Are you facing a difficult decision in your life? Are you struggling to decide who to marry, or what career to go into, or how to raise your children? Do you ever find yourself agonizing over even the simplest day-to-day decisions, like what to wear, or where to go to dinner, or what movie to watch on Netflix? (I don’t know about you but it seems like every time I sit down to watch something on Netflix I spend a half hour watching previews and still not be able to find something to watch). Maybe you think that you’re foolish or a bad decision-maker but have you ever thought that the reason you have a hard time making decisions is because in this life there are just so many decisions to make. Let me show you what I mean.
Have any of you seen one of these machines? This is called the Coca Cola Freestyle machine. It has over 150 soda choices. If you combine just two sodas you can make over 8000 different flavors of soda. Here are some favorites from seriouseats.com:
- Mezzo Mix – Coke and Fanta Orange
- Rasparilla – Barq’s Root Beer and Fanta Raspberry
- Half & Half – Diet Mr. Pibb’s plus Minute Maid Lemonade Light
- The “11-Year-Old” – pretty much everything
- Here’s my favorite: Strawberry Daiquiri. I didn’t realize that rum was one of the beverages in the Coca Cola freestyle machine; it’s actually Fanta Zero Lime and a tiny bit of Fanta Strawberry.
If you think it can be overwhelming to get a soda, just walk into Starbucks. Starbucks offers over 80,000 different drink options. The most obnoxious, according to Huffington Post is the Iced, Half Caff, Ristretto, Venti, 4-Pump, Sugar Free, Cinnamon, Dolce Soy Skinny Latte.
We are simply overwhelmed with decisions these days. Marketing people call this phenomenon “overchoice.” It leads to what psychologists call “decision fatigue.” Decision fatigue is the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making.
Road Map for Decision-Making
What if I told you that God has a way of taking these millions of decisions that we are called on to make every day and simplifying them? Wouldn’t that be nice? Who wouldn’t want a foolproof way to making good decisions? If you want help with all those choices here are two things to keep in mind. There are two things that will always lead you to the right choice if you keep them central in your mind whenever you are faced with a decision.
1) God is more concerned with who you are than with where you are going.
Craig Groeschel said it like this:
“Put who before do.”
There are a few times in the Bible when God tells certain individuals to do certain things. Moses, set my people free. Jonah, go to Ninevah. Paul, go to Macedonia. There are moments like that, but in 99% of the Bible God says nothing about where to go; most of the Bible is spent on who to be.
We make life so much about what our job is and where we live and what we’ve accomplished. We pat ourselves on the back for what we’ve done and kick ourselves for what we haven’t done. Our self image is tied up so much in do. God is more concerned with who you are than what you are doing. God calls us to put who before do. Good decisions start with where you are at now, not where you want to be.
[bctt tweet=”Put Who Before Do. Who you are matters more that what you are doing. #CanyonSprings” username=”canyon_springs”]
If you wake up each morning and decide to be the person God wants you to be—someone who is forgiving, grateful, humble, kind and loving—then the rest of the decisions somehow become easier. It’s true. Don’t believe me? Give it a try.
2) God is more interested in why you are doing what you do, than what you are actually doing.
We need to put why before what to make sure that we have the right motives for what we are doing?
“All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord. Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.”– Proverbs 16:2,3
How true is that statement? We can all justify our own actions an in typical Everyman Jack fashion I have a great statistic to prove it: 64% of drivers rate themselves as “excellent” or “good.” Is that your experience on the freeway? Me neither.
But maybe it’s not your driving that you are trying to justify. Maybe it’s…
- Your expensive car. (“I need reliable transportation.”)
- The amount of time you spend at work. (“I need to provide for my family.”)
- Why you are posting that photo on Facebook. (“I want to give God the glory for my fitness.”)
We can all come up with reasons to explain what we do but most of the reasons we have are meaningless. There is only one reason, according to the Bible, that holds up. The only reason that matters to God is if you are doing what you do to make a difference in the lives of others.
- You may feel like being a stay-at-home mom or dad is meaningless but if you are doing it for the right reason, to make a difference in the life of a child, then you are doing more than changing diapers; you are changing a life.
- You may think your job is a go-nowhere, dead-end job, but if you spend your time at work caring for and loving the people you work with then it’s a life-giving job, not a dead-end job.
I know this is is an over-simplification but if you want to read the story of a life lived for the right reason then click on this link.
Swipe Right, Not Wrong
There are so many decisions we make in our lives, so many choices we have to make. We can become so overchoiced that we are overwhelmed. So God makes it easy. Just do this:
- Focus on who you are. Focus on who before do
- Focus on why you do what you do. Keep your motives pure. Focus on why before what.
If you do that and you keep God at the center of your life, it doesn’t matter what you do. You’ll be a success. You’ll not just make an impact here on earth, you’ll make an impact for eternity. God will see to that.
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