My brother-in-law and I were talking yesterday morning about some of the ones we work with in the counseling world. It is easy to fall into the thinking that they could improve much more quickly if they’d only let some of their behaviors/beliefs go and “stick with the healthy plan”. We got into the topic of Judgment vs Discernment. It is so easy to jump into judgment when someone doesn’t see things or do things similarly to oneself. 

I have a brother where it has been easy for me to quickly step into judgment. He and I rarely see life through a common lens. He is 12 years older than me so our lives never had a common path until I entered into the adult world and he moved to Idaho. His profession is the same as mine so I thought we’d have much in common. That didn’t prove to be true. Over the years I’ve fallen into judgment more than once with him. It would either be him judging me or vise versa. 

When we were having the conversation yesterday about this topic of judgment I realized just how much I have judged. I needed to see this and this morning I’ve confessed it asking for the gift of discernment to replace it. Judging builds walls and this I don’t want to be a part of doing. God is never done awakening us to our flesh. I just had my own awakening!