Eternal Perspective

If you have read any of my posts before today, you likely know that one of my recurring themes is that of having an eternal perspective. In my mind, decision making that is done from anything but an eternal perspective is not God-honoring and misses the mark.

Sure, some of the decisions we are asked to make from day to day are not ones that appear like they will have a major impact on eternity. I get that. At the same time, sometimes appearances are not what they seem.

Significant Consequences

Sometimes seemingly small decisions can carry significant consequences. It is for this reason that we need to take our decision making process seriously. We need to attempt to include God in every decision we make. How far you take this advice is up to you, but I think you can understand what I mean.

Not only do we need to include Him in our decision making process, but we also need to make sure that we have some sort of structure for our bigger decisions.

Decision Making Structure

I am not recommending anything too formal, but a good set of questions that we can go through when facing these larger decisions can be a huge help. A recent C12 segment included a great set of questions that can serve this very purpose. I am pulling the main questions, and supporting questions, directly from this segment.

My suggestion is that you take these five questions and put them somewhere you can access easily and quickly when you need them. Then, when faced with a tough decision making situation, pull them out and go through them one at a time.

Improve Your Odds!

While this decision making process will not guarantee you to make the right decisions every time, it will significantly increase the odds in your favor. Depending on how honest you can be with yourself, you should see improved results by asking these questions.

Rather than try to cram all five of these questions into one long post, I am going to break them into several posts. I will cover the first question in this post.

Here is the first question:

Decision Making Question #1

How will your most important priorities as God’s child and servant be enhanced by this decision?

In other words, will such a decision enhance your fruitfulness? Or, might these very priorities (i.e., your calling) be hindered if you make such a decision? (Remember, God doesn’t work against Himself!)

You may want to read that a couple of times to make sure you understand exactly what it is asking.

Most Important Priorities?

First, what are your most important priorities as God’s child and servant? While this may be debatable to some, I think Scripture answers this quite clearly. In Matthew 22:35-40, Jesus tells us that our top priorities are these:

Love God with all your heart, mind, and soul.
Love your neighbor as yourself.

Priorities Affected?

Second, you need to ask yourself how these priorities would be affected by this decision. Would one of the options before you enhance the fruit you are bearing in living out these priorities? Would that option limit your fruit?

In some cases, the decision may have no affect at all on these priorities. That is certainly possible, but we need to make sure by praying through our answer. Sometimes we can hide critical factors from ourselves if we are not careful. We must ask God to reveal these to us.

Stay Tuned!

I hope you can see how this question can help to guide us through the decision making process. In my next posts, I will cover the remainder of the questions.

Stay tuned!

Think about a recent decision that you have made.

Would this question have changed how you approached that decision?

Would it have changed your decision altogether?

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