Listen to your heart. It’s there that Jesus speaks most intimately to you. Praying is first and foremost listening to Jesus who dwells in the very depths of your heart. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t thrust himself upon you. His voice is an unassuming voice, very nearly a whisper, the voice of a gentle love. Whatever you do with your life, go on listening to the voice of Jesus in your heart. This listening must be an active and very attentive listening, for in our restless and noisy world God’s so loving voice is easily drowned out. You need to set aside some time every day for this active listening to God if only for ten minutes. Ten minutes each day for Jesus alone can bring about a radical change in your life.

You’ll find it isn’t easy to be still for ten minutes at a time. You’ll discover straightaway that many other voices, voices that are very noisy and distracting, voices that do not come from God, demand your attention. But if you stick to your daily prayer time, then slowly but surely you’ll come to hear the gentle voice of love and will long more and more to listen to it.

—Henri Nouwen

Do not treat your conscience with contempt, for it always advises you to do what is best. It sets before you the will of God and the angels; it frees you from the secret defilements of the heart; and when you depart this life it grants you the gift of intimacy with God.

—St. Maximos the Confessor

“One important duty is to take guidance seriously. Guidance, as we said, is optional, but if you choose it, be serious.”

—Fr. Antony Paul, Confession and Guidance: An Approach

“Someone with the spirit of discipleship is always praying to God to know what His will is in all things, and thus, will be attentive to God in all aspects. This person will learn from the Bible, from books, from mentors, from children, from animals, from nature, from everything in existence, including the universe itself. This person will receive clarity because the person is asking, and is not presuming to know or discern the answers.”

—Fr. Antony Paul, Confession and Guidance: An Approach

Do not seek advice from a man who does not lead a life similar to your own, even if he be very wise. Confide your thoughts to a man who, though he lack learning, has experience in spiritual things rather than to a learned philosopher who speaks on the basis of speculations, having no actual experience.

Follow the counsel of a man who knows how with patience to make a trial of things that demand discernment. Not everyone is able to give trustworthy advice, but only he who has governed himself well, who possesses knowledge gained from experience in all things, who does not love himself, and who does not shy away from calumnies.

—St. Isaac the Syrian

“When they asked St. Antony the Great which of the virtues was the greatest, he replied, “Discernment,” which he called the “lantern of the soul.” Discernment includes wisdom, the ability of “seeing the whole picture” and understanding the why and purpose behind all things. It also refers to the grace to know the Will of God. As a charismatic gift of the Church, discernment is also a unique manifestation in the lives of the saints given by God to lead other souls to salvation. Likewise, St. John Climacus in the Ladder of Divine Ascent describes the progression of discernment. First, beginners start with self-knowledge. At a middle level, one can distinguish between what is truly good and what is opposed to the good. Finally, the perfection of discernment is attained with knowledge resulting from divine illumination.”

— All That I Have Is Yours: 100 Meditations with St. Pope Kyrillos VI on the Spiritual Life by Kyrillos Ibrahim

“The virtue of prudence is doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right measure. St. Augustine said of it, “Prudence is the knowledge of what to seek and what to avoid.””

— All That I Have Is Yours: 100 Meditations with St. Pope Kyrillos VI on the Spiritual Life by Kyrillos Ibrahim

In truth, self knowledge seems the most important of all. For not only the eye, looking at outward things, fails to exercise its sight upon itself, but our understanding also, though very quick in apprehending the sin of another, is slow to perceive its own defects.

—St. Basil the Great

There are various ways we feel confident.  Confidence can come from a sense of zeal, a feeling that we are doing something important—even if we don’t exactly know what we are doing.   Confidence can come from the thought that you know what God is doing in your life or in the lives of those around you.  It is a kind of figuring it out, a reduction to principles that can be applied to any situation.  This kind of knowledge, I think, is akin to the knowledge that St. Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians chapter 8, the knowledge that puffs up, as opposed to the love that builds up. Confidence can also come from a sense that we are right, that we know what is right to do and we are doing it. This, in my experience, is the most deceptive kind of confidence.  Feeling right is a dangerous feeling, for our right-ness (i.e. our “righteousness”) quickly becomes a idol with clay feet.  And feeling that we are right and being zealous at the same time is the most dangerous kind of confidence.

—Fr. Michael Gillis, Happy Ignorance With Peace

Rather, in peace, he should seek for consolation in God, continuing faithfully in the work that is before him, knowing that if God wants him somewhere else doing something else, God is able to make that abundantly clear to him.  

—Fr. Michael Gillis, Happy Ignorance With Peace