Decisions, especially those major, life-changing decisions about the future, are challenging, to say the least. What makes them particularly difficult, at least for me, is just the simple fact that I'm trying to make a decision about the future, that will affect my family's and my future, without being privy to what the future even looks like. This can cause me as well as probably many of you some stress. So, let me share with you some things I have learned and am learning right now as I lead my family through a particularly challenging decision-making process that will undoubtedly affect our future.
The big issue for us when making decisions about the future is risk. We simply don't want to risk making a bad or the wrong decision because we do not know which decision is the best one to make. So, in order to alleviate as much risk as possible we want to know as many details about the future as possible, which for us as believers means asking God to give us clear leading as to what to do because He does know the future we don't know. But, God doesn't usually work this way. The future is His to know and ours to find out by experiencing it when it comes (Deuteronomy 29:29).
As Kevin DeYoung puts it:
"Obsessing over the future is not how God wants us to live, because showing us the future is not God's way. His way is to speak to us in the Scriptures and transform us by the renewing of our minds. His way is not a crystal ball. His way is wisdom. We should stop looking for God to reveal the future to us and remove all risk from our lives. We should start looking to God--His character and promises--and thereby have confidence to take risks for His name's sake."
Our big problem in decision making is not so much a lack of trust as much as it is misplaced trust. We get wrapped around the axle of trusting God to lead us to make the perfect decision, which will bring about the best possible results whereas, we should be asking God to help us make the wisest, most biblically informed, most gospel-impacting, and most spiritually healthy decision and then trust God with the results--resting in the fact that because of God's sovereignty--all of our decisions will end up being used by Him to accomplish His will for us. Like, Scotty Smith writes, "Life isn't primarily about making the right decisions but, trusting the right Lord.
Practically speaking, this means reaching the point in our decision-making process where we desire God's wisdom rather than His omniscience. Certainly, we should research our options and consider all our choices wisely. But when, what we really want to know is every step, every turn, every possibility, and every outcome of God's plan for our lives we’re no longer seeking understanding, were wanting omniscience. And quite frankly, the biblical way to making decisions isn’t found in grasping for God’s omniscience, but in grasping God’s hand as we trust that He has been leading and guiding us all along.
When it comes to non-moral choices about specific and perhaps major life-changing decisions, too often, too many of us, approach God's leading as something we just, with the onset of this decision, discovered we needed, rather than assuming that God has been leading us all along as Psalm 23 teaches us. In other words, instead of assuming we need God's leading in choosing which fork in the road to take, perhaps we should assume that God has been leading us all along and the two options before us are the result of God's leading. The assumption that God has already been leading us and therefore, has led us to this fork in the road means that either option would be a fine and perfectly good option to pursue since God cannot and would not tempt us to do that which is wrong (James 1:13).
Looking at our arrival at a junction in life where a major decision is required as a divine appointment and then seeing the choices before us as the good options God has led us to consider and choose from removes the sting of fear from our decision making. This perspective on decision making leads us to freely and responsibly choose between good, God provided, and God-engineered options so as to experience freedom rather than fear in our decision making.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us not to worry about the future, which obviously encompasses the decisions we have made and will make about the future—not because we have access to the information God only has in His omniscience or because an unknown future isn’t scary, but because our Heavenly Father cares for us: "Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" (Matt. 6:25–26)
The idea of our Heavenly Father caring for us is not merely isolated to providing for our material needs of food and clothing, but also to those multiple and important decisions we must make that end up providing definition to our lives. Again, the assumption is that as we are seeking God's Kingdom and God's righteousness, He is leading us, and thus the choices He is leading us to are good options to freely choose from.
But don't make the mistake of thinking that this freedom to choose--promises that our choices will always prove successful or safe. Freedom has never been a synonym for safety. In fact, most of the time, freedom is risky, at least from our perspective, because when we do grasp his hand and decide to trust him, we don’t know what he’ll do. As Elisabeth Elliot writes:
"Our prayers for guidance (or for anything else) really begin here: I trust him. This requires abandonment. We are no longer saying, “If I trust him, he’ll give me such and such,” but, “I trust him. Let him give me or withhold from me what he chooses.”
You see, at the end of the day, assuming God has already been and is continuing to lead us as a result of His providential and sovereign care, as we seek his kingdom and righteousness, means we can freely live life by making the "risky" decisions that will define our lives without overanalyzing every decision or being paralyzed by fear or the prospect of failure.
Pastor Tim Keller once shared that when he first came to Manhattan to start Redeemer Presbyterian Church, people asked him, “Are you sure God has called you to start this church in New York City?” His answer surprised most of them and maybe it'll surprise you too.
I think He did. I see an opportunity. I don’t see anybody else taking the opportunity. I feel an obligation to come. I think it’s a good idea. I think God’s calling me. But I can’t be absolutely sure. I can be sure that I must not lie; it’s in the Bible. I can be sure that I must not bow down to idols; it’s in the Bible. I’m sure of a lot of things that are God’s will. But as far as I know, I won’t be sure that I’m called to plant a church until it happens.
And then when these same people would persist, incredulously asking him, “But, didn’t you have a peace about it?” he replied:
No, it was too hard of a decision. It was too scary. But I know this: guidance is as much something God does as it is something he gives. Therefore, I knew that by selling my house and moving up here and signing a three-year lease that, if I failed to plant a church, God was preparing me for something I couldn’t envision.
In other words, Keller believed God had led him to the decisions and the options he needed to, freely and responsibly, choose between so as to grasp God's hand rather than trying to grasp His omniscience. And this enabled him to rise above fear in making a life-changing decision and enjoy freedom. In this, he followed the early Church Father, Augustine's advice, who, simply and succinctly, wrote in a sermon from 1 John 4:4-12, "Love God and do [choose] whatever you please."
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