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Understanding God's Will: Finding Clarity In the Small, Large, & In-Between
59 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, Dan Sanchez and Pastor Ridley Barron talked about discerning God's will in our lives, a multifaceted topic critical to the Christian walk. They unpacked the nuances of interpreting God's voice amidst today's challenges, exploring the broad spectrum of divine guidance from sovereign to moral and individual will. Delving into personal experiences and biblical examples like Jonah's unambiguous call, they provided insight into the varied complexities of knowing and following God's direction.
Timestamps:
04:58 Fear of making mistakes leads to prayer.
08:10 The pressure of getting decisions absolutely right.
11:36 Gathering information and seeking wise counsel.
16:41 Agreement on prophecy and ability to discern.
19:49 God intentionally gives us talents and path.
20:27 Introverts may not be suited for preaching.
25:35 God uses medium decisions to redirect lives.
27:15 Serve in church according to God's will.
31:27 Discussing decisions at the table positively impacts kids.
34:39 Careful deliberation, prayer, research before major decisions.
37:40 College isn't for everyone; know yourself.
41:27 Reevaluating marriage based on mental commitment, not emotions.
43:14 Choosing to love is a conscious decision.
46:44 Add 6th step: know yourself very well.
49:35 Christian dating books are mostly garbage, unhelpful.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Blueprint' Sermon Series
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome back to the Grove Hill Church Podcast where I'm here with Ridley Baron talking about the new sermon series we just opened up called The Blueprint where we're studying the book of Acts. Today's topic, discerning God's will.
How to Discern God's Will?
00:00:13
Speaker
It's one of those classic topics that I feel like every good Christian wants to know this, right? I feel like from the earliest times you're like, God, what do you want me to do with my life?
00:00:23
Speaker
Just give me a sign and then when you hit your early 20s is when you're really asking it because you have a lot of big decisions like, God, what college should I go to? What career should I pick? Is she the one? All the stuff. You're like, I don't have a decision making framework, God, so help me figure this out.
00:00:42
Speaker
So it's a topic, and I feel like it's something that we all long to know. We want to know what God's will is for us. All of us at some point have prayed that prayer, Lord, open the right door, shut the right door, give me a sign, those kinds of
Human Nature and Divine Guidance
00:00:56
Speaker
things. And there's lots of indications in scripture that there were similar prayers being prayed by guys like Gideon.
00:01:04
Speaker
I think it's in human nature to do it, right? Otherwise we wouldn't have all the tarot card readers and fortune cookies. It's like every culture is God. It's like, it's like magical way of like forecasting what you should do, right? So it's like, it's in the human heart to go and to go up. That's where we got this. This wasn't in the stars. Now we're reading the stars to try to figure out what God has planned for us, you know? So there's something
Understanding God's Will: Sovereign, Moral, and Individual
00:01:30
Speaker
about us. God made us to depend on him for direction.
00:01:35
Speaker
So to kick off this podcast, I wanted to dive a little bit deeper because you hit this in the sermon, but I'm like, uh, you went deeper in the leadership Academy classes. So like, let's bring out some more of that because there were some things that were said in a visual that was given that was really simple, but really useful. So can you recap for me? Like what the difference is between like.
00:01:55
Speaker
God's general will for me and his preferred will. Those weren't the exact names, but it was something along those lines like where you could go and then where you probably should go. Right. So the terms that we use Sunday and even going back to the Leadership Academy where we did this before are his sovereign will, his moral will, and his individual will.
00:02:21
Speaker
The sovereign will is also referred to as the hidden will, and that's because this is the part of God's will that is absolutely sovereign. It's untouchable in the sense that nothing can change it. It's already been determined.
00:02:34
Speaker
I would compare it to in Scripture is the idea of predestination, that certain things are predestined to happen. And so that part of His will is called hidden because we usually don't recognize it or see it until after it's passed. And we're able to look back and go, oh, that was God guiding me, protecting me, arranging things for me.
00:02:57
Speaker
So yeah, that's the big one, the overarching one. It's God's sovereignty over everything in the universe. The second one we call the moral will, or his revealed will, and the reason it's called revealed is because most of this, 98% of it, is in the Bible for us. It is, to use where we use Sunday, it is basically the parameters within which we can operate and still be considered to be living a righteous life that pursues Christ.
Anxiety Over Missing God's Will
00:03:24
Speaker
So he's given us directions for life. He's given us principles by which to live and ways to which to try to make decisions, those kinds of things. So the third one, the third one is kind of like questionable, I guess is the best way to put it. Lots of people believe that there is a specific will that God has for us. And some go so far as to say that his specific will is down to the minute.
00:03:54
Speaker
it was God's will that I got up at 6.15 this morning, so he woke me up. There's God's will that I took a right turn instead of a left turn, those kinds of things. If you think about Frank Peretti's books back in, you know, this present darkness and stuff, there's a lot of that kind of instance in it. This idea that everything in the universe happens for reasons. I spilled my coffee. Well, it must've been God's will.
00:04:20
Speaker
There are less intense versions of that that do just kind of say, well, God has some specific will regarding major decisions in my life, like who I marry, where I live, where I go to school, those kinds of things. But the problem, for those who do not adhere to that, the problem is this idea that God's specific will is something we either hit it and get it right, or we completely miss it.
00:04:46
Speaker
And if you don't get it right, then you settle for what they like to refer to as his permissive will, where you're not really in trouble, you're just not in his perfect plan for your life.
00:04:58
Speaker
That puts lots of pressure on us, and that's what I think leads most of us to pray prayers like, God, open the right door, shut the right door. I'm scared I'm going to make a mistake.
