Making Godly decisions – Christian decision making – God’s will
Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.”
How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” Otherwise you are boasting about your own plans, and all such boasting is evil. Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it. James 4:13-17 (NLT)
For a follower of Jesus, a Christian, God’s will is paramount in making both small and big decisions. Yet far too often we make decisions based on our intellect, our own wisdom, our experiences, the advice of others, how we feel, what we want, or by looking for some open door. The problem with that it that none of these require any kind of thinking about God’s will. Even adding a quick prayer and ending it in “if it be your will” does not necessarily indicate any real concern regarding God’s will.
James indicts the business men and women in the text above because they made decisions based on their own abilities, their pride, and the potential profit (their own benefit). When he tells them that they should say, “If the Lord wills,” he never meant for that to become a thoughtless phrase to rubberstamp our own plans. What he wanted them to do is to make their decisions based on considerations that made God, His will, His kingdom, His ways, and what He wanted them to do central.
Anyone who is serious about knowing God’s will, and make decisions based on His will, has to make a fundamental determination: Whatever God reveals concerning His will is not a discussion item, it is what I will follow, what I will do, what I will submit myself and the decisions I have to make to. Without making that determination God’s will merely be one option among many, and we will continue to have difficulty discerning God’s will.
In order to know and do God’s will we will have to learn to walk in the Spirit, die to self, know and obey what God has already revealed, pray, develop a spiritual mindset, serve, and be connected to the body of Christ/the church (Galatians 5:16; Romans 12:1-5; 1 Timothy 3:16-17; Matthew 6:9-13; 1 Peter4:10).
The beginning point is what God has already revealed concerning His will. The word of God, although written by men, is authored by the Holy Spirit. God uses the Bible to show us His will in general and often in the specific. It is the first thing to apply to any decision that faces us, and the more we apply it the better we become in discerning God’s will. When it comes to God’s Word (the Bible) you begin with applying diligence in knowing and understanding it, and the second thing, but equally important, is faith which is expressed in doing what it says. In between those two, being diligent in understanding the Bible and acting in faith by doing what it says, are prayer and meditation which help us to make specific application to our own personal situation.
The time to start making godly, thoroughly Christian decisions is now. List three decisions you are currently facing. Now think of as many scriptures that you can think of that are clear revelations of God’s will and look them up and read their context. Next talk with God about both the decisions you listed and the scriptures you read. Follow that with some thinking time/meditation asking yourself tough questions as to whether or not your life is in sync with those scriptures and what adjustments/changes you need to make to be obedient what God has already told you, and what obedience looks like in the decisions you listed. Then go and make that obedience a reality.