Decisions (Part 1)
Making Good Decisions
Text: 1 Kings 18:21
“How long will you falter between two opinions?” (1 Kings 18:21 NKJV).This message is the first in a series of messages that will be very straightforward and honest in dealing with the area of decisions. Years ago I heard the great missionary Danny Ost say this little phrase, “Decisions determine destiny.” Decisions have determined and will determine your destiny.
Probably, if you’re like me, you know that you’ve made quite a few dumb decisions. You might relate to this story I once heard: A young businessman came to an older businessman to seek advice. He asked this older, very successful businessman, “What’s the secret of your success?”
The older man answered, “Well, I’ve made wise decisions.”
The younger man countered, “Well, how do I learn how to make wise decisions?”
“From experience,” the other man replied.
The young man asked, “How do I get experience?”
The older man answered, “From making dumb decisions.”
There’s a lot of truth in that anecdote, and there’s also hope. You may have made a lot of bad decisions, but from them you can gain the experience to start making good ones.
How many of you have made a lot of dumb decisions? And you know what happens when you make dumb decisions? You feel trapped. You feel hopeless. You feel like your decisions have gotten you so lost. You’re out in the woods, in the forest, and you can’t get out. You’re walking in circles in the same old forest. The question remains, how can you get yourself out of all the mess your bad decisions have created?
Remember, it’s your decisions that determine your destiny. If you don’t understand and accept that, then you’ll always feel like a victim and blame everyone else for your problems. But you’re a free agent in America. You are on your own. When you turn 18, you are legally recognized as an adult. You can choose to go to college, who to marry, where to live, what career to follow, and all those things. So, really, you’re a product of your own decisions. The sooner you realize that, the better. But a lot of times, we want to blame everybody else because of our bad decisions.
Today I’m going to teach four principles about decisions: (1) What is a good decision? (2) What is a bad decision? (3) What is a no decision? and (4) How can you make good decisions? But before I begin, let me give you one hopeful point, one thought, for today. If you are hopelessly lost in the woods but you find a compass on the ground, and that compass shows you where north is, and you know that to the north of your city is a convenience store, then all you’ve got to do is follow that one direction out of the woods. You may have been lost in the woods for hours, but when you make one good decision—to go north—all of a sudden, everything changes. If you follow that one good decision, you’ll eventually find your way out of the woods.
I remember years ago a guy came to me and said he was so hopelessly in debt he didn’t know what to do. He was going to have to declare bankruptcy. I told him to write down everything he owed. He did, but it took him a whole legal pad, with every single line filled with the names of all his creditors. Together, we wrote everything down, and it really did look hopeless. This man owed thousands, tens of thousands of dollars, but he worked for the railroad as his livelihood.
I asked him, “What’s one good decision we could make here today? Could you get a second job or do anything else to help pay off this debt?”
The man answered, “I can do silk screening for T-shirts.”
I replied, “Great, that’s where we’re going to start. Every penny you make from that we’re going to put on this debt. We’re going to start with this one.”
We arranged the debts by interest rates, and he began the process of paying off his debt. Three years later, he came to me and said, “Brother Larry, today I’m paying off the last bill on that whole 25-item sheet, and it’s all because I made one good decision.” He continued, “I started selling T-shirts and my business went crazy, and I have been able to pay off everything.” I don’t know where you are today or what you have gotten yourself into because of bad decisions. But all you need to start your walk out of the woods is to make one good decision. One good decision—that’s all it takes.
But a lot of people find it hard to make even one decision. It’s like the man who went to the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist asked him, “Are you indecisive?”
You know what the guy answered? “Well, yes and no.”
The psychiatrist asked, “What do you mean?”
The guy answered, “Well, I used to be, but now I just can’t decide whether I am.”
What a picture! I’ve seen so many people like the man the Bible describes in James 1: “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” Your decision-making process really does affect everything in your life. That’s why Elijah the prophet stood before an entire nation and asked, “How long will you halt?” or “falter” in the King James, or “limp” in the ESV, “between two opinions?”