Freedom Within God's Moral Will
00:05:09
Speaker
I actually had a little counseling session yesterday with a young lady who, that was very much the language she used. She said, I have trouble making decisions because I'm always scared I'm going to mess it up.
00:05:21
Speaker
Kind of had to take it back to, you know what, this idea of the moral will is the moral will is the room within which we can operate and still know that we're still righteous. There's nothing wrong with it, but I think God gives us freedom within that and not to feel like we have to find a specific spot on a map. So that's kind of a quick review of those.
00:05:44
Speaker
The illustration we had at the leadership Academy, I'll put up, put up my
Framework for Decision Making
00:05:48
Speaker
little whiteboard here. If you're watching the video, then you can see it. If you're on Apple podcasts, you can see the video or just go to YouTube. No, it's not on YouTube. You pretty much have to watch this in Apple podcasts. We need to put this on YouTube, but I haven't started doing that yet. I need access to YouTube. That's the problem. I have a circle here, a big circle called the moral will.
00:06:09
Speaker
And that's like everything within the bounds of what scriptures allows us to do. Now, of course, like adultery, that's outside God's moral will, you know? So we know we can't do that because he explicitly says, don't commit adultery, right? As an example. And when you talk about the specific will, like, does God want me to go here or marry this person, you know, a specific person who you're not married to yet? You know, it's kind of like you're asking God to like pinpoint something really specific, this little dot. You're like, is that in your will?
00:06:40
Speaker
It's kinda like, well, I don't know. Sometimes for some very few people, God has very, very specific plans for it. You see that in the Bible where God's orchestrating, like, no, Jonah, you're gonna go here, you're gonna do this. And do it this way. And there's nothing you can do to get away from it, so it happens. So there's some circumstances like that. But I remember from the Leadership Academy, you're like, yeah, but there's this other circle of like, it's almost like you could break,
00:07:08
Speaker
Closer to the inner circle you are like the more The better it is because you know, the Bible says like all things
00:07:17
Speaker
Oh gosh, I screw up this verse every time, but not all things are beneficial, but all things are permissible, right? Not all things are many things. It says all things, but I'm like, well, many things are permissible. Not all things are beneficial. Not all things, right? And it gives us the kind of sense that while you can do it and not sin by picking over here, there are some things that are better than others. Right. Right. Exactly.
00:07:45
Speaker
you can meet someone and get married to them and then sleep with them the next day, but that's not using wisdom. You could do that and it wouldn't be sinning, but it's probably not a good idea. There's a bunch of things like that, but then there's a lot of shades of gray between these two circles sometimes, right? Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:08:12
Speaker
The problem with the idea of a specific will is that that puts a lot of pressure on us to get it absolutely right with every single decision, because if we don't get it right, then we can throw off sometimes the whole universe by our choices. This idea that we have a soulmate, that there's one person who is just right for us, that's probably been messed up a million times, a billion times, even through the course of history. In fact, if you go back to the Bible,
00:08:40
Speaker
people didn't get to choose who they married. There were arranged marriages. So how do you know that you were getting a specific person? And if I'm getting married and I choose the specific person I think is there and it's not right, then now I've taken somebody's perfect mate from them and that sets off a chain reaction of people being unable to marry their perfect mate. When you get back to more general decisions like which school do I choose to go to,
00:09:08
Speaker
Many times I feel like God's answer to us when we pray those prayers is, I don't really care which school you go to. I just want you to follow me when you get there and be used by me while you're there. So back to your drawing that you just showed us a minute ago.
00:09:25
Speaker
It may be for a kid who needs a smaller, maybe a private Christian institution. There's lots of options within that small circle. But if they decided to go to the University of Oklahoma, it wouldn't be a sin. It just would be a less ideal decision that they have made.
00:09:43
Speaker
There's a lot of freedom in it, but there's also still like this Russell of like, Oh, but what's the better decision? And I think you outlined it really well in the sermon. It's kind of like, Hey, like decision-making framework, you kind of laid out right at the end and you're kind of like, here's some steps you can take one, get more information, like talk to your elders in your church, especially if it's a big decision. Like, should I,
00:10:07
Speaker
I don't know, like if you're, if it's talking about marriage, of course, like, you know, what's funny is I find that the people who actually seek counsel are the ones who usually don't need it. Right. Because they're wise. You're probably good already, but do it anyway, because then you'll be one of those people. Um, it tells, it means that you're thinking with your head and not just like what the, the emotions of the moment. Yes. So we kind of ended up the sermon with basically a five step plan to help you with decision making process. Number one, you always start with prayer.
00:10:37
Speaker
And then going back to the passage of Scripture that we referred to in Acts, this selection of the 12th apostle to replace Judas Iscariot, we couch that in this statement of principle. You should have an ongoing existing conversation with God that's a part of your regular life.
00:10:55
Speaker
So that when you get to the major decisions and begin to pray specifics about that, there's a familiarity with God's voice. You're not talking to a stranger. You're talking to someone you have an ongoing intimate relationship with. So prayer is the beginning.
00:11:11
Speaker
reading God's Word, being familiar with it. Of course, that begins to outline for you. The more you know it, you have the outline of what the moral will of God is. The moral will can be major things. It can be minor things. It can be things like God says, I want you to love one another and I want you to serve one another. That's part of God's moral will for us. So those things need to be kept in the back of our minds as we're considering these decisions.
00:11:36
Speaker
The third step is the gathering of information like you talk about. It could be googling something on the internet. It could be going to the library and pulling out a book on the subject. It could be just sitting in a general conversation, a Bible study with people and listening to them share their thoughts on a particular matter.
00:11:54
Speaker
But then the fourth step, which is kind of closely related to it, is this idea of wise counsel. Let's go find the people who are not necessarily the experts in that area, but they're at least experts in understanding and hearing the voice of God.
