Telephone Call to Discernment

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The phone shrilled, percussive in the backdrop of an ordinary evening.  I answered it. 

“Hey, Lauren, remember me?”  For a moment, I couldn’t say that I did, and then she prompted me with her name: “It’s Sophie.” 

Oh yes.  And I remembered. 

I met Sophie on a very long one day skiing trip with siblings, Papa, and two good friends.  Along for the ride was a group of young people I didn’t know from a local church, including Sophie who had, in some sense of the word, charisma.   

As soon as I met Sophie and she offered a glimmering, “It’s great to meet you!” I wanted to be her friend.  The whole vehicle laughed at her well-timed quips—she was hilarious, and I began to keenly feel my own lack of wit.  Somehow, even with her thick ski pants and coat, she managed to look wonderful—she was cute, and I suddenly despised my Michelin-man-style outfit.  She used words that had never had a niche in my vocabulary before—words like the hazy if not endearing adjective “gnarly.”  She was an older girl, and I felt young and unsophisticated next to her, but not because Sophie looked down on me.  I was engulfed in my own fear of man: my desire to have Sophie think well of me. 

Even while she made me laugh and engaged me in conversation, however, I began to observe her actions and demeanor, and I began to notice things that made me decidedly uncomfortable.  I wavered between loving her and being confused by some of her standards.  Then, at one point in the day we were discussing skiing and, as if she were opening her arm to let me into her circle, she offered to let Mikaela and I know when she and her friends were next going skiing so we could go with them.  We exchanged phone numbers because I did very much want to go, yet there was still that same uncomfortable feeling in my heart.  I was inexplicably enamored with this girl, and therein lay my danger, for any friendship that begins with caring more about the other person's good opinion than God's is doomed.

I am certain that I am not the only one who has wrestled, discernment against desire, with how close a relationship you can have with a person who knows God and claims Him as her Savior, yet has areas of carelessness in her life.  How close can you get to someone whose charisma and likeability is magnetizing without her standards and worldliness becoming magnetizing as well?  This is not about discipling or seeking for opportunities to minister in the context of family or giving a friendly greeting when you see the person: this is about a relationship.  For even in “hanging out,” a relationship is being developed in which you rub off on the other person and she rubs off on you. 

How close do you want to get?  How much like that person does God want you to be? 

Malachi 3:17-18 says,

“‘They shall be Mine,’ says the LORD of hosts, On the day that I make them My jewels.  And I will spare them As a man spares his own son who serves him.’  Then you shall again discern Between the righteous and the wicked, Between one who serves God And one who does not serve Him.”

That telephone ring was a call to discernment for me.  A call to discern between me serving God or man.  A call to choose my friends with the utmost care.  A call to remind me that I am the Lord's jewel, not someone who needs to fear what others think about me. 

Yes, I remembered Sophie as I talked to her on the phone, and I loved her, prayed for her, and secreted no illusions that I was more righteous than her—it was my own weakness that had got me into this dilemma in the first place!  But I also knew what God wanted me to say when she invited Mikaela and I to go skiing with her.  I took a deep breath and began to speak. 

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.