I am a Christian, I have been made righteous by God’s mercy, I study to show my self approved rightly dividing the word of truth. I make my decisions according to the will of God as I understand it. The problem for the day is how do I make decisions. Do I write today, or do I spend the day working on my old truck? As a friend explained yesterday, “Give me two options and I can make the decision but give me three and I am at a loss to choose.” How do we make decisions in the light of God’s grace?
It is assumed there is a plan for my life. I may well deviate from the plan. I can even purposely ignore the plan and go my own way. But the plan still exists. What are the methodologies, or guidelines for my decisions? How do I choose between three things, or for that matter hundreds?
Every day we are bombarded with decisions and decisions about decisions, and decisions about the decisions we have decided.
Every decision we make changes things, people around us, our circumstances and our lives.
Each of us have ideas, concepts of what is right and wrong. Most of these value judgements have been nurtured through our lifetimes. We have allowed peer pressure and societal norms mold us into making decisions that may or may not be the best. Should society dictate my decision-making process? Should I conform to the norm? Do I conform to the commands, principals and examples of others? I rail against this. My life is more that conformance to a list of right and wrong set by the community around me.
My ethical compass must have something more that a list. I have found well over 1,500 commands in the New Testament. They are the revealed will of God. But what do I do when I must make a decision which the Bible is silent? I have struggled with this most of my Christian life. Law verses grace.
At this point of this missive, I don’t really know where I am going with this. I just decided to tell everyone I found an answer to my decision dilemma. “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and everything else will be added.”