00:12:08
Speaker
And a perfect example is when I first felt a call to go into ministry, I had not even thought about ministry. So one of the things I did, probably about out of blind luck, rather than knowledge, that's what I needed to do. I went to people I looked at as mentors and said to them, do you think I should go into ministry? And immediately several people said, absolutely, I see that character in you. I see those leadership qualities in you. I think that's something that would be in line with God's will for you.
00:12:39
Speaker
And then the last thing is, I think the way we word it was just make a decision and go with it. Don't look back out of fear because the most amazing part of the gospel is that God has already loved Dan at his lowest point. He's not going to stop loving you because you make an incorrect choice on a decision. He knows your heart. He knows that Dan is trying to follow after God.
00:13:02
Speaker
The fact that you're even praying about a decision means I want to get God's input on this. So we shouldn't live in fear of those decisions because there's nothing that we could do even if we made a mistake that God couldn't overcome and use for our goodness. This topic is near and dear to my heart because everybody thinks about it and I've thought a lot about it, especially when I was in my 20s.
00:13:27
Speaker
Going back now, especially after working at a missions college, where there's lots of young people praying about going overseas and going to America and all that kind of stuff, part of me has been tainted about this topic of discerning God's will.
Skepticism Towards Claimed Divine Direction
00:13:40
Speaker
Because it seems like so many Christians, young people, but even older people, I've noticed,
00:13:46
Speaker
tend to manipulate the thing and use it like, well, Lord, the God told me to, God told me to. When it's like on the other side, it's such, I'm like, you're, you're making a mistake. It's a huge mistake. Right. When they come to the missions, they just go prematurely. Well, we know someone over there or what are you going to do once you get over there? Oh, we'll figure it out. I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is not good. I can't tell you how many young people I have had conversations with.
00:14:12
Speaker
Unfortunately, not all of them in an advisory capacity, but who have heard them say things like, I'm going to go to missions because I visited there four years ago and I really loved it. Well, that doesn't mean you're called to missions there. It's a great vacation. Yeah. So, um, yeah, we can manipulate God's voice. And I have said probably 20 years of my life, many of us are going to have to get to heaven and apologize to God for what we blamed him for when he had nothing to do with it.
00:14:38
Speaker
So I've always been really hesitant and anytime someone tells me like something the Lord's told them, I'm always kind of like...
00:14:45
Speaker
I have this like look on my face. I'm like, don't show the look, don't show the look. Show like you actually believe. But I always have this like hesitancy. I'm like, okay, tell me what you heard. I mean, it also depends on who's saying it. You know, if I know this person, it might be my age to just blame something on God. It might be my age, Dan, but I'm getting more skeptical about that. Not because I doubt that God's talking to people. I just feel like more people use it as a manipulative tool. If I say God said, then people will have to listen to me. Yeah.
00:15:14
Speaker
And you're right, it happens way too frequently. People trying to put the endorsement of God on something that God really never had anything to do with. I've got one very, very sweet, very dear friend who I would say, man, she is a prayer warrior. If anything comes into my life and I need it, I'm gonna look at her and say, can you be praying for me? But she, more times than I am comfortable with, will say, God has given me a word for you and she will say it
00:15:44
Speaker
And then it never comes true. Well, biblically, what that means is that she's not really hearing from God because God's word always comes true. Yeah. I think now prophecy is a whole different topic, but it'd be fun to touch on it a little bit here.
00:16:00
Speaker
the way I've been taught about prophecy, because most people jump to like Old Testament prophet status, but I think it's actually a spectrum.
Modern Prophecy and Cultural Discernment
00:16:07
Speaker
And it makes sense when you line it up to other gifts. So I'd like to hear what you think about that if like, because not like teachers get it wrong, too. So do leaders.
00:16:16
Speaker
We hold profits to such high standards, but if they're operating as Old Testament profit status, there's got to be gradients of little gifts of the prophecy, maybe a little bit more discernment, maybe a little bit more discerning God's will here lightly, and then maybe some people can get up to this point. I haven't seen any or have heard of any, and every time someone says somebody's an Old Testament status prophet, I'm always like, probably not. Right. I'm with you. I'm with you 100%.
00:16:44
Speaker
Yeah, I do. In fact, when I take spiritual gifts tests, one of the gifts I'm given is prophecy. And the way I see prophecy, at least the level using your terminology, the level that I am as a prophet is an ability to decipher the culture and see things for what they are and to see how they need to be changed in order to align them with God.
00:17:08
Speaker
So if you even apply that to Old Testament prophets, guys like Isaiah, they didn't get to see the future. God saw the future and told them what it looked like. It wasn't their ability to see it. It was God's ability to see it. But what Isaiah's job was to apply that to his culture where he lived and say, if you don't listen, this is what the Lord says will happen.
00:17:29
Speaker
So I feel like that kind of, it kind of gets blurred between I'm a predictor of the future, I'm a seer of the present, I'm an understander of the current situations, those kinds of things. I've had a few people prophesy over me and they come true in weird ways. People knew nothing about me. I'm like, whoa. Till this day, I'm like,
00:17:52
Speaker
Dang, that old guy, I only met one time. We talked for a while. He knew things about me. He had no idea. I'm like how he knew him and my friend and prophesied over things over us. I'm like, they both came through. I don't know how it happened, but not going to be the one that says there is no ability to do that. I think many times, especially when people who know us prophesy over us, that what they really are doing is not seeing the future, but that they are really, really crystal clear and seeing your present and how that leads to that future.