How long will you limp between two opinions? Here’s the important thing to get. When you don’t make a decision, you start limping in your life, which means you’re “halt,” or “lame.” You can’t walk. But when you make a good decision, you get traction and begin to take off. The reason you’re going nowhere in your life is that you haven’t made a key decision. I hope that as I teach you very practical things on making good decisions, you’ll make one good decision to help you get traction.
People come to me all the time after a financial series and say, “I’m completely out of debt because I made a decision that I was going to change my lifestyle.” At the beginning of a year, some of you say, “Yeah, I’m going to lose 50 pounds.” Well, that’s a great wish, but a wish and a decision are two different things. But when you make a good decision and stick with it, things begin to change in your life.
Let’s look at the four areas I mentioned above concerning decisions.
#1 – What is a good decision?
You might be thinking, “Pastor, I’m supposed to make one good decision to get myself out of all the mess I’m in?” That’s right. So what is that good decision going to look like? Well, I can tell you the first place to start. It needs to be a biblical decision, one based upon Scripture. I’ve been reading the Bible all my life. I don’t know how many times I’ve read the Bible through, and I’ve taught every book of the Bible. What I have learned is that there’s something in Scripture about every problem I’m going through or every decision I need to make.
I like to read The One Year Bible, which includes a 15-minute daily Bible reading. Some of you might say, “Well that’s not enough for me.” Well, that’s good; just meditate on it longer. But if you can give just 15 minutes a day, you’ll read through the entire Bible in a year. I want to challenge you to make one good decision today, and that is to get a One Year Bible and read it through in a year. God speaks to me in my daily readings and helps me to make the right decisions, and He’ll do that for you too as you spend time in His Word.
A second trait of a good decision is that it is based on the witness of the Holy Spirit. Years ago the Lord spoke to me and said, “I don’t need you to be a decision maker. I need you to be a hearer.” God makes the decisions, so when I’m serving the Lord, I just need to sit at His feet and listen really well. But if I’m not following the Holy Spirit, I can make some very dumb decisions. If I’m very cerebral in the way that I look at my life, it’s not going to go very well. But if I’ll drop 16 inches from my brain to my spirit and follow the witness of the Holy Spirit, I’ll come out okay.
You might be wondering what I mean by the “witness” of the Holy Spirit. I’m referring to the “red light” or the “green light” on the inside of you. The peace of God will be there for any good decision that you’re supposed to make. But there’ll be a sense of unrest and uneasiness down in your heart, regardless of how it appears, if your decision is wrong in that area.
A third thing to remember about a good decision is that it’s neither hasty nor fearful. I have learned that if I get in a hurry and don’t do the research, and if I don’t wait to get the facts about something, I reach a wrong conclusion. On the other hand, some people gather facts forever and ever because they’re afraid to make a decision. They’re fearful. So if you are either hasty or fearful— these are two ends of the spectrum—you’re going to make a mistake. Don’t get in a hurry, and don’t get afraid.
I’m going to give you one example of this that was a great blessing to Bethany, and I give God the glory for it. About a year ago, our maintenance people came to me and told me that the 20-year lifespan was up on our utility panel at the north campus. They also told me that the air-conditioning chillers, which are huge, were also at the end of their 20-year lifespan. They said, “Pastor, we are going to have to replace the air conditioning and the utility panel in our 6,000-seat building.”
I replied, “How much is that going to cost?” thinking maybe $50,000 or $100,000. The answer, however, was $1.3 million. After I got up off the floor, I thought to myself, “We don’t have $1.3 million; what are we going to do?”
The maintenance crew continued with, “You’ve got to do it now; you’ve got to replace it now. Of course, it’s been working fine, and there’s nothing wrong with it right now, but the 20 years are up.”
The Lord gave me a check in my spirit not to just borrow the money and do it. I said, “Wait a minute. Let’s have another meeting about this; I don’t feel right about it.” So I called in the air-conditioning men, the electrical people, and others, and they made their proposals. The bottom line was $1.3 million.
I said, “Is there no cheaper way to do this that will be just as effective?
They said, “No, we’ve worked on it, and this is it.”
