MAKING GREAT DECISIONS: DON’T SEEK THE ANSWER

In the last episode, we started looking at how to make good decisions. Everybody needs to make decisions in life at some point or another, and there are keys in the word on how to make good decisions because good decisions set you up for success! Psalms 23:3 says, “he leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” Verse 1 says, “the Lord is my Shepherd” and everything that follows in this Psalm is because the Lord is my Shepherd. He’s my Shepherd and therefore he leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. With God leading us, if we are following him, it’s always going to be following him into what’s good for us! I hear testimonies of people saying things like, “God was leading me to do XY and Z” and they really just didn’t want to do it. That’s a poor testimony. If you have that kind of attitude it’s only because you don’t believe that God desires what’s best for you! The truth is, God is a good father and he has your best interests at heart.

Decisions determine your destiny! Your destiny doesn’t just happen because God wills it, but as you choose what God’s got for you and as you follow his leading and you make those decisions to follow his leading then you start to walk in his purposes for your life and walk in success and that’s when things start to work the way that they should. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “I know the plans I have for you…” and we all know that verse and we quote that verse and we stand on that verse and we stick it on our fridges, and yet we ignore verse 13 which says, “you will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” The way to discover God’s good purposes and plans of prosperity and hope for us, are to seek him with all our hearts! If you really desire to know God’s will and his wisdom to make the decisions that you need to, then you can’t seek out his guidance half-heartedly. You have to give quality and quantity time and attention to seeking him, and by seeking him I mean spending time with him in prayer and in studying the word so that your heart will be open and sensitive to hearing what he has to say to you. We don’t spend all our time with God getting answers from him. Scripture says that we should seek him not just what he can do for us. We’re encouraged to seek him with all our hearts, it doesn’t say seek answers with all your heart. We should be seeking him for who he! A lot of people only start seeking God when they are really in a tough spot and they need answers; when they need direction in their life. That’s seeking God for what he can do for you and God is gracious and I believe that he will meet you where you’re at, but the point that I’m making is that if we are just seeking God all year round, in all seasons, no matter what’s going on, it does matter how good it’s going or how bad it’s going because we are just wanting to know God and we just want to enjoy fellowship with him, then when it comes to making decisions it’s going to be so easy. Follow his leading in the right path will be easy because we know our shepherd’s voice! Jesus said that we hear his voice, we know his voice, and he called himself the Good Shepherd. We need to learn to discern the voice of our Shepherd so that in times of decision making we know which decision to make! Making the right decisions is going to cause us to go in the right direction.

I want to encourage you today to seek God because he wants to have a relationship with you and it’s the best thing for you! It’s going to benefit your life so much to have a vibrant life-giving relationship with father, and as you do enjoy that relationship with him you’re going to get to know his voice and as you know his voice you’re going to be able to make decisions so easily! You’re not going to have to fast and pray for 6 weeks before you make big decisions, but you’re going to get to the place where you know your father is speaking and you know what his heart is in a situation because you have been spending time with him. When you know your Shepherd because you’ve been spending time with him it enables you to discern his voice amongst all the other voices that are trying to speak to us. We learn to discern his voice through spending time in his word and getting to know him, through spending time in prayer fellowship with him – that’s what prayer is all about, it’s not a shopping list, is just an opportunity to fellowship with our father.