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's almost more amazing when they know nothing about us and still, you know, there's this in the charismatic circles, they caught a word of knowledge, right? It's less prophecy predicting the future more of like, God's told me something about you and now I'm gonna
00:18:37
Speaker
I'm going to share it with you. And if it's right, then here's like the second part of the interpretation of like, and I've been a couple of times to me too, probably not as much as you, because I've been primarily most of my life and all of my life in the Baptist tradition, which doesn't have as much of that as some of the other interdenominational or non-denominational. So yeah. I remember the first time I got exposed to those kinds of things. And as somebody who, again, searching for God's will for my life, I was fascinated by it and would seek those people out. Now I'm kind of like,
00:19:06
Speaker
If it comes, it comes. If it doesn't, whatever. I'm more, I'm kind of like, I like this picture we've drawn here with the circles because it can say like, you know, stay within God's moral will and then think about like, how to best leverage your strengths and gifts for helping other people and bringing other people to Jesus.
Aligning Decisions with Spiritual Gifts
00:19:24
Speaker
Outside of that, do what you want. You know what I'm saying? Like figure it out. Like God, if you want to get into hiking and like,
00:19:34
Speaker
I don't know, get even to outdoor ministry. Like I, even at my point, I was picking careers. I'm like, I could be a graphic designer. I can get into outdoors ministry is the two big decisions I was making. Honestly, I think both would have worked out great. I ended up going to design and marketing route, but yeah, that goes back to something we were talking about as part of the sermon Sunday. I don't know if we talked about this in the leadership course as much, but we did talk about this Sunday. The Bible is very clear that when God put you together, he had intentionality in it.
00:20:02
Speaker
You know, he gave you a certain temperament. He gave you a certain talents. That's not to say that we aren't, you know, it goes back to the whole nurture versus nature kind of thing. That doesn't mean that God can't develop things in us as we grow and as we're exposed to life experiences. But there's some really core things that Ari put into us when we are born, which she began to give us clues about where our path needs to take us.
00:20:27
Speaker
If I'm an introvert and I'm scared to death about being around large crowds, then it's probably a good sign I don't need to be a preacher. I don't need to be on the stage trying to teach God's word. There are exceptions, obviously. I know some guys that are really bad introverts who are amazing preachers.
00:20:45
Speaker
It begins, and so the idea is you put it along, I like to use, Rick Warren used to use the acronym SHAPE when he would do his teaching classes, and I'm probably gonna forget all of them, but the S stood for spiritual gifts, H stood for your heart or your passion, A stood for your aptitudes or your abilities. P was something else, and then I think E was like your experiences, your life experiences.
00:21:11
Speaker
PS personality. PS personality, that's it, yeah. So you put all those five things together and they give you a good network, basically a filter for which you to filter out things and go, this is going to narrow down my choices for me because God has put those things inside of me.
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah, I like that shape spiritual gifts, heart abilities, personality experiences. That's a pretty good way to frame it in. There's many tests like that. This one's pretty good. Yeah, there's actually if you just Google shape Rick Warren, he has actually a little testy thing here. Yeah, you just print it out and fill it out and it'll kind of help you discern.
00:21:48
Speaker
We're fixing to put in a variation of that over the summer that we're going to offer not only to our new members as they take our new member class, but all of our existing members who have not had the opportunity, it's going to be incorporation of those kinds of things. Personality, talents, spiritual gifts, those kinds of things. One book I have to shout out.
00:22:09
Speaker
This is a little bit more of a dense book, but if you're really into this topic, there's this fantastic book called What's Best Next. It's actually around, it's a theological defense around Christian productivity, saying like, why should Christians work to be productive?
Levels of Decision Making
00:22:23
Speaker
But it kind of comes back to that idea of like, there's lesser choices we can make, like I could spend the whole week in playing video games, or I could spend the weekend, you know, building meaningful relationships with my kids and discipling them. Both are permissible.
00:22:37
Speaker
One's more beneficial, but not everything is so clear. That one's an obvious one. Not everything is so clear. This book outlines how to think through it from the Bible. How do we approach productivity as Christians? Who is Matt Perlman? Do you know who he is? Is that Matt? That's the author. Oh, who is he? Yeah, who is he? Is he a professor? I believe he's the editor of Desiring God.
00:23:04
Speaker
Oh, okay. I'm pretty sure like he's highly involved in desiring. God works with John Piper and John Piper. Yeah, that's pretty solid then. Oh yeah. No, it's, it's, it's a little bit more of a meaty book. I wish they had like a thinner digest version of it because there's a lot of helpful concepts in there, but yeah.
00:23:22
Speaker
I thought it'd be fun to dive into like, okay, like we've said a lot of things, but like, what does this actually look like? So let's break down, like, how do we handle discerning God's voice for small choices, medium sized choices, and some big choices. And I have some examples. Let's talk about them. Okay. Starting with small choices. All right. Does God care about the small choices if they aren't violating his moral will? Okay. Uh, my answer would be that God cares about everything.
00:23:52
Speaker
But I don't think that God stresses about those things. Don't use the word stress like we would normally think about stress. God doesn't stress about anything. But I think God, that's an area where God says, hey, you got a lot of freedom in this. Go back to your illustration of the weekend. How do I spend my weekend? Do I spend it working in the yard or going out with friends? None of those things are going to be life changing, life determining factors. They're not going to set the course of your life for the most part. So enjoy the freedom.
00:24:19
Speaker
If you get guilty because you didn't get your grass cut, that's your problem, not from God. Yep. So you want to make the most of your time, but at the same time, God's most glorified when you have the most joy in Him, and that can be done doing recreational things too. Yes. Now, again, those all still fall, even though they're small decisions, they still fall within the moral will of God, where God gives us direction. I mean, Proverbs is very clear about making wise use of your time and
00:24:49
Speaker
you know, the sluggard is going to starve or become, you know, given into poverty, those kinds of things. So there's lots of wisdom there where God says, you know, you can blow the whole weekend playing video games, but that's not the wisest thing for you to be doing.
