mark 3:35
Remind about upcoming launch and adjustments—FEBRUARY 8! (SHOW SLIDE FROM LAST WEEK)
PRAY
This is the third week of our series on discernment, that we’re basing on Ruth Haley Barton’s book Pursuing God’s Will Together. So far, we’ve talked a bit about what discernment is and how to be open to it; we’ve explored the future of our church and the discernment that will be present in this next season. Today, we’re going to talk about the foundational beliefs that we build our practice of discernment on and WHY those are so essential to developing this work.
Honestly, talking about discerning God’s will can be a pretty tricky thing. Even that phrase can conjure up some heavy baggage for some of us. We could all probably talk about times when we’ve seen this concept weaponized and used to harm people. After all, you can pretty much say ANYTHING was God’s will, can’t you? We’ve seen, throughout history, whole groups of people be enslaved or marginalized because someone with power claimed to be doing “the will of God.” We’ve witnessed other faiths be attacked, both interpersonally and through policies and systems in the name of being “faithful to God’s call.” Even just a week ago, a man in Mississippi set fire to a synagogue and referred back to his faith as a motivator for a hate crime.
And it’s not always quite that serious or consequential, but these misuses of the idea of following God’s will can still leave us with a really bad taste in our mouths. When I was in college, I was part of a group that was serving in Northern Ireland for a mission trip. We were working with a local organization and they had a lot of contact with a lot of people in the area, so throughout the two weeks we were there, there were all these different people who were in and out. One guy joined us about halfway through our time, and he very immediately and assertively claimed that he was a prophet and he was there to help us understand God’s will for us, and for the entire land of Northern Ireland! This was all proclaimed in the first meeting...it was a lot.
At first, we were kind of patient, trying to be a considerate group of Americans in a different country and culture, and we tried to help him feel like part of the group. But as the days went on, he got really rude about the whole thing. He knew EVERYTHING and no one could have any other kind of opinion on ANY subject because HE firmly believed that had a direct line to what God had to say. This applied to everything from pop culture to politics to weather predictions.
And it was actually the weather that ended his time with us. I remember that on that day, all morning he had been telling us it was going to rain. To give you some context, had he been right, it would not have been particularly impressive...it had rained every day on our trip). But he boldly predicted the weather and told us that God had given him a message that we needed to bring our rain gear. But then—and this is one of those moments I believe God must have some kind of sense of humor—IT WAS SUNNY ALL DAY LONG! The only day of the trip that was like that! And when someone in our group decided to say what everyone was thinking and questioned this guy’s prophetic abilities...you might guess that he did NOT appreciate that insight. He moved on from the ministry and our group that evening.
So I think about stories like that; I think about the more serious and significant examples from our history...and I can very easily understand why we might have a wariness or skepticism when we talk about understanding the will of God. I can easily see why things like discernment might feel like a faulty science or like something that is really difficult to trust.
And it’s BECAUSE it’s so difficult to inherently trust in the will of God and BECAUSE things can go sideways so easily when we CLAIM that we’re acting out of that will, having a strong foundation of what we believe becomes so critical to the practice of discernment. (SLIDE) We need to know what we believe about God’s character and how God works in order to effectively engage this practice.
Now, today, my job is not to give you an exhaustive list of all the things that you MUST believe about God in order to practice discernment. I’m sure there are things you would add to the ones I’ll suggest. But what I do want to do is offer a few starting points and places to operate from, and to invite us to just begin to untangle some of our more limiting beliefs so we can engage in a deeper way. I am NOT saying that you have to have all of your theology figured out, or your spiritual wounds healed, or false narratives perfectly reshaped. But these four beliefs we’re going to talk about...they matter. And digging into them, I hope, will help us as we engage in what is a pretty vulnerable and tender spiritual practice.
So the first core belief that is SO important for us to hold as we try to discern is that:
(SLIDE) God is good.
Now, ok, I know this one seems obvious. We say things like, “God is good—All the time. All the time—God is good.” And that’s really fun in church!
But I’m not sure we always truly believe this as we relate to God. In fact, Ruth Haley Barton says in her book Pursuing God’s Will Together, “Many of us don’t believe in God’s goodness enough to trust God with the things that are most important to us. We may have suffered things for which we subtly blame God. Perhaps God disappointed us when we trusted Him with something important…How can we give ourselves to someone we’re not sure will be good to us?” (p. 55)
For many years, I existed in church spaces where the overwhelming narrative was that God was an angry being, just waiting for me and everyone I knew to mess up so we could be punished. More people were heading to hell than would get into heaven. There was so much fear and shame baked into that view of God that even declaring something like “God is good” felt like it came with a thousand asterisks next to it. In reality...God was scary. God was demanding. God was supposed to be trusted, but God was not safe.
It took a lot of study and time really getting deep into the Bible, a lot of experience, a lot of therapy, a lot of hearing other people’s stories about God’s goodness and different ways to experience faith to move beyond that view of who God is. I would guess that some of you are either still carrying that narrative or you’re super close to it and it gets bumped into with decent regularity. If that’s NOT you, guess what? You’re worshipping alongside people who it IS their story. And I love that we get to create a church where we can be in different spaces on how we relate to God and have empathy and room for each other. That’s such a gift.
And I think what’s so amazing is that we get to be living examples of God’s goodness and kindness. I think about Stephen Ministry, and what we saw in that video earlier. When we show up for each other, when we forgive each other and show grace, when we speak the truth with love and are willing to have honest conversations...those are all ways that we point back to the goodness of God. And as we reflect that goodness, there’s so much healing and hope that can come from simply showing up for each other. You never know when you demonstrate God’s goodness like that what doors you’re going to help open for someone to be able to encounter God in a new way.