Well, the Lord told me to have another meeting and to invite one of our laymen from here at the church. He does industrial, electrical-supply work for plants along the river. The Lord brought his name to my mind. I had another meeting, and I asked him to come. I told him, “I just want you to be a mouse in the corner and listen to what these guys are saying and tell me if you think this is legitimate.” I was doing all this because I didn’t have a witness in my spirit about what they had said.
We had the meeting, and after everyone left, I asked the man from our church, “So what do you think?”
He said, “I’ve been doing this all my life, and all I do is supply for big companies. Let me work on it, and I’ll get back to you.” A week later, he sent me a proposal of how it could be done. He said we could actually do the job for $300,000! Now in case you haven’t subtracted $300,000 from $1.3 million, that’s a million-dollar difference.
I told him that sounded good, but we would need to double-check it. I brought the companies back in and gave them the man’s proposal and asked them what they thought about it. They looked at it and said, “That’ll work; that’s fine. I believe we can do it for $300,000.”
Can you imagine that? We would have flushed a million dollars down the toilet, if the Lord had not intervened. The Lord just showed me in that how important it is that you gather the facts before you make a decision.
Shortly after that, our accountant told me that we had just finished giving our millionth dollar as a church to plant churches this year. Instead of that money going into some air-conditioning guy’s pocket, that money went to plant churches around the world. Isn’t that good? So, you see, don’t make hasty decisions or be fearful of decisions.
A fourth thing about a good decision is that it is based on your core values. What do I mean by core values? I mean what you really believe in your gut. If you really believe in honesty, integrity, and in faithfulness to your wife, then those are part of your core values. A pastor friend of mine said that 95 percent of your decisions are already made based on your core values. You may not know where you’re going to eat out after church (that’s the other 5 percent), but 95 percent of your decisions are already made by your core values.
For example, if someone tries to entice me to steal money, I can say, “No, that decision’s already made, because the Scriptures say, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ ” Or if someone comes on to me in an enticing type of way, I can tell them, “Hey, I’m not interested; I’ve already reached that decision.” That’s a part of my core values.
Joseph had the core values of loyalty and purity, so when Potiphar’s wife grabbed him and tried to drag him into bed, all she got was his coat, because he was running out the door. Joseph said, “How can I do this thing and sin against God?” His core values were so strong that he didn’t need to make a decision.
I want to tell you men something. If you haven’t decided about something until the moment of temptation, it’s too late. When pornography comes or when enticement comes, if you haven’t made your decision already, you won’t have enough power to stop yourself from those things. So I encourage you to change your core values. That’s the fourth part of what a good decision looks like.
The fifth thing about a good decision is that it’s consistent with your calling. Good decisions match your calling. People always try to get me to go into areas of ministry and life that I’m not called to or qualified in. How about you? Do you ever have people try to move you in a certain direction? Do you have people telling you that you need to be selling this or that you need to marry that person? When that happens to me, I remind myself that God has a plan for my life. I know that I have a calling, so I always tell people, “The Lord knows my address, and He knows where I am. He can surely tell me if He wants me to do that.” Don’t let other people make decisions for you.
To make decisions based on what others want you to do is just as ridiculous as taking someone else’s medicine. If I’m sick, I don’t take your medication. Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to say, “Well, I’m sick, but any old pill will do”? Your prescription is your prescription, and God has a prescription for me. Your calling and my calling are different. Don’t make decisions based upon other people’s callings.
#2 – What is a bad decision?
Probably half of us could stand up and preach this one. A bad decision is, first, any decision based upon fear. When the news tells you that if you don’t sell by two o’clock tomorrow morning you’ll lose all your money, and you go running out and sell because somebody made you fearful, that’s a bad decision. Don’t receive that. I realized a long time ago that my lifestyle and the world’s lifestyle are going in two different directions. The Scriptures says in Isaiah not to fear what they fear, not to be intimidated by what they are intimidated by. I do not make decisions based upon fear. But if I start to, I get like Chicken Little. I go running around like my head’s cut off, and I start making stupid decisions out of fear.