00:25:02
Speaker
That's it. So I think small choices are so many small choices. I don't have specific examples of those. And that's just kind of blankets all these small choices from what you should do over the weekend or what clothes you should wear, what should you buy, all that kind of stuff. It's not a medium sized choices where it starts to get interesting because the big choices are usually the ones people pray the most about if they're praying for a decision at all. But the medium sized choices where it gets interesting. So let's say you're changing directions in career.
00:25:31
Speaker
Or maybe even considering a new job or pursuing a new path. God can use anything to redirect the course of our lives, but I would argue that the small decisions probably aren't the ones he uses most often. But once you get into these medium decisions, those are the ones where he begins to use those kinds of determinations in your life that set your feet on a particular course. Picking a new job path is a great example.
00:25:58
Speaker
does God care if you stop working at Walmart to instead go be a programmer at a particular corporation? Most likely not, but could he use that to help you become a great programmer that then eventually joined some ministry somewhere and now you're helping to advance the kingdom of God through that particular talent that you've learned or whatever? Those are great things. And so yeah, they require a little bit more prayer
00:26:26
Speaker
Now, let's be clear. The Bible says pray about all things. So we're not saying don't pray about the small decisions. But I think the key, one of the key differences between a small decision, a medium decision and a large decision is time. How much time do you take to ponder the decision? You're not going to pray for 48 hours about whether or not to go eat it in a Mexican place or the Italian place Friday night. But if you start talking about a career change or maybe even
00:26:51
Speaker
selling your house and moving across town. Those are a little bit less freedom because they have a greater potential for impact in your life. What about where, not if, to volunteer at your local church? Thank you for clarifying that, Dan Sanchez. Yes, where? I started off writing the question of, oh my, no, no, no, where? Yeah, yeah.
00:27:17
Speaker
Because, again, if you're doing this according to what we've talked about, the moral will of God is that you will be serving in your church in some capacity. You'll be serving the body of Christ. That's why He's given you and part has given you some of those talents. So, yeah, I think that's one of those areas where prayer, I mean, going through the five steps, prayer, knowing God's word tells you to serve somewhere.
00:27:41
Speaker
gather information from different ministries. One of the things I like to encourage people is go sit in a kid's classroom a couple of weeks and see if you've got the temperament to serve our children or go visit the youth ministry and see if that's something you want to be a part of. Talk to the wise counsel and then make a decision, but know that those decisions are not, they're not gonna change your life in such a radical direction that you can't come back from them and be right back where God wants you to be.
00:28:12
Speaker
Here's an interesting one. What about your kids' activities? It's one of those things where you're talking between good options, you know? It's whether to do this sport or that sport or maybe this sport or being more involved in something like Alana's or something like that. You can only pick so many things to do and it's not major. You can undo them pretty quickly. One season can be over and then you change, you pivot. But at the same time, it's a big decision as a family.
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah, I would kind of, if, if I'm allowed to do this, I would kind of put that in the medium hard decision. It's a little bit more than medium. It's not, like you said, a major decision, but it's a little bit more, more than just a mid range decision.
00:28:54
Speaker
because it has the potential to set a kid on a course of direction for the rest of their life. It has the ability to help a kid engage with talents that they learn about themselves. It can take them away from good influences that might help them to grow in their character. It also can set traditions and patterns for their life. And you're going to hear a pastor say this and know that's what pastors do.
00:29:18
Speaker
If you tell your kid, hey, I'm going to take you and put you on a travel ball team that's going to take you away from church for the next three months of your life, then what you've said to them is church really isn't a big deal to us. Just doesn't matter. And that sets patterns. And then not to get too far off this rabbit trail, then they show up at your church, you know, 15 years later going, I don't understand why my kid doesn't have a passion for God like I want him to. Well, that passion is instilled in them by the passion you have.
00:29:49
Speaker
Yeah. I've often wondered, I'm like, wait, you know how some parents like go all into sports for their kids? I'm like, what does it look like to be all into local church with your kids? Yes. I mean, you could do all the programs, but I'm like, but what does it look like to be a fanatic and just be like, like be one of those parents, but like in the church. I'm going to, I'm going to be the objective pastor here and say, you can go too far the other direction as well. I think you can bear your child so much in church.
00:30:17
Speaker
that they forget that their job is to go to the world and share Jesus. You put them inside a kind of a holy huddle and put a bubble around them and then they don't know how to share their faith with those who are not like them in their beliefs. So I think there's a healthy balance there. I'm never going to be the one to say, don't put your kids in outside activities because I benefited greatly from school plays that I was in and sports that I played. So yeah, I think those are really, really key, but you got to
00:30:47
Speaker
You got to constantly remind yourself, where is my focus for my kids? Lots of people nodding right now is good. What's interesting about that is when you're choosing between two good things.
Family Discussions on Decision Making
00:31:01
Speaker
Right. And that's kind of like the activities with kids. Like, am I choosing between this good thing or this equally good thing? Yeah. And again, like you were just saying, I kind of consider it now. It's like, well, how much time does it take? How much money does it cost? How big of an impact? How easily reversible is it? You know, take all things in consideration should be the amount of time. It should kind of set the amount of time you're pursuing God's will on the topic, which is walking through the five steps you laid out.
