THE AUDACIOUS ADVENTURE with Danica & Autumn

The Expected & UNEXPECTED Ways God Speaks to Us // Discernment Series (Part 2)

• Danica Childs • Episode 4

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What are the normal or usual ways God communicates with us -- and what are the surprising, out of left field, sometimes even CRAZY ways?  How do we discern if it's REALLY God speaking?  And what exactly IS discernment, anyway?  Well, for starters, Christian Discernment is a WHOLE body adventure with God -- our Divine Creator is continually creative in the ways He connects with us.  As we delve into this topic, we'll share our own UNEXPECTED God stories with you -- and tips on how to spot God's communications with you throughout your day.  Examples include Autumn's WACKY mountain top story (which showcases God's sense of humor!) and Danica's poignant experiences of God connecting with her at home in a couple rather UNCOMFORTABLE ways.   And we will finally define what Christian Discernment IS and ISN'T!  // Episode 4

*Check out Larry Warner's book on discernment, which highly recommend and  reference throughout this series:  Discernment, God's Will & Living Jesus: Christian Discernment as a Way of Life https://amzn.to/3VRGeqB

NEW HERE?  CHECK OUT OUR FIRST TWO EPISODES:
YOU Are On The Audacious Adventure! // EP 1
Meet YOUR Fellow Adventurers! // EP 2

DISCERNMENT SERIES:
5 Reasons Why We MUST Be Discerning Christians // Discernment Series (Part 1) // EP 3 

ABOUT US:
DANICA CHILDS is a Spiritual Director with a MA in Spiritual Formation/Soul Care from Talbot Seminary and a MA in Christian Apologetics from Biola University. Her sister AUTUMN is a storyteller passionate about the spiritual gifts and creating with the Holy Spirit. We’re sisters who've spent a combined forty years in various forms of ministry, including co-planting a church in Hollywood with other families, where we served in a variety of leadership roles for around a decade. Later we began THE AUDACIOUS ADVENTURE as a Los Angeles based ministry in 2016. We daily pursue creative, artistic, messy, and joyful lives of adventure in Southern California with our family and friends!

"We're excited to adventure audaciously with YOU!"


Autumn Cornwell:

God wants us to ask you wants us to be excited and in relationship and ask him the hard things and, and if he truly loves you like he does, he will do something, I guarantee there's gonna be something you just have to be seen it.

Danica Childs:

And Jesus Himself said, Ask, and you will receive, seek and you will find. And so it's like a treasure hunt with God. That's what you're going on. You're going on a little treasure hunt, and asking God to help you find him in your day.

Autumn Cornwell:

Hello, and welcome to the audacious adventure. I'm Autumn Cornwell and I'm Danica Childs. And we're two sisters adventuring with the Holy Spirit's. Thank you for joining us. And today, we are going to be talking about how God communicates with us in the usual normal sort of ways, and the unexpected ways. And we have a lot of experiences we're going to share from our personal

Danica Childs:

It certainly is her take it away.

Autumn Cornwell:

I want to hear what we have going on today. So today, we

Danica Childs:

are talking about Christian discernment and Christian discernment. This may surprise you, you may never have thought of Christian discernment this way. It may have never, you may never have come up in any of the places you've talked about. Discernment in the church, in your small group or whatever will Christian discernment is actually a whole body adventure with God, a full bodied feel so weird? God loves you. God loves you. God loves loving you.

Autumn Cornwell:

Loving You are starting to feel cultish.

Danica Childs:

But it's true. But it's true. So that's one of the first assumptions is that God loves loving you. The second assumption is that God's love for you is unconditional. This is a huge one because I think a lot of us have this sort of transactional idea about God's love that if we behave well, if we do what he wants, then he will love us or he will bless us but but this is really God's

Autumn Cornwell:

Oh, yes. It's like fail and learn and grow. Yes. Yeah. Discernment is a process of you had kind of honed the skills and the muscles, whatever that means, you know, exactly get that muscle tone. Right,

Danica Childs:

exactly to become mature and BFA as we said before, and so it is a process, it is a way of life with God. And as with anything in the Christian life, growth requires like autumn was just saying, making mistakes, stumbling failure. And so in all of that, you we don't want you to think that God is disappointed in you. And I think this could be a difficult one for Christians because

Autumn Cornwell:

the Aren't with a child who's stumbling and falling as they tried to walk for the first time, or we're trying to talk for the first time we're trying to eat peas for the first time. We don't smack them and say, Why can't you chew better? Yeah, gotta keep those bees in your mouth, not in your nose, you know, or elsewhere?

