Customer Reviews

The Voice of Jesus: Discernment, Prayer and the Witness of the Spirit

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This book is a wonderful guide on listening to the Holy Spirit. I love to read books that teach me how to judge well instead of making judgments for me. Gordon T. Smith is a masterful teacher, encouraging us to listen in order to discern well. This book is thought-provoking and smooth to read.

This is an excellent text that reviews the spiritual discipline practices of Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley and Ignatius of Loyola. He addresses the question of whether or not "God speaks today," in a thoroughly biblical manner. Smith looks at the inner witness of the Holy Spirit and gives guidelines on how to discern. He sees the capacity to discern as a critical sign of spiritual maturity. Smith is careful to steer clear of both the cold rationalism that quenches the Holy Spirit, but also the unbridled emotionalism that fosters presumption. I do not believe the author is a "charismatic," but then again he is also not a cessationist. An example (p. 53), "Discernment, then, is not merely a matter of rational analysis, of weighing the pros and cons and seeking to respond with a biblically informed mind to the options we are facing, Neither is discernment a matter of pure revelation, what some call a "word from the Lord." Rather, it is a way of knowing and seeing that is experienced as a profound interplay of intellect and emotion in which head and heart are informing and guiding each other." The writing throughout this book is crisp, winsome and engaging to the reader. It is not a polemic though I believe a soft heart will be strongly challenged by his words.

Smith takes the spiritual traditions of three different Christian leaders -- a Jesuit (Ignatius), a Methodist (Wesley), and a Puritan (Edwards) -- and pulls out their commonality. This is molded into a model for understanding God's intentions ... or as the book title makes clear, a method for hearing the voice of Jesus. I especially enjoyed his take on "community" as neither being modeled in the individual autonomy of the West nor the Eastern model "which subsumes the individual within the collective". The last chapter, on the process of communal discernment, may be the best. An excellent book.

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