00:31:27
Speaker
Right, right. And in a family way, I think this is a really great conversation piece around the dinner table with your children. I hope you're having dinner around the table with your children on a regular basis. But helping them walk through and answer those kinds of questions helps to make them good decision makers. It also helps to take away some of the anxiety they might feel about this whole idea of a dot in their life rather than the parameters that God has given us to live righteously. So yeah, even
00:31:57
Speaker
Well, maybe even more importantly in the hard decisions that you face, like say your family's talking about moving four states away to take on a new career and a big change in lifestyle, those kinds of things. I think even as young as seven or eight years old, it's a great idea to have them at the table and say, let's talk about
00:32:15
Speaker
the good, let's talk about the bad, let's talk about where God has given us direction and where God has left us freedom to make those two choices so that they understand the process of being a good follower of God and what it means to consult Him for the choices we're going to make.
00:32:30
Speaker
That's good. I'm wishing I would have done that when moving here. I did not. I'm like, what did we do? I'm sure we told them somehow, somehow they came over. I could start doing that now. The reason I'm able to say that is because there's many times I'll haul, you know what? I probably should have included my kids in that conversation. Yeah. Well, there'll be many more decisions to make. My kids are still young. So good for you learn from that one. Moving on to some of the big ones. One of them was moving.
00:32:59
Speaker
So what do you think about that? You know, it's funny. I've heard some people, I've heard some, I think it came from a pastor being like, don't move for a job, move for a church. I'm like, I'm not sure how I feel about that. Some, there's been times where my family moved, my dad didn't have a job lined up, but they didn't move for church. They moved for something else. Yeah. And then he ended up not being able to find work in the new location. So I'm like, Oh, I could come back and bite you. You probably should know when there's a job. Yeah. I think there's lots of good and bad reasons to make a move.
00:33:28
Speaker
Sometimes I think people move because they're running away from pain that they experienced where they're at. And I think that's a good place for us to remind you that sometimes the pain that was brought to you was brought to you by God to teach you some things. So you don't want to run from that. Sometimes it is good to move because the family is kind of stuck where they're at and a change of scenery. We give them all a fresh start. Obviously changing a career where, you know, maybe it's a,
00:33:58
Speaker
better alignment for the mom or dad. It's who they were created to be. And so now they're finally getting into a field that kind of reinforces that. That's a great reason to make it a choice to move. I'm going to surprise you just because you're getting a raise and a bump in your promotion is not necessarily a good reason to move. Because again, just recently had a conversation with a young lady who said,
00:34:24
Speaker
I love my dad to death, but our relationship has suffered because ever since he took his new job, we don't see him. And so dad's making bank. He's gotten promotion, but he's losing his family in the process. Never a good trade. Right. So, you know, going back to this whole conversation about hard decisions, I think that's one of those where you take more time. You don't rush those decisions. You go through the five steps slowly, meticulously, and
00:34:55
Speaker
I would argue that you do them in order and don't move beyond until you know that you've completed each one. Am I praying specifically and sincerely for an answer from God and am I listening? Am I doing all the talking or am I actually listening to hear what God might be sharing with me? Am I in the word daily so that there's places for him to give me direction if that's how he's going to choose to speak to me? Have I done my research, you know?
00:35:21
Speaker
Go visit the place. Go sit down with people who work there. Talk to families that live in the neighborhoods that you would be looking at for possible moves. What are the schools like? There's all kinds of things to be considered which deserve and I think mandate that you take your time and think it through. So yeah, all those processes are going to help with those hard decisions. Again,
00:35:44
Speaker
There's freedom. I'd be the first to tell you that my mom and dad probably made some decisions that, looking back, they regretted. They will not be counted against them as sin because they weren't sinful decisions. They were maybe just made a little hastily or without enough research into the decision. Maybe just because it felt good in the moment. I don't know. And I'll be honest, in 56 years of my life, I know there's decisions I've made that I thought, man, I wish I'd have thought a little more before I pulled the trigger on this.
00:36:14
Speaker
Uh, fortunately, at least right now in this moment, I can't recall any of them that fall into that major decision part, but a lot of medium decisions that we made. I'm thinking, man, bad call on this one. Yeah. I have a good thing. You have a lot of choices I've made that you Dave Ramsey calls you pay the stupid tax on. You did the thing and now you, you pay the price for it. I paid a lot of stupid tax. Yeah. Yeah. You know,
00:36:43
Speaker
You're right. And it can cost you a lot of different things. It can cost you money. It can cost you your reputation. It can cost you your family. It can cause you a lot of heartache. So it costs you some emotional stability. There's a lot of prices to be paid by rushing through any decision that you need to make.
00:37:04
Speaker
The last two big choices I have are like the classics. This is what I call the second, third largest choices of usually your life.
College Decisions and Youth Pressure
00:37:13
Speaker
We'll start with the third one, which is college. It's a hard one. It is. Because 18-year-olds don't even have their decision-making ability fully formed in their brain yet. I agree. I agree. And how much it's developed may be
00:37:25
Speaker
based on how many times you sat there down around the table and had those conversations about how do we make decisions. I've been going, not going. Where do you sit on college right now, by the way? Sometimes it makes sense. It always makes sense. Where do you stand on college? Very much. It's not for everybody now.
00:37:45
Speaker
I love college, love the idea of college, loved my experience of college and even convinced three of my four kids to go to college. But my fourth kid was the one that convinced me, you know what, it's not cut out for everybody. And there actually are lots of great career paths that don't require college, but a little bit of trade school or maybe an internship somewhere and you're set on the path that you really love and enjoy. So school is one of those areas I very much would say
00:38:14
Speaker
You got to know yourself a little bit. And I think you have full permission to lean into your preferences. Do you want a small school? Do you want a big school with a big football program so you can go to games and support the team? Do they have the actual career paths that I want? The majors that I want? Those kinds of things. So those are really great pieces of conversation to have.
