Decision Making

Decision Making

Let me define for you a godly decision. A godly decision is that God put me on this earth to carry out a specific work in this world.

The Bible says the days were all written in the book that were ordained for me. So though I can shorten those days by folly and madness, yet there is some point in which my work can be finished. Assuming that I do what I am supposed to do, and like the Lord it is my time to leave the earth, or like the others come home it's time to be with me.
So our life does come to an end.

In the meantime, whether or not we complete this work which God has given us to do, and remember that is the only thing that is going to count in the end. That we can say like Jesus, "I have finished the work you gave me to do," or he will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant." Many, many Christians never ever know that they were in the will of God their entire lives.

I spent one place in ministry, and though God did a fairly good work for three years in that church, I never knew. As a matter of fact, I quite well suspected, that I should not have taken that particular church or ministered in that particular place. Very disturbing time. Many bad things happened there to me, to my wife and to my children. As a matter of fact, it was the beginning of our breakup and separation.

Bad decisions. Bad decisions can have a profound effect on your entire future. It will distort, distract, turn you away from the plan that God has for your life. And sometimes it will take years before you ever get on track again. And in the meantime you have lost all these vital years. You know my story and how this happened to me.
Now I am very careful about decisions. I don't make them hastily, and I don't make them without following God's plan for finding His mind. He has a decision. If each one would think of it like that that God has a decision in every matter. Our job is to find His decision, because that one moves us along absolutely in the direction we are going and puts us in the right place at the right time.

The importance of decisions. They determine our future. I have discovered this at times in the area of decision-making. I will separate decisions later into two kinds: policy decisions where a policy is established and the kind of decisions we are making toward the future.

I discovered sometime that what I considered to be a little decision has a profound effect on the future of my life. What I considered to be a little thing, "Oh, that's just a little thing, I'm not going to waste time on it." I consider that there are no little decisions.

Let's take a man who walks out of a building and he has a decision to go either left or right. He goes to the left and everything is open. He goes to the right, and there is scaffolding and people are dropping bricks off, and he gets hit in the head and is killed.

It was just left or right. No, it was life or death.

Let this subject sink in. I am not dealing with some light idea. I am dealing with why some people end up shipwrecked and why others have tremendous blessing all of their lives. You say, "Why does God favor that person." He does not favor any one above another. It is the result of grasping how the flow of life moves from God and they step in that flow and they move with it. Others cross the flow continually and they are constantly being run over and stepped upon. And not by God, but by their own wrong decisions.

Decisions determine our future. The directions we take in life. How we use our time and assets, and the smallest decision done improperly can have a vast effect on our future.

The second point I would to make is in the elements of poor decisions. What is it that guarantees a poor decision?
First, the chief thing that guarantees it is impatience. Impatience. Good decisions take time.

I have talked to people through the years and I have said this many times, but there are a number of people here who haven't heard it, and some of your older ones need to hear it again.

Whenever a person says to me, "Decide now." Piece of real estate. "Buy it now because I have 17 people ready to buy it. And if you don't buy it, it's gone. I say, "Goodbye." Very simple. That's it. Because I have learned something. God will never force me to make a decision where I don't have the time to do all the things necessary to nail down that decision carefully. Never will He force me.

God has been thinking of you and me before the foundation of the world. He has thought about me far more than I think about myself. He has thought about you far more than you think about yourself. When He is bringing you to a place of decision, you are going to have to decide here. He starts dealing with you way back here so you have plenty of time to come up to this decision and know with certainty what you should do.

So the greatest deterrent to making good decisions is simply impatience. "I am not going to take all my time to do this. This is really ridiculous. Man, my mind is sharp. I know what to say." Impatience.

The product of good decision-making is the result of T-I-M-E: time. So if you are in a hurry, "I have to make this decision right away." You do not have to. That is the one thing that you have to get deep in you spirit. I don't have to make that decision now.

When do you have to make it. When I know it is right. That is the only time I have to make it.

