Righteous Deciders

 
It seems easier to comprehend a God of the grand and monumental but what of the random and trivial?

Can I make a decision that He does not know?

Can the wind change the course of His intentions?

Can my decision alter His plan?

Can circumstances accumulate beyond His control?

My day will be filled with thousands of decisions, some are recognizable as consequencial but most are not even acknowledged as a decision.

Every decision is a dalliance with the future.  We speculate against the opaqueness of uncertainty.

How silly it is to play a blind prophet when we have One who controls it all? He knows how our individual minds work.  He knows the clouds that impede our thoughts and reasoning.  He has given us wisdom, knowledge, and reasoning.  He has given us prayer. 

Why do we become undone when decisions come?  Could it be that fear has shackled out minds at one of life’s respites because we cannot peer beyond the bend?

Good decision making does not remove uncertainty. It merely enables our minds to live with it. However, we usually live with uncertainty in the most unrighteous of ways.  We glorify the decisive decision makers.  We heap prestige upon the visionaries who appear prophetic of future’s prospects.

Yet, we ignore the One who  holds uncertainty’s tolls.

Believers should display our belief in the most practical of ways, by how we decide.  I suggest that righteousness displayed in decisiveness shows glorious godliness.  

This is my suggestion on how a Christian should decide:

1. Pray
2. Use your mind; use your knowledge and wisdom. They are gifts of God for this purpose.
3. Pray some more.
4. Ensure you are on solid Biblical ground and walking in the Spirit.
5. Pray some more.
6. Ask for wise counsel.  The body of Christ is our gift for this purpose.
7. Pray some more.
8. Weigh the cost. Weigh the benefits.
9. Pray some more.
10. Make the decision and then trust.  

Our decision making should not display anxiety and apprehension.  Our decision making should not be indecisive.  A righteous decider should display belief.  Belief that nothing is beyond God’s power.  Belief that God is a good Father.  Belief that God knows me down to the dwindling