Danica Childs:

Yes, exactly. So and then the third thing. The third assumption we have going into discernment is that God is always communicating with us. And this is where the whole idea of the ways that in which God communicates to us expected and unexpected ways becomes the focus of this particular episode. So lots to look forward to as we move forward. You might be wondering, Okay, that's to us in expected and unexpected ways. And one caveat I want to say about the whole idea of discernment is that while you are listening to this, you might be thinking, what is the big deal about discernment? I know how to make decisions, I make really good decisions. Well, I'm here to tell you that decision making is not discernment. Some of you are like I'm out of here. Discernment is so

Autumn Cornwell:

Exactly. So Danika, as we go forward, what are some of the expected ways that most of us Christians have experienced God communicating with us?

Danica Childs:

So I would say, majority of Christians who have grown up in the church at all would, would totally understand that Scriptures, the Scriptures, the Holy Scriptures, the Bible, are one of the number one ways we can expect to hear from God and of course, because that is God's divine revelation to us. And so of course, we expect to hear from God through that. And there's two aspects to a verse just jumps out at you and hits you and you're like, wow, I've read that verse 100 times, and why today? Is this resonating with me so much? Well, God is speaking to you through that particular verse. And then what you want to do in that moment is to take time and say, What is going on in my life that is making this verse resonate with me in this particular way. And that is the Holy Spirit,

Autumn Cornwell:

Yes. And I wanted to jump in on what you're saying there about the fact you can be reading and this verse jumps out at you. And you could have read it a million times before, but because today, it's relevant to you, right? There's something going on in your life, and God is using that the Holy Spirit is using that. And I've heard people discount what they'll say, like, Well,

Danica Childs:

answering the desire of your heart. So when those when those things were used to just like flip open the Bible and wherever it lands? Would he is meaning in that when he's drawing your gaze to a verse on the on the page is he's meeting your desire to hear from him? Why wouldn't God answer that? Right? That is something that has a desire, a God given desire that he will answer and

Autumn Cornwell:

thing. Like, what if it's the person who hasn't been reading the Bible a lot? Like you don't want to get this like religious framework, like, oh, you need to be doing like we were saying, it has to be systematic. And then God will meet you. He knows that you there dry periods, there are times when we're not in the scriptures as much, right, whatever. And he's there. Yeah. And

Danica Childs:

every desire you have for God, every desire, you have to, to even open the Bible, every desire, you have to hear from God. Those are all God given desires. So he will meet those desires, he will answer those desires. That's how he's, that's how he's built us. That's how he's made us. Okay, so that was our first expected way or the scriptures the second expected way we we

Autumn Cornwell:

Yeah. And in fact, I'm a huge part of my spiritual formation process was when I was in my 20s. And we attended a church in Hollywood a mean, mainstream mainline mainline, mainline denomination, and the pastor started a series on David, and I, you know, when you're in your 20s, and you're kind of trying to figure out your life, your path recalling I totally resonated with that

Danica Childs:

God was telling autumn don't retaliate against the backstabber.

Autumn Cornwell:

You know, that reminds me of that I love the parks when you know David could have like slaughtered when he was peeing in the cave, I love that. And yet he resisted slaughtering Saul when he was being in a cave. And I also resisted slaughtering someone when they were peeing in a cave. They were in the bath. Right?

Danica Childs:

Alright, so that is our second expected way is through church and sermons and testimony and just, you know, the people who are sort of in those positions, leaders, leadership positions, who have been tasked with teaching us about God's word.

Autumn Cornwell:

And then another one is a wise counsel, people who are like, they can be leaders in our church or counselors that can be therapists. They can also be spiritual directors, especially doing spiritual directors. In fact, the undercroft gives me a lot of wise counsel, I will give you kudos to that. And then people who are mature Christians who have a character, and a long history

Danica Childs:

And so then the fourth thing is, we would expect to hear from God when we pray, like normal, typical discursive, as they say, prayer, which means and explained discursive, yes. So by discursive, we simply mean, we're using our words, our thoughts, we're using language to communicate to God and then potentially hearing back from him. So you know, it's like your traditional prayer, oh, you're looking really tired today, or? Good, so yes, case in point, if the person getting the comment, either replies with snark and him, or ignores or turns away, then my bid for autumns attention has been rebuffed. However, if in me saying the comment, Autumn looks at me and is like, Oh, tell me more, I don't feel tired, and she responds to my bid for attention, then there, the relationship gets closer. And so what he found is