The second core belief is that:
(SLIDE) God is revealing
The passage we read from 1 Corinthians 2:11-12 says that we have God’s Spirit with us, and that through that Spirit, God reveals to us wisdom and discernment.
I always love talking about the mystery of God, and it’s a healthy thing to let God be as big and mysterious as God truly is. There ARE things we will never fully understand about who God is and how God works. But what’s so incredible about our God is that God isn’t ONLY this great big mystery. God is also relational. God is also loving. God is also present.
I don’t think it’s any kind of accident that when Jesus was getting ready to leave his disciples, that he emphasized that he would be leaving the Holy Spirit with them. They might not have him right there to have a conversation with or ask questions to, but God’s Spirit was going to be something that they could hold on to. And that Spirit would be found in the quiet moments of prayer; it would be found in their intuition; it would be found in each other, as they lived in community.
That Spirit would be there for them, to guide them. To make sure they still felt this deep connection to God and weren’t isolated, on their own. To make sure that they could keep moving forward and doing God’s work in the world.
God’s Spirit shows us what we need to keep moving towards whatever’s next for us. It might be subtle, we might have to be so hyper intentional to notice it...but God’s not tricky. God’s never out to harm us. God is walking with us, guiding us, giving us nudges and glimpses to help us discern what to do.
And as we follow those glimpses and nudges, it’s so good for us to keep the third core belief in mind. To remember that:
(SLIDE) The love of God is our ultimate call
This is the bigger picture that holds all the little details and decisions we find ourselves trying to discern. And I really, truly believe, as someone who is a compulsive planner and always wants to know with certainty what’s next, I truly believe that if we can make our lives about living out God’s love...I think we’re going to be ok. I think we’re going to be on the right track and firmly planted within the will of God. I think this is what Jesus cares about so much more than us getting our lives perfectly ironed out and making every “right” decision.
Listen again to what it says in 1 John:
11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:10-12
As we love each other, God’s loving nature, God’s goodness, God’s ability to reveal Godself...it’s made real. If we’re chasing that love and we’re doing everything we can to live out those pieces of God’s nature, I don’t see how we’re going to be heading in the wrong direction. Because that love is powerful. That love creates a life that’s full of meaning and hope.
Rev. Lizzie McManus-Dail has a book of devotions called “God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us” and it might be something you want to check out, especially if you’re in that place of trying to reshape some of these core beliefs. I want to share with you what she says about this passage out of 1 John and what it looks like for the love of God to be our ultimate call:
Sometimes God feels like a blanket that envelops me, and the world, and everyone I encounter. Like the exposure settings are both over-bright and perfectly warm, like I can see everyone and everything and our threads of connection.
At other times, the despair is enormous. God can feel far away, or impossible to grasp. And when we cannot feel that love, when the despair is too much, when we are full of rage that God could let this happen...our task is maybe not to love God in some big, holy, sky-reaching praise but to love the people God gave us right here. Love them imperfectly, inevitable. But love them. Love ourselves. And let this love ground us.
Because that love is God saying: I am with you, always. Even here. Even now. --Rev. Lizzy McManus-Dail “God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us.”
One final thought as we wrap up today. I don’t have a foolproof, multistep process to ensuring we’re following God’s will. But here’s what I do know, and have experienced, and I would guess you have too:
(SLIDE) As we do God’s will, we experience God’s presence
Jesus says in Mark 3 that whoever does God’s will is his sibling. There’s a closeness we experience with God when we are in tune, discerning, loving others and, working to follow God’s leading. It doesn’t mean life will always be easy or that we won’t have challenges or heartbreaks. But it does mean that in the midst of those things, we will experience God’s closeness.
So my encouragement to all of us today is that when we sense God nudging us, when we start to discern a path forward...follow that. Do the thing, take the risk. Because you just never know how God might show up.
Robin Chaddock attends the North Indy campus and if you were at the Soul Care retreat in 2025, she was the keynote speaker. She told Pastor Rob a story last week that I wanted to share with you too. She recently became involved in a prison ministry, where she goes and teaches classes at a men’s prison. And many of the people who teach there are kind of obligated to, but Robin just felt called to serve there, like God was inviting her into this way of living out the love we’ve been talking about.
And not too long ago, one of the people in her class, who had been pretty standoffish, kind of annoyed by her presence, he came up to her and just asked, point blank, “why are you here?” So she just was honest and said, “I feel like God has called me here, to serve you all.”
And that answer, changed the dynamic. It shifted the way that she and this person related to each other. It even changed the way she viewed what she’s been doing there. She listened to the nudges that God’s Spirit was giving her, about serving in this place that is so different from anywhere she’s served before. And as she followed that direction, she’s encountered God’s presence, again and again...and other people have encountered God’s presence through her.
So I wonder today, as the band comes up, and we get ready to close our Sunday worship time...which of these beliefs could you spend a little more time with this week? Which of these beliefs needs some tending to because it might be getting in the way of your practice of discernment?
However you answer that, here’s what I’ll always remind you of—God is faithful as we wrestle with these things. God is faithful as we examine beliefs we’ve held for a long time; as we try to discern what God’s will looks like lived out in our lives.
God is faithful. And for all the questions we hold, for all work we want to do, for all we want to know more about...we do all of that built on this solid foundation of that faithfulness. And that faithfulness is something we can hold on to and trust with all our hearts.
Let’s pray.