Second, a bad decision judges by appearance. A bad decision looks at the skin of the apple and not at the fact that there’s a worm in the middle. A bad decision focuses on the paint color instead of what’s going on in the carburetor. In the Bible, Eve looked at the fruit and saw that it was good to the eyes, pleasant to make one wise, and good for food. She went by the appearance of the fruit rather than the consequences of disobedience.
The devil is a master at putting something that looks so perfect right up in front of you. In fact, I’ve gotten kind of suspicious of perfect stuff. I’ve had people wanting to join the church staff come in from out of town and say the Lord sent them. Then they tell me all about their degrees and experiences and how the Lord told them to come here. And all I say is, “Uh hum.” Don’t go by appearances.
When Joshua looked at the men of Ai and saw that their sacks were worn-out and their bread moldy, he assumed they must be from a far distance. However, they were from next door, and they made a treaty with Joshua that wasn’t a good one. But Joshua didn’t ask the Lord; he went by appearances.
Everything might look good and sound right, but never make a decision based on appearance. Go back to your prayer closet and say, “Lord, you know this guy, you know this deal, you know this business. Lord, what is the true reality? Expose this thing to me, and let me see if this thing is really from You.”
Third, never make a decision based on the short term. This is where a lot of Christians go wrong. They make a decision as though it’s a snow cone that’s going melt and then that’s the end of it. But decisions have consequences. If you don’t believe it, go down to the parish prison. Just about every guy in there will tell you, “I made a very bad decision.” But you think, “I’ll just do that thing; it’s no big deal.” It is a big deal. You’d better be prepared for the long-term consequences of a bad decision. “Well, I’m in a hurry; I’ve got to go 100 miles per hour.” When you’re in there wearing “orange pajamas,” you’ll decide that it was not worth it to get wherever you were going five minutes earlier and spend five days in the parish jail.
Long-term—you’ve got to think long-term. The reason people make bad decisions is that they think short-term. You’ve got to ask yourself, “How would I like for my picture to be in the paper, my name under the DWI column?” That will help keep you from making bad decisions that alter the course of your life.
Fourth, a bad decision is based upon speculation. A lot of people make decisions based on “eeny, meeny, miny, mo,” and that really is not a good way to make decisions. Gambling is a really poor decision based on speculation. You might think, “Well, I need money; I’ll win the lottery and pay off the house.” Do you know what the chances of winning the lottery are? Just about the same as getting struck by lightning. And, probably, they’re both as equally good for you! It’s ridiculous to think you can speculate your way into good decisions. No, the better decision would be to get a job, if you need money—not play the lottery. One good decision is all it takes, but people are caught in the web of bad decisions.
Fifth, a bad decision is based on emotion. You might say, “I never use my emotions in my decisions.” Really? Do you ever get frustrated and make a rash decision? How about anger? Do you make decisions because you’re mad at somebody? Or how about depression? People get in a valley in their life, a really depressing time, and make drastic decisions.
I read, one time, a great piece of advice: never cut down a tree in the winter. Every tree looks dead in the winter, but it’s not. It’s actually alive. It’s just wintertime. You will walk through winter seasons in your life where you’re feeling defeated, depressed, and discouraged. You look around and say, “This thing’s dead, man; I’m cutting it down.” So you just start whacking at the trees in your life. But it’s not dead; it’s only wintertime.
Making decisions when you’re depressed can lead to disastrous results. Sometimes a spouse dies and immediately the grieving mate goes and gets married in a very short span of time. That’s a bad decision. I tell people who lose a lifetime partner, “You’re going through a winter season, but spring is coming.” Sometimes we just need some time to feel grounded again. So don’t go sell the farm and marry Susie Q. Just relax. Give it a little bit of time. Don’t cut the tree down in the winter.
A bad decision is always tied to emotions. If you get all worked up in your mind about a person or a relationship, you need to go take a cold shower. Because those relationships based on emotions are never good ones. I’ve had people come to me and say, “Can you marry us by next Saturday?” I say, “What do you mean by next Saturday? Are you going to a fire or a race? You’re going to live together 65 or 70 years, and you’ve got to be done by Saturday?” I tell them, “Get in line. We’ve got counseling classes around here. You need to cool your jets a little bit.”