Everything else God has planned so that I have plenty of time to get to that decision-making place. God's decisions always plan in the time for you to make the decision.

Secondly, emotional pressure is one of the greatest destroyers of good decisions. We get disturbed emotionally.
Love is, for instance, one of the greatest disturbers of emotional balance. A young person falls in love. "I love her. I know it must be God. I want to get married right now." I was in love a thousand times before I met my wife. And only once afterward. But falling in love and out of love is easy. Sometimes if you are a man and a woman wiggles her nose, you fall to pieces, "I'm in love. I know I'm in love." And our emotional balance is disturbed.

I'll tell you when it is God. You are going to hear His still, small voice. When your heart is pounding, and your mind is going in circles, you will never hear God. But when do must people make decisions. Right then. You get yourself in serious trouble and hurt your life.

"I had to move fast. The opportunity was slipping away. My counsel-let it slip."

Third. "I had no choice in the matter." We always have a choice.

I have a friend who has made bad decision after bad decision, hurting his family, his life. It's gone on for years and years. And now he is up in years like myself. And I saw him not too long ago, and I said, "Why did you do that?" I knew what he was going to say. You know what he said? Something I have heard 50, 100 times from him.

"I had no choice." In other words, conversation is over. "I had no choice." Yes, he did. You always have a choice. I'll tell you what they are: yes, no, maybe.

If someone says to you, "You make your mind up now." I say, "I've made it up. No." Very simple. Or, "I'll go pray about it."

The third one is pride or ego. I remember a lady a number of years ago who made the most atrocious decision. We were asking her, "don't you see, don't you see?" But she replied, "I thought this through and I know it is good for me."

Most of us don't know what is good for us. I don't know what is good for me. Do you know who knows what is good for me? I'll give you the order. First of all, the Lord, next my wife, and thirdly my brethren. They can look and say, "Well, Jim, what are you doing this for? This is dangerous for you." The last one who knows what is good for me is me.
Generally, when I have to make a decision, I am under a disturbed, emotional pressure. In other words, someone turned up the cooker on me.

See, a salesman, is sitting here and is selling something. Does he come in and say, "Jim, in no sense, do I intend to make any emotional plea to you whatever. I'm simply going to drop the facts here. I'll walk off and you can call me sometime in the future. If you feel like buying this that would be wonderful, but if not, I don't really care." Is that what a salesman does? No.
Let's say he's selling fire alarms. He's going to sell me a fire alarm. He brings over and puts this slide show on. And you hear an alarm go off. And then he tells a story.

"You know one of the most tragic stories I have ever heard is where this fireman went in, and there was a man standing in the hall, dead. And he was just standing up where the hot blast of searing air from the burning carpets and the cyanide that was coming out had caught him and pulverized his lungs immediately and he was never able to move from that place. And the fireman reached and took his arm to pick him up and all the flesh fall off." No emotional pressure.

Do you know what you should say to a pitch like this? When the guy is trying to get you to sign on the line. Say "Boy you said really good things here. And I am going to go pray about this now."

If you do that your emotions will calm. And you know what will happen. If you need a fire alarm, God will tell you that it is wise, and you call the salesman and say, "I'd like those fire alarms." You won't be making an emotional decision.

Have you ever heard of buyer's remorse? You buy tonight. Salesman leaves. You wake up in the morning, and you say, "What have I done?" So you try to call him up and he's gone out of town and you can't find him anywhere.

The next point is belief in certain myths that certain people have. That is I hear the worst of all possible myths as why you do not need to have a decision-making process as this one. "I have heard it from the Lord." One of the greatest myths you will find is that one.

I knew an older couple years ago, and their lives were shambles. Just a terrible ruin. And yet I was talking to them one time, and they said, "Do you know what happens to us?" And I said, "No, tell me." And they said, "Every morning when we are having breakfast, Jesus comes right down and sits at our table and talks to us and gives us our instructions for the day."
My natural way of responding although I try to bite my lip, and I did in that case, is to say, "Then he needs to be trained how to give good instruction." If what they did as a result of getting that instruction at the breakfast table, they were getting some bad information, or they translated it wrong.

