Soma

If you noticed, in the formula that I provided in the previous post there were really only two things to do in order to make a big decision.

1. Pray
2. Study Scripture

The problem is, even when we really, really, really want to know God’s will for our life, we still spend more time thinking, interpreting, and talking than we do praying…and most of the time we completely neglect the idea of studying Scripture. After all, there is not one verse in the entire Bible that can tell me whether or not I should buy a house in Culver City. There’s not one verse in the entire Bible that can tell you whether or not you should go to law school. There’s not one verse in the entire Bible that can tell you whether or not to marry the person you’re dating. There’s not one verse in the entire Bible that can tell you who your roommates should be. There’s not one verse in the entire Bible that can tell you whether or not you should stay at your job. So, we go off searching for other things, other signs, other reasons, other factors, other feelings to help us make the decisions that the Bible doesn’t speak to.

However…the Bible does speak to them! In fact, the Bible is the only way that you can count on God speaking to you about the plethora of decisions you have to make. The Bible has a number of principles that demand our obedience and attention. In his book, Just Do Something, (a must read for anyone struggling with how to make decisions) Kevin De Young has a number of helpful thoughts in this regard, here are a few:

The argument in Hebrews 1-4 goes like this: (1) God can speak in many ways. (2) In these last days, God has spoken by His Son. (3) God speaks to us by His Son through the Holy Spirit speaking by the living and active Word of God. Which brings us to the last statement concerning God’s guidance.

Statement 5: Apart from the Spirit working through Scripture, God does not promise to use any other means to guide us, nor should we expect Him to…

God my guide us in [extraordinary] ways in rare instances, but we should not expect Him to. We have no record in the New Testament of anyone anxious to hear God tell him what to do. Paul never sought out special words of knowledge concerning his future. He seems very concerned to know and obey God’s moral will. But when he gets to a fork in the road, hesitating and pleading with God to know which way to go seems completely foreign to the apostle.

What this means is that God wants you to consult and listen to Scripture regarding every decision you make. If God is our authority, and His Word is the only authoritative way that He speaks to us, we must search His Word for the commandments and principles that ought to guide our decisions. Doesn’t that make sense?

Having established this, next time we will begin looking at a sampling of the biblical principles that went into us buying our house as well as some of the questions that arose along the way and the answers that we found in Scripture for those questions.

I know that this is a little personal, and that these are the kinds of things that we don’t normally discuss in public, however I believe that the taboo regarding discussing big decisions (especially financial ones) is part of the problem. We’re left to only be able to look back and evaluate our decision instead of getting the encouragement, correction and perspective we need in the midst of the decision making process. I hope this series will open the door to more and more of those kinds of conversations.