#3 – What is a “no” decision?
What is a “no” decision? Here’s a good picture for you: Can you imagine going to a baseball game where the umpire can’t decide if the pitcher has thrown a ball or a strike? What if he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know!” That umpire wouldn’t last long. He has to make a decision. He’s got to make the call. Everything is dependent upon him. Or in football, when there’s pass interference in the end zone and only five seconds left in the game, somebody’s got to throw a flag—even if it changes the outcome of the game.
Somewhere down the line, you will face critical decisions. But if you just sit around passively avoiding decisions you should have made last year or last month, you’re giving the devil the opportunity to triumph in your life.
Why do people not make decisions? One reason is because of feelings or friendships. People put off important decisions because they are afraid they might hurt somebody’s feelings. “That’s my best friend,” or “That’s my second cousin twice removed, and I’m going to make her the bookkeeper over my company.” But the problem is, she can’t even add or spell! She does not need to be there. “Oh, but I would hurt Aunt Rosita if I removed her from that position.” But you know what? Hard decisions always involve dealing with feelings and relationships.
I’ve seen people keep their 39-year-old son in their house and never require him to make any decisions. He’s eating their cereal and their hamburgers, and they’re changing his sheets and doing his laundry! Well, I can help them make a decision: remove him from your property! Make him get a job, and make him cook his own beanie weenies and pay his own bills. “Well, I don’t want to hurt him. He doesn’t know where to go or what to do!” He knows exactly what to do, but he’s not going to do anything unless you force him to. When you allow wrong things to go on because of feelings and friendships, you’re not making the hard decisions.
I know what I’m talking about, because I work with my family and I have to “let the hair go with the hide.” I’ve learned that if I just let justice, not my feelings, guide me in my decisions, everything works out right. As the Bible says in Proverbs 28, to rebuke a man brings more favor than to flatter with the mouth.
Another reason some people make no decision is that they fear they will make the wrong move. All of us feel that way. We’ve got some pretty big decisions to make in our lives, things that will affect us and our families for months and years to come. But you can’t be afraid to move forward and make a decision.
When Ronald Reagan was a young man, his aunt brought him to a shoemaker to have a pair of shoes made. Reagan said that when he got there, the cobbler asked him if he wanted round toes or pointed toes. Reagan answered, “Well, I can’t decide. Give me a few days to decide.”
Time passed, and Reagan ran into the shoemaker on the street. The guy told him his shoes were ready, so Reagan stopped by the shop to pick them up. To his surprise, one shoe had a pointed toe and one had a round toe. He looked at he guy and said, “What did you do?”
The shoemaker answered, “I made these shoes to help you learn a lesson. If you don’t make decisions, other people will make them for you.”
You need to remember that. Every time that you postpone a decision, you get yourself further and further into a corner until your options get fewer and fewer. Then, finally, somebody else is going to look at you and make the decision for you. That’s why you need to make your own decisions.
We have that liberty in this country, but sometimes we don’t exercise our liberty. Some of us don’t even have enough decision-making capacity to vote when it comes time to vote. “I don’t need to vote; all those other people are going to vote,” you might say. Well, you’re refusing to make a decision right there. This is your nation. You need to vote.
This leads me to the third reason people make no decision. When people don’t want the responsibility of leadership, they fail to make decisions. Everybody likes to just ride in the backseat, so to speak. I drove my family around for years, so now I love for one of my kids to drive while I relax in the backseat. I enjoy that. Nothing feels better than not having to take responsibility.
But as good as that might feel, there’s a season in your life where you have to make decisions for other people. Parents, young people, children—they all need someone to help guide them. Husband, your wife is looking to you for leadership. You might say, “I don’t know how to lead. I don’t want to lead. She can do everything, and I’ll just keep going to work.” Sir, that’s not the way life works! Your children and your wife are looking to you to make decisions.
