The Spirit of Discernment

If we follow the word discern back to its Latin roots, it basically means to sift. We sift wheat to separate the grains from the chaff. We sift through dirt to separate out the gold. Whether we want it or not, all of us have millions of thoughts flowing through our minds every day. Most of these just pop into our head without any effort on our part, although, even despite our best efforts, some of them refuse to get out of our heads as quickly as we would like. Since these stray, random, unbidden thoughts use a lot of the same mental muscles as those we use when we choose to think about something, we tend to assume that our thoughts and who we are deep down are one in the same. After all, didn't Descartes famously say, “I think, therefore I am.” But when we are filled with the Spirit of Discernment, we recognize that we have the power and agency to sift through all of the thoughts flowing through us and to separate out that which is important and beneficial, and that which is not. As King Benjamin counseled us, “But this much I can tell you, that if ye do not watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds, and observe the commandments of God, and continue in the faith of what ye have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even unto the end of your lives, ye must perish. And now, O man, remember, and perish not.” (Mosiah 4:30). When we are filled with the Spirit of Discernment, we watch ourselves and we watch our thoughts. We recognize that we don't have the time or the energy or the obligation to give equal weight and consideration to every single thought that crosses our mind. We can let the wind sweep away like chaff every idle thought and passing fancy and let only the heavier, more substantial grains and kernels of truth sink deep into our hearts. When the Savior warned Simon Peter, “And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:” (Luke 22:31), the danger wasn't in the sifting itself. We can and ought to sift as wheat through the thoughts in our mind. But we are the ones who should be doing the sifting. Satan wants to take over that responsibility and do the sifting for us. Stop putting in so much effort trying to figure out which thoughts are worth keeping and which ones aren't, he might say to us. Let me help. Let me tell you what's important and what's not. You just focus on having as much fun as possible and turn your brains off and I'll take care of the rest. If we are not doing the sifting ourselves, then someone else is doing it. And he does not have our best interest at heart. We can't afford to put ourselves on autopilot. We can't afford to trust that what has worked in the past will continue to work in the future. Every day of our lives we are thrust into new challenges and trials and we have to be constantly watching our thoughts and our words and our deeds, sifting through them with the Spirit of Discernment so that we may know the exact right course of action for this specific circumstance. I know that if we obey the commandments and keep our covenants and maintain ourselves worthy of the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, we will be given the energy and the capacity to sift through all of our thoughts and we will be blessed with the Spirit of Discernment so that we may know which thoughts are worth holding onto and which we should allow to blow away like chaff on the wind.