We do hear from God. But there is a way that you have to know how to determine if it is really God. Many say "I know the voice of God when I hear it." I would like to say, No, we don't. Satan comes as an angel of light. It would be wonderful if he would come up and say, "Boo, I'm the devil and take his horns and poke you in the side." You'd say, "that's the devil all right." It would be wonderful if he would do that. But he doesn't. He comes and says, "Hello, Jim. This is God talking to you. It might sound like God but you must have a way of testing it. How do you test what you hear, how do you test what you feel?

Each of these men who did these things were doing what they thought God was telling them to do. "God showed me this, God told me this, God said this."

How can this be. Look at what happened. "Well, I don't know. God told me. It's His problem. Not mine."
When God tells you-It's right. What we tell ourselves may be disastrous.

Miracle stories. Signs, confirmations and fleeces. I remember one time I went to a particular place and spoke about fleeces. And this person told me he was operating by fleeces. I said, what kind of fleece do you operate by. He said, "Well, I say to the Lord if the sun comes up tomorrow morning, I will know that you want me to do this thing." That's not a fleece. A fleece is like the opposite. If the sun doesn't come up in the morning, then I will know that you want me to do this. If the earth stands still.

Remember, Gideon's fleece. He said if the ground is wet, and the fleece be dry, and then he reversed it, if the fleece be wet and the ground be dry. In other words, a real fleece. But actually there are better ways to test it then that. That was before we had the Bible written.

Another thing that is one of the greatest problems is the ignorance of the value of good decision-making. Sometimes people say, "Well I'll just change my mind." Sometimes you can't change your mind. You have launched yourself in a direction. Like a person said, you leap into debt, you crawl out.

Like a person who says after signing a contract, "Well, I have just changed my mind." Sometimes you can't. You are committed. You must go that direction.

Ignorance of its value, a wrong decision can cause us years of lost time.

How do you make good decisions?

Divide life into two decision categories.

Number one is policy decisions. Establish the basic policy of your life.

In the ministry, we have two kinds of decisions. For instance, Lynn, our church secretary, is authorized to carry out certain policies. For instance, when we receive the PG&E bill, she doesn't have to come back and ask the elders, "Should we pay the light bill or not." Policy. When the light bill comes in, pay the bill. Pay the rent, pay the water.

Once in a while the policy needs to be reviewed to make sure that we are not putting money here when it shouldn't be here. We need to review it from time to time. And in your life, you have to review your policy.

In other words, when it is time to buy groceries, I don't need to have my wife and I call the elders of the church together and ask, "Should we buy groceries at this time or not." Then a period of prayer and confirmation and so forth. We made a decision. we need to eat. This is authorized by God. We have basically chosen what to eat, where to shop, how much to spend in the budget. These are policy decisions.

Make sure your life has a clearly stated policy which is moving you along. We don't go into debt, we don't pay interest. Whatever the policy is that you set. To establish that policy should be a well thought out process. Once you establish it a large portion of you time and money are caught up in that policy.

Next, policy decision. By the way, a policy decision is to go to work and be there on time.

New decisions, even small ones, can cost us a great deal. Here is the truth to know about decisions. We can and do hear from God. The inner voices you hear, the impulses you receive, the feelings. Many of those are from God.

But mingled in with them because sin has damaged our perceptions, emotions and judgements, we can be easily self-deceived. That's why I used the earlier example of the man and wife who heard from Jesus every morning. People are blown away. Their emotional life, their married life is a total shambles. And they are saying that is what Jesus told them to do. They are totally self-deceived.

