Hebrews 5:14
“But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”
I am at that age when the eyes don't see as good as they used to. I am the only one in my family who has never had to wear glasses. In fact, when I was in my early twenties, the eye doctor told me that my eyesight was the best of all his patients.
Recently, my eyes were giving me a bit of a problem. While I was preaching for a good friend, he had an eye doctor who attended his church. I told him that I needed to get my eyes checked, so she worked me into her schedule. During the eye exam, she asked me if I could see the letters clearly. She would then make an adjustment on the lens and asked me again if I could see the letters clearly or if there needed to be more adjustment. The adjustments she made on the lens helped me to distinguish clearly what I thought I saw. Sometimes my original assessment was right, but there were a couple of times what I thought I saw was not what I saw.
An eye exam is a great illustration of discernment. According to the verse above, discernment helps a person determine what is right and wrong. Without discernment, a person looks at situations in life with blurred vision. When things are blurry and you make decisions off your perception, you could make a wrong decision because your spiritual perception didn't allow you to properly discern the situation. If you are going to avoid making wrong decisions, your spiritual eyes need to have the proper discernment so you can perceive everything through the eyes of God.
You are only going to have discernment when you are willing to say some things are good and others are bad. If you don't have the stomach to differentiate between good and bad, your discernment will be blurred. Discernment doesn't allow you to see gray areas, but discernment sees everything in black and white. You will not have discernment if you are not willing to say something is wrong. For the sake of getting along many people will not say something is wrong. Friend, if you can't exercise your spiritual senses to say something is wrong when you know it is, you will never have the discernment to see ahead. According to the verse above, discernment is acquired through use. If you won’t say, “Yes” or “No” based off what you do know, your spiritual eyes will continue to stay blurry.
Moreover, you will never have discernment without spending time in God’s Word. Discernment is seeing through the eyes of God. You will never see through His eyes if you don't daily spend time in His Word. God’s Word builds your senses to know what is good and bad.
Furthermore, you will never have discernment without yielding to the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is like spiritual glasses. Without being filled with the Spirit, you will never see things through the eyes of God. By yielding to the Holy Spirit, He will help you to see everything through God’s eyes.
Very few people have discernment. Without discernment, you will find yourself making many mistakes that you’ll regret. With discernment, you will avoid the pitfalls others couldn't see because discernment will allow you to clearly see them.