A fourth thing I’ve learned about making no decision is that when we are overconfident, thinking we have plenty of time to make decisions, our options run out. I remember one of my kids came to me one time and said, “I want to go to college.” I said, “That’s fine, but you’d better enroll, because you have to enroll months ahead.” He said he had plenty of time. As you might guess, he procrastinated and turned on the computer one day and discovered that enrollment had ended the day before. So he had to sit out a semester, because he procrastinated in making a decision. What are you waiting on? Elijah said, “How long will you wait between two choices?” The longer you postpone that decision, the fewer the options.
Finally, a no decision is when you are constantly changing your mind because you are filled with remorse every time you do make a decision. You always fear that you made the wrong one, so you keep changing it. Have you ever gone out to eat with someone who says, “Let’s go over here.” About the time you get there, they say, “You know, I think we should have gone over there.” So everybody turns around and heads over there. This is the type of situation you get in with someone who always doubts his decision. But Jesus said not to doubt in the darkness what you’ve heard in the light. Your decisions will always be tested, but you cannot continually doubt.
#4 – How can you make good decisions?
We’ve established what is a good, a bad, or a no decision. How do we make good decisions? There are several steps. First of all, repent. Repent means to turn around. I look at Jonah in the Bible; he is a perfect illustration of a guy who made a bad decision. God told him to go to Nineveh, but he got on a boat and headed into the Mediterranean. The next thing you know, a storm arises and Jonah is thrown overboard, where he’s swallowed by a whale. Like Jonah, some of you are in the belly of the whale today. You’ve made some bad decisions, and now you’re in the bottom of the sea in the belly of the whale.
What did Jonah do? He said, “I will arise and go to Nineveh.” When he made that one change and that one decision, the whale immediately brought him to land and vomited him ashore. All you need is to make one good decision today.
Repent means to change your mind about what you’ve been doing. Look at the prodigal son. He made a bad decision. He said to his dad, “I want all my money.” He got in a foreign country and spent it all and ended up in a hog pen. Lying in a hog pen somewhere, he made one good decision: “I will arise and go home to my father.” Full of muck and junk, he stumbled home, and his father ran out to meet him, embracing and kissing him. He was completely restored to his position in the family, and it all started with repentance.
The next step is to you check your core values. Ask yourself what got you into this mess to begin with. Do you have the wrong values in life? Do you excuse lying and stealing and adultery and all those things that are wrong in the Lord’s eyes? Deal with core issues.
Next, list the risks and benefits of a decision you are contemplating. Get a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. List all the risks on one side and all the benefits on the other side. If the risks outweigh the benefits, don’t do it. If the benefits outweigh the risks, then do it. As an added precaution, show that piece of paper to at least three people that you trust and let them go over it. That’s why Proverbs 11 says that there’s safety in the multitude of counsel. I have a multitude of counsel around me. I have trustees and presbyters, six men that I always run decisions by. You need that too.
Then, you’ve got to trust the Lord. When you’re really deciding something, you’ve got to say, “Lord, the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.” I like to say the “stops” of a good man are ordered too. Trust the Lord. He lives within you and will guide you.
Finally, let your decision stand. Don’t second-guess yourself. Some might tell you that you made a bad decision. But if you know you followed your heart, your conscience, good counsel, and the Holy Spirit, then stay the course. You’re always going to pass through storms with every decision you make, but the Lord will bring you through to the other side.
I recently heard a terrible story about a young man who made a bad decision. The church of a pastor friend of mine had a drama about hell, and a mother brought her 26-year-old son who had been in rehab. When the pastor gave the invitation, the mother got up to go to the altar, along with 500 other people. She asked the young man to go with her to give his heart to the Lord. And you know what he told her? He said, “I can’t decide.” It was kind of like Agrippa in Acts 26, where he told Paul, “Almost you persuade me to become a Christian.” This young man said, “I can’t decide.” The mother tried unsuccessfully to convince him. Then she went forward and got saved. The tragedy of that story was that two days later they found that young man dead of an overdose. He’s gone. Did he make the decision before he died? Who knows? But postponing it was evidently the devil’s ploy.
You cannot avoid making decisions. Start today to take the steps toward making decisions that will set your life on God’s path—both in this world and in the next.