00:38:34
Speaker
But I also feel like it's one of the ones we put way too much pressure on our kids to make. And I think we need to give them the freedom and remind them of the freedom they have just to make a choice based on what their gut tells them after prayer and consultation with people. Gathering information is important there. You got to know what school you're going to based on what majors they offer, what extracurriculars they offer, those kinds of things.
00:39:01
Speaker
It used to be a bigger choice because you had to do it at that time of your life. If you missed it, you missed it. Going back was extremely hard. Nowadays, not so much. I went back at 30 after having found the thing that I actually wanted to do, which I found out was marketing. Then I found a program that let me essentially test out of every class that I already knew, which having been a marketing director already, I got my BS in like eight months.
00:39:27
Speaker
It was just, it was fast. So like there's, there's all kinds of options out there these days for adults going back. And many do. That's one of those decisions that I'm like, if you're not sure. Wait, because it is depending on where you go and what you do, it can be expensive and it can be a complete waste of time. Right. With a lot of biology majors that ended up changing. Yeah. Yeah.
00:39:49
Speaker
With online learning, distance learning, you got lots of options nowadays. Um, the used to you had requirements that you had to finish your course load by a certain time period, or you would lose credits. And that, I think that's still true. If you're going to do it, you have to do it. You can't go get half of it in 10 years later.
00:40:06
Speaker
No, you know what? They do transfer. They will transfer those credits, but sometimes the reason why they do is programs change over time because they're trying to keep it up to date. And if it's like from 20 years ago, it's like, well, it's like, yeah, graphic design has changed a bit. I understand that. But again, to your point, 65 years old, you discover what God wanted you to be when you were 20 and you go, okay, I think I want to go back to school and get this. There's no, really no deterrent at all. It's just a matter of your willingness to do it.
00:40:35
Speaker
And the big one is marriage. I mean, that's the second biggest choice of your life and making a good decision there can make you and sometimes break you. Absolutely. That is one of those decisions that is really difficult and has anybody ever taken a class on how to even go through the process
Marriage: A Commitment Choice
00:40:54
Speaker
of identifying? I got lucky, I went through a gap year program and they actually taught. And it's funny, they taught all the guys this, they did not teach the girls in this program, which means nuts.
00:41:02
Speaker
But as they walked us through like, hey, this is the goal of dating. In fact, here's the dating process. They like to call it a courtship. I was like, whatever we call it dating. But like, this is what you're looking for. Here's the goal. Here's how early dating phase looks like. Here's what later dating phase looks like. Here's the requirements you should be looking at for engagement, what you do while you're engaged before marriage. And I'm like, they gave me a playbook to run off of, but I'm like, most people don't have a playbook to even make that choice.
00:41:27
Speaker
I'm going to throw this out there at you. I would love your thoughts on it because I probably am a very, very big minority here. I have thought and rethought through the years about marriage and what biblical marriage looks like and all these kinds of things. I think Western humanity has ruined romance and all this kind of stuff because it made it all about emotions.
00:41:53
Speaker
And that's why people wake up one day and say, I don't feel like I love you anymore. Well, that's not really what this is about. I don't believe that real true love of the way the Bible describes it is about emotion. I believe it's about mental determination and commitment.
00:42:07
Speaker
And so I would say if I were to go back, just me, I'm gonna just put myself on the spot here, and to start over my journey in life about who I'm gonna marry, it would come from mental things that I knew that I wanted to commit to, the kind of person I wanted to commit to. So there's still this dating and romancing element, but there comes a day where you go, I choose to love this person.
00:42:33
Speaker
Not, I woke up with goosebumps this morning or they made me feel good when I kissed them or we held hands because that's a dangerous way to base your love. And the best proof I have that I think it's more about your mind than it is your heart is because in the Bible, they didn't date. You know, Jacob did not date Rachel or Leah either one. Same exact circumstances, one he didn't love Leah and the other he did, Rachel.
00:43:03
Speaker
Why? Because Jacob made a determination that Rachel was the girl that he wanted to spend his life with. And so he committed himself to both. And I think that's what the Bible speaks to. The Bible talks about loving people as a choice we make. Jesus says, love your enemies. Well, nobody wakes up feeling like they want to love their enemies. They wake up saying, you know what? I choose to be obedient to Christ's command, so I'm going to make a decision to love the person who is unlovely.
00:43:31
Speaker
I feel like if we approached our dating and courtships and marriages that way, we'd have way fewer divorces because it wouldn't be based on how I feel when I wake up in the morning or when I lay down at night after a long day and instead would be based on, I have made a commitment to God and to this person because I believe in who they are. I'm on a 100% agreement with you. Once you've made the decision, once you've tied the knot, once you've made the commitment.
00:43:59
Speaker
Whatever that is now your soul, I guess soul mate's a bad term because that's not even a biblical idea at all. Right, but I get what you're saying. That is who you're destined now to be married to. This is who God's choice for you now is the one you just committed to. Even if maybe you didn't walk through the best decision making process and picking him or her, that is now the choice.
00:44:23
Speaker
And many times people will ask me when I say that, doesn't that take all the fun out of being married and all the romance out of being married? And I'm like, no, it actually, what's so cool about it is when you do it in the right way, then now it becomes easier to have those feelings because you've, you've done your homework. You've researched first of all, your own heart and your own personality and the person that you're going to commit yourself to. And so now you're committed based on things of substance rather than emotional waves.