Yet, in fact, they did hear from God from time to time. But they could not distinguish one from the other. So every impulse they felt they rushed off to do it. I have seen this happen again and again in ministry. Satan is always attempting to imitate God's voice even using Scripture to add the deception. What is the clearest example in the Bible of Satan using scripture to deceive someone? To deceive the Lord. Remember what the devil said to Jesus? "Is it not written?... Hath not God said?" That is the first thing he said to Eve. But Jesus knew the difference. He learned to distinguish one from the other.
We are not so good at that. So we have to have a process by which we can distinguish.

Recognize your limitations. Number one, your limitations of knowledge. You don't know everything. And if you are going to make even a simple decision, many times there is knowledge out there that you don't even know at all that if you knew it you would say, "I can't make a decision like that."

Secondly, your judgement is limited. Your ability to give the proper weight to one thing or another. There is nothing more serious. I have made decisions for years and years and I keep telling myself this, and listen I am telling myself this at nearly 64 years of age. "You don't know enough to make the decisions you have to make. You don't have clear enough judgement to weigh one thing against another. Only God can give you that kind of judgement. You don't have the proper perceptions to see what this decision is going to have on the future."

I remind myself of this again and again. Especially when I am pushed to make a decision. I tell myself, "Stop, you are far too emotional, you are far too stirred up. You don't know enough. You don't have judgement enough, your perceptions are not clear enough. You don't have the logic."

When you make a judgement here don't ask yourself, OK I have made a decision here to take some money out of my pocket and buy something here. You need to say what is the effect of this decision here, here, here."Because if I spend this money here I can't spend it here. A lot of people spend themselves blind just because they have not learned how to spend money and suddenly something is here that should have been prepared for, saved for and thought about, and we are in trouble.
Let me give you an example. Years ago, I was training a number of young people in business matters. One of the things I said to them is I want you to put 40 cents a mile away for every mile that you drive this particular vehicle, a business vehicle. They said, we can't afford to do that. Then I said, you can't afford to drive the car, because whether or not you put the money away that is what it costs you to turn those wheels over per mile.

Today, it's about 50 cents a mile. Put it away. Because whether or not you put it away you have spent it. And if you say, we can't afford to put this kind of money away. Then down here, your engine will blow up but you will have no money. The license will come due, but you will have no money. This will happen, but you will have no money. Because you have not prepared. See, all the time you were spending it. The pistons were getting ready to fly out, the oil was getting dirty. The gas is being used up. The tires are being worn out. The metal is fatiguing, the car is rusting. But you have no money for it. So as a result you get to the point where the engine blows up and you get all excited and worried, "Oh no, my engine has blown up." Of course, the engine blew up. If you drive a car long enough, what will be certain about an engine? It will blow up. You don't have to worry about it. I guarantee it. Anything a man makes dust to dust, ashes to ashes and it goes back to that.
The next thing is you must become neutral. In any decision you are to make you must become neutral. Let me tell you what neutral is.

A decision comes up. I ask myself am I neutral at that point. I tell you I am not. Neutral is: I don't want to do this and I don't not want to do this. I only want to find out what God wants and that is what I want to do. That is neutral. That doesn't come easily.

I tell you Satan is right there putting pressure on you. You have got to get yourself where you are neutral and can say, "Thank you Lord." What happens if you can't do it? "It doesn't matter Lord." What happens if you do it. "If that's what you want Lord, it's OK with me." What do you want to do Jim?" "Only what you want to do, Lord." See. It's an attitude of life that we must come to again and again. It isn't like one decision out here. But Satan is always trying to unbalance us so we get emotional about our decisions and make the wrongs ones.

Your heart and will must be set to conformity to the image of Jesus Christ. It is the only place that I know of that if that is our conformity and our aim then all things work together for good to those who love the Lord and who are called according to His purposes. Without that, all kinds of confusion. Whenever I want to do something like "Oh, I want to go to Hawaii." I remember someone telling me a number of years ago about a young man praying after Bible school and He was praying "Oh Lord, I want to go where you want me to go Lord. You know Texas is in my heart. But I don't want to go there if you don't want me to go. Yes, Lord, Dallas, Texas is where I want to go. Dallas, Lord. Dallas, Texas, Lord. Oh, thank you Lord." Now for someone to be able to change that young man's mind, you'd have to run behind him with a megaphone to get him to change his mind. He had his mind made up.