Autumn Cornwell:

particular story started on a weekend, I went for my typical daily hike on a Friday. And it usually takes about an hour up and an hour down the mountain. And this day, I was grappling with a problem I was trying to figure out if I should do something, step I was supposed to take. And I didn't hear clearly from God, I was, I felt he was asking me to risk and step out in faith, but I with my hike. No breakthrough, but nice time with God. I go down the hill, Sunday, I'm hiking again. Same thing, same power with God. I mean, I've already done you know, I've read the Bible. I've gotten wise counsel, I still don't feel that piece. I don't have that piece yet. That says yes, go for it. Or, you know, I'm with you in this and step out in faith or anything like that. I'm still

Danica Childs:

So it says, For truly I say to you, if you have faith, like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain move from here to there, and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you. Matthew 1720

Autumn Cornwell:

Like is that crazier one unexpected for three days. And I'm always noticing this like I could have gone by and not really noticed it. But God was actually pointing it to my attention because I think the first time I

Danica Childs:

use basically Are you saying you ignored God three times and then on the fourth time you finally listen to my job not running away from them. So but I mean, you know, like God had been in the first communication of drawing your attention. I think like the baboon, so you

Autumn Cornwell:

look like this and look like a little monkey. It looks like a little monkey. And I was like, oh, and then if that had not happened I think I might have just noticed, Oh, someone lost a shirt or something I might have just to kind of talk yourself out of it. Yep, talked myself out of it. But that was so fun. boggled. I was like, No way, God, you are crazy. I love it. You are so

Danica Childs:

the shirt gave you the answer you were looking at it was step out

Autumn Cornwell:

in faith, you know, because it was like, I didn't have the faith to make the decision. And I felt like he's like, go for it. And the decision was a good one. And it didn't involve risk, and, you know, failure or whatever. But I knew that God had my back. I had an

Danica Childs:

interesting experience a few years ago. You know, like, I've talked about my lack of emotional awareness. Well, I was working on this paper, and I had brought home this book, it was written by Kenneth Bailey, I remember that. And it was a book about the life and the, you know, like, the culture of the times in which Jesus was living or whatever. And on the cover of this book,

Autumn Cornwell:

I love that story. So much. Yeah, I can just picture to get to kind of get all scholarly like do we pay for and then suddenly, her eyes falling on that book?

Danica Childs:

Oh, yeah, it was it was very uncomfortable.

Autumn Cornwell:

Because it's like, it's so personal. And he's like, I love you. I love you.

Danica Childs:

When we're talking about unexpected ways of God's communication, it really is as creative as God is. So God can speak through anything to us, he can communicate through all sorts of means, but we're just going to talk about a few that we have definitely experienced. And but really, it is there's no limits on how God can communicate to you. So the whole point of discernment is to

Autumn Cornwell:

love that about God, he is so personal. He tailor makes experiences and communications for you. He knows what you are in tune to what you are interested in, like you notice, like he knows I'm a hiker, and I love being in nature. So he used that. Yes. Other people can hear music and songs can speak to them. Yeah, at a particular moment. I mean, it could be almost anything like a

Danica Childs:

do. Exactly. But some of the ways that this that God communicates to us that we might consider unexpected is the fact that like when we're talking about the, the Christian discernment is a whole bodied adventure. We mean that not only are you using your mind to think through and reason through ideas and choices and decisions, but your body, your physical body is part of this

Autumn Cornwell:

you're not being irrational. When this is happening. I think that's people just discount it like what am I doing? I'm being irrational, learn it. But it's great. And it's such a relief to understand that your emotions are signaling something

Danica Childs:

as well in the fact that God made you emotional. So God made us to be emotional, physical, embodied souls. And so he communicates us to us through our emotions, they are not bad. That doesn't mean you you stick your whole life on your emotions or your feelings, but they are giving you a powerful information that you will need when if you are trying to discern, especially in big mother, I homeschool or two kids. I'm never alone. Never, never. And so, you know, this longing is reminding me that I need time away, I need time alone, I need time to just stare at a blank wall and be present to God. That's what I that's what this longing was reminding me of. Now, if I hadn't paid attention to that emotion to that visceral response I had, I would have lost out on some really

Autumn Cornwell:

I just love how God works. I mean, here you are needing that time away. But not even being able to articulate it or pinpoint what is going on inside. Right? That happened. Right. And God had mercy on you. Right, and grace and love because he loved loving you. Right now, next year, what your husband right there, and you're watching the four fingers. And then here you go.