00:44:52
Speaker
Amy recently was telling me she had just watched the notebook and she had skipped the bad scenes in it and she watched it without mad. But I watched Chick Flicks with her every once in a while. She's like, you know, it's funny. It's a fun little love story, but she ends up picking, there's two guys. There's the Heart's Flame, you know, the guy she meets when she's younger and then she meets like a nicer, like fairly wealthy guy and great guy, great guy.
00:45:16
Speaker
Yeah, you're like looking she's like looking back over the story, like she ended up choosing the young flame, like the old flame, you know, in the end, she's like, but it actually made way more sense to stick with the other guy. Like he was such a great guy. And like all he checked all the boxes off.
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah. And it's interesting because it's like in our society, we often want to go towards the thing that's the most passionate and the most like, Ooh, has the most fire. But it's actually stacking the logical reasons why you should be with someone that is like the more you can stack for being with them as far as logical reasons. And you could put emotions in there too. Let's take a stack. The harder it is to like go against it later. It's just harder versus the one who only has emotion and it's so easy to break apart later.
00:46:00
Speaker
Our culture has elevated the heart and the emotion to such a point that we leave our brains behind sometimes. And I think marriage is one of those instances where we just throw the knowledge out the door and go, I just feel this way about that person. And that's sweet in the moment, but it's not, that doesn't last. This doesn't last. So knowing that you're fighting against 20 years of programming from Disney,
00:46:30
Speaker
What do you tell young people to do when they're like, even if they're just starting to become open to the dating scene, maybe they actually didn't do it during high school and now they're like, well, I'd like to find my husband and wife.
Self-Awareness in Relationships
00:46:43
Speaker
What are you telling them? Basically what I would do is I would add a sixth part to our five step process that we've been talking about. You still want to pray, you still want to know God's plans, your moral will, those kinds of things. The sixth step would be this, know yourself very well.
00:46:59
Speaker
Because if we're not self-aware, then how in the world can we know what we want to be committed to? What are your values? What are things that matter to you? It drives me crazy in a sweet kind of way when people will come to sit down with me to do premarital counseling before they get married, and they always want to go, yeah, we'll do the premarital counseling, but we've talked about everything. And I'll go, OK, how many children do you want to have? And they'll look at each other and go, well, we didn't talk about that.
00:47:28
Speaker
Which one of you is going to be in charge of the finances of the house? Oh, we haven't talked about that. Uh, are you a saver or a spender? Oh, well, we haven't discussed that either. Those are things that, I mean, those are the major reasons why people get divorced these days. And yet people are getting married, not even talking about them because they're all into, Oh, I looked into his eyes and I melted. And that's just not the way it's supposed to work. Nope.
00:47:53
Speaker
I was told, and this is like the most unromantic way to approach dating, but it honestly was the most productive way to manage dating. My wife did not like this at the time. And now she's like, that was a good choice. I was told like dating, especially in the early stages is supposed to almost be more like an interview. You're looking for red flags. You're looking for yellow flags. You're trying to find everything out. You can about them to disqualify them from marriage. And once you disqualify them, it's over.
00:48:19
Speaker
Cause this is the whole purpose of the whole thing. I literally had my friends interview Amy. She did not like that. So she had her friends interview me, but they didn't know. And I agree with that. And here's a word of encouragement. When you see the yellow and the red flags, don't ignore them and say, Oh, I can change that. You don't enter into marriage saying I can change somebody. You recognize that you being married to them will mean both of you change over time, but you don't go in thinking you're going to change somebody. But I like, I don't know, the more.
00:48:49
Speaker
I'm more of a logical guy. Like I'm not the more emotional guy. That's kind of my personality. So it ended up working out really well in that camp because I love my marriage, you know? And I think it's cause of the, some of the early decisions I made there actually had five, five major requirements I was looking for, but I don't think most people even think about like what they want. And unless it's like a shallow thing, I want a guy who's six foot and short brown hair and a beard or something. I don't know. Like girls put together funny lists, love that.
00:49:19
Speaker
I'm sure guys do too, but they still write them down. Maybe you should write a book about your interview questions and your interview process. Maybe that would help a lot. I don't even remember what they were. I really, I need to go back to the guy who came up with that class and have him publish a book on is what needs to happen. There you go. They have written books on these, but they're all broken. All the Christian dating books I've seen, like when God writes your love story, dateable. There's another really popular one. I kissed dating goodbye. Like all of those are garbage books.
00:49:49
Speaker
So I don't think I know of a good one. I'm sure there's some out there, but oh, well, it's a hard, hard process. The more you stack it on logic and reasons to stay together against seeking counsel, asking, asking your, if you just ask older people, especially in your church, what you should be looking for, you'll get a good list. Oh, absolutely.
Involving Wisdom in Decision Making
00:50:09
Speaker
If you just start with there and are, is that, if you're that person seeking wiser counsel, incorporating it and praying and walking through the five steps, you'll probably make a good choice.
00:50:18
Speaker
Very wise to include older people in that conversation before you make those decisions, because they have lots of life lessons to share with you. The one piece of feedback that I got that I didn't obey was that I was getting married too young. And looking back, I'm like, nope. I felt like he was wrong then. And I'm like, nope, still wrong. I got married at 22, almost 23. And I'm like, nah, I really wanted to get married young. But I think I was probably one of those exceptions. Maybe some people should wait longer. I don't know.
00:50:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Man, good conversation today. Great topic. Well, lots of decisions to make, right? So lots of things to talk about. Yeah. I hope the conversation has been helpful today for somebody who's going through some decision-making processes. Yep.
00:51:05
Speaker
And if you're not sure and you haven't figured out from this episode already, just go and talk to some people at church, bring other people into the decision, pray, seek the word, read the word, and make all the options known to you so you can actually make an informed decision about the thing you're wrestling with. All right. Then that's the podcast.