Prayer is one of the great balancers of life if we go before the Lord and say, "I want to enter into the secret place of the Most High. I want to enter into Your presence and let Your calmness and Your peace, and Your certainty flow over me and realize that I don't have to make any decision now. I don't have to be under pressure. I just have to sit here. Because this decision if I have to make it at all, Lord, you have given me plenty of time to become peaceful and calm to reach this place of decision. So here I am, Lord, let Your peace flow over me."
Then put the thing out of your mind.

Remember where it says let the umpire be the peace that is in your heart. Make sure that core of peace is unbroken. When you are totally neutral and can say to the Lord with an honest heart: "Lord, I don't want to do it and I don't not want to do it. I just want to know what you want and that's what I want to do."

The next area I would like to address is seeking counsel. The Book of Proverbs is full of scriptures that point to the need for good counsel. We need to get over the myth that each one of us receives our counsel from God without taking the results to other people to sift through it and judge.

Let me show you how important counsel is. Solomon, was the wisest man who lived outside of Jesus Christ. His son, Rehoboam, ascended to the throne and was approached by the northern tribes who were complaining about the burdens that had been laid upon them. They told Rehoboam, "Lighten them and we will serve you forever." The Bible says he called in the counselors of his father Solomon. What did Solomon need counselors for? The wisest man who ever lived. Because the wisest man who ever lived still is limited. He is not God. You need counsel.

Counsel means a person primarily who is committed to you but who has the courage to say, "I don't think that is a good idea and here is why." He doesn't say "if you don't do what I say then I am going to..." That puts emotional pressure on you. But it's one who can say with an honest and good heart, "Jim, in my perspective, I don't think you should do that and here is why." No pressure.

It's like you are putting that decision out there and letting others see it from different views. That is the difference. The counselor can see what you can not see. The reason he can see it many times is he is not blinded by the emotional pressure that you are under. He has no pressure except to give you the best counsel he possibly can.

Proverbs 11:14 says: "Where there is no guidance, the people fall. But in the abundance of counselors there is victory." What does it say has to be there? An abundance of counselors.

Some people say well I went and got counsel. And you ask, "Where did you get it from?" And they name one person who might possible be a friend. What kind of counsel. Abundance. That means many.

Now look at 12:15: The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel.

What kind of counsel. Abundance of counsel. Let me tell you the reason for that. Counsel causes me to balance out my position. I might be all excited about something and saying "I know this is right." The counselor might say, "Cool off, Jim. Did you think about... Did you give this consideration?" Counsel balances us out so you stop and think wait a minute I didn't consider that fact, I didn't weigh that out. I didn't look at that. It balances you out.

Proverbs 15 Without consultation plans are frustrated.

Proverbs 19:20: Listen to counsel and accept discipline that you may be wise the rest of your days. Many are the plans in a man's heart but the counsel of the Lord, it will stand.

Proverbs 20:18: Prepare plans by consultation and make war by wise guidance.

You are planning to go into business. Don't just sit down and plan to go into business. You know what you should do? Make sure you have the best counselors you can find to help you come up with the plan. Prepare plans by wise guidance and consultation.

Proverbs 24:6: For by wise guidance you will wage war and by abundance of counselors there is victory.

I want to ask you a question. Why do you think God repeats these things over and over in the Book of Proverbs? Abundance of counselors, abundance of counselors. Because it is important. The development of counselors is one of the most important practices you can ever engage in in your entire life.

The next thing is read your Bible. It will show you examples of men who make good decisions and men who made bad decisions, and this woman made a godly decision, and this person made an ungodly decision.

In conclusion, you will occasionally make a wrong decision. But they will never be fatal. You will be able to quickly correct them. And blessings will abound everywhere.

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