Danica Childs:

Yes. And I what I would say about that, too, is that it's he brought it to my attention, something he knew I needed that I was ignoring. So I was not giving space to this feeling. I was not even giving space to the thought, let alone the feeling. And it was as if God came in, it was like, Alright, we're gonna make you aware because you need this.

Autumn Cornwell:

And another way that the Holy Spirit communicates to us is through dreams. And we see this a lot in the Old Testament and the New Testament. So tons of stories of dreams like Joseph in the Old Testament, having dreams about his siblings all bowing down to him. In the New Testament, we have another Joseph and then the beginning of Matthew, from an angel of the Lord appearing in a

Danica Childs:

just say here this is if you ever read about the Middle East and how Muslims come to the Lord, oftentimes it's because Jesus appears to them in a dream.

Autumn Cornwell:

Yes, I mean frequently 1000s of Yeah, right. Yeah. So and then also someone like me, I also get dreams. I God has spoken to me in dreams, maybe one or two times a year, for the last 10 years or something. And so it's very rare. But he will on occasion, give me a dream. That's very specific. And I know it's of him because I wake up, I can't stop thinking about it. And it seems

Danica Childs:

ignore your dreams, especially if you wake up, you remember all the details in there's an emotion attached to him that you remember that it carries with you then pay attention to that not all dreams matter. But those kinds of dreams where you remember the details when you wake up and it kind of sticks with you for a while. I often think those are God trying to communicate something

Autumn Cornwell:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's usually information you wouldn't know otherwise. Right? I mean, that's what's so fascinating. It's like, oh, my gosh, God, it's like you're letting me inside this person's heart or this person's life, because they need help. They need intercession. They are right now. And he goes to those who will listen and heed him. And he, of course, he does this in unusual. But God did those at certain times, because it was very important that he got my attention. And they were exciting. Like, if you have that experience. Wow, that's fun. But that, but if you haven't had that experience that doesn't negate you know, no, it's just God chose to I have never had one. Yeah, yes, exactly. So you know, but you didn't have the eyes. Could be sort of a slight type

Danica Childs:

but it's, you know, it was more emotional than most usual. Okay.

Autumn Cornwell:

Yeah. So, um, so don't discount that. And we're gonna go more in that in the future, because that's a fascinating topic. And then finally, the thing we're going to cover today about unexpected ways is divine encounters with people. And all, you know, in the Bible, it says, do make sure you entertain people, because you never know if you're going to be hosting an angel, you know?

Danica Childs:

discount them. No, no, I think that's our that's our big thing is don't discount that angels are real and that they are active today. Yes. And you

Autumn Cornwell:

know, you can pray and ask God to surround your your loved ones with angels, you can pray and ask God to send angels into a situation and we do that like we'll say, Oh, this this situation is very tenuous, and and angst ridden, please send your army have angels into the space where we're going because we want to create space for your work to be done. Yes. And so there's a lot

Danica Childs:

Yeah. And so again, as you think about all the way unexpected ways in which God could communicate to you, you want to take those unexpected communication, you want to take any kind of communication, that isn't a direct God speaking to you where you have, you totally know, it's God, it's, you know, there's no question. Those you can just take as at face value, in a sense, but all of will be a little bit more open to seeing God in the unexpected. Oh,

Autumn Cornwell:

yes, that will be quite the adventure. And also what you could do is take a moment as you're, you know, before after this exercise, is to as you go forward into the next days, take a moment and say to the Holy Spirit, please show me a surprise this week, I would ask that I ask that Holy Spirit, Father, God, Jesus, show me a surprise. Show me why you love me. But show me something

Danica Childs:

Himself said, Ask and you will receive seek and you will find and so it's like a treasure hunt with God. That's what you're going on. You're going on a little treasure hunt, and asking God to help you find him in your day.

Autumn Cornwell:

Thank you again for joining us here on the audacious adventure. And remember, he loves loving you He loves

Unknown:

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