5 Questions to Help You Make Decisions

Life is full of an insanely vast number of choices from the everyday mundane what to eat and wear choices that affect your life cumulatively to the bigger, life-changes in a second ones like replying to a marriage proposal or which house to put an offer in on.

If you were to look up pop-cultures’ advice on how to make these decisions, you’d hear a lot of remixes on the same old tune: Do what you feel, do what makes you happy, follow your bliss, follow your arrow, follow your heart.

FALSE.

I believe that your decisions and your life path are SO worthy, that they deserve to have the attention and advice from your father in heaven. With that as your foundation, go to God in prayer and take this series of questions to give you a framework for making your decisions.

1.         Is it sin?

First, be bold enough to ask if what you’re considering is sin, or if it will set you in the path of sin. Look for Bible principles that apply. If the answer is yes, then this process is over. If you’re trying too hard to justify something---you already know it’s not the best choice.

If God says it’s sin, our response is to trust Him. It’s super mature to say “God, I think this is a fine idea, but your word seems to say otherwise. I’m going to trust you, even though I don’t get it and feel like I’m missing out.”

2.         Is it “on mission”? 
There are some things that are not sin, but are just not helpful or meaningful in achieving our greatest purpose as Christians. In Matthew, Luke, John, and the beginning of Acts, Jesus emphasizes the same thing. He tells His disciples to make more disciples.

So when you’re thinking about the decision to make, you have to consider how it affects your ability to make disciples of Jesus. Every relationship, every job, and every opportunity in your life has to be filtered through the question of “will this decision help me reach more people for the kingdom?”

Your friendships matter to God, your health choices, your summer jobs-- they all matter to Him. The reason for them being in your life is because the way that you live will attract more or less people to Christ. That is why you have all these opportunities and relationships, God is setting you up to make an impact!

3.         What do my mentors say?

Many times, God gives wisdom to His people through other people. Whatever decision you have, you need to bring it before a group of Godly counsel. Btw, non-believers can be brilliant, but they aren’t able to counsel a Christian, because they have such a different mission.

It’s important to ask a group to weigh in on your bigger decisions, and it will keep you relatively safe from doing something ridiculous. Proverbs 18:1-2 (ESV) says “Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment. 2 A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.”

I would recommend asking 3 to 7 people to be on your personal counsel for decision making. All of the people on my counsel are Godly and will put my best interest before fear of offending me. If you have Godly parents and family members, start there and add people at church—trusted elders or pastors, and especially ask people who have experience in the area where you are struggling. If you really want wisdom, try to listen most carefully when the people who love you disagree with you.

4.         What do I want?
Now, I know we started off saying that our own wants are not to be the thing that steers our decisions, however, if you’ve answered the previous questions honestly and still can’t decide—you CAN feel good about doing what you want. Because you’re in alignment with his will, he can safely give you the desire of your heart! 

So, what do you want to do? You want to take that job? Do you want to move to that school? Do you want to invest in that side hustle? Do you want to get engaged?

If the answer is yes, then do it. If the answer is no, then don’t do it. Don’t over spiritualize it at this phase, because you’re waiting for God’s face to appear in the burning piece of toast in your toaster. Make a decision, and sally forth!

5.         Can I have faith and peace, regardless of the outcome?

The unfortunate truth is that you can make wise, Godly decisions and still find yourself in tough circumstances. Don’t think wise decisions will bring only blessing. Jesus made every decision according to the will of his father, with everyone’s best in mind and he still ended up crucified.  BUT he wouldn’t have had it any other way. He was 100% on mission!

Girls, when you look at the big decisions of your lives I want you to be able to say. “I did the best I could for the kingdom, and I made the best decisions I could with the info I had.”