Moviegoers had hardly pulled into their driveways after seeing Disney’s record-smashing film Frozen, when the Christian blogosphere exploded with a debate that was anything but chilly. At the center of the controversy was “Let It Go,” the movie’s lead single song.

Don’t worry. I’m not here to nauseate you with another critique of “Let It Go.” What interests me is how all this flurry around Frozen highlighted people’s attempts to apply the Christian worldview to our culture—the exercise we call discernment.

Discernment means more than dissecting Disney films. We need discernment in choosing whether we watch those films in the first place, where we spend our money, and how we use our free time. This seems complicated! Is there even a starting point?

In Philippians 1 Paul prays “that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent.” This prayer gives us three important truths about Christian discernment.

Christian discernment starts with love.

Discernment seems narrow and discriminating; love sounds so broad and open-minded. But unless our affections are first engaged completely toward God, we can’t begin to make discerning choices. Try to get a child to clean his room. He may rearrange the toys or scoot the dirty laundry under the bed. But until he loves being neat, you’ll find yourself nagging, bribing or threatening until the job gets done right.

When love for God becomes the engine that powers Christian discernment, it can make complicated decisions simpler (though not necessarily easier). For instance, rather than trying to quantify the gratuitousness of eroticism in a particular movie, a Christian may simply decide that he doesn’t want to view something that would weaken his affection for Christ. Instead of trying to figure out how many Sundays away from church would constitute “forsaking the assembling of yourselves,” a Christian’s love for God may compel her not to miss any Sunday services at all.

This love must be regulated by knowledge and insight.

But this love takes a specific shape. It is not like soft Play-Doh—molded by whatever hands that happen to hold it. Rather, it is regulated by a genuine understanding of God and his ways. Like the two banks of a river, knowledge of God and insight into the true nature of an issue allow our love for God to flow in the right direction. Only by growing in our knowledge of God and his Word can we hope to grow in our ability to make right choices as Christians.

It takes hard work to gain this kind of knowledge. While we often must draw upon the expertise of other Christians, we should be careful not to cheat ourselves of the growth that comes only by personally wrestling through issues of Christian discernment.

Christian discernment is an essential way of glorifying God.

I’ve heard discernment poo-pooed as the hobby of mean-spirited legalists who plot behind computer screens to lob cyber napalms at sincere Christians . I know for a fact that such cowards exist. But we can’t let them define what discernment is. Rather than being a game for ivory-tower academicians, discernment is an essential exercise for every Christian who wants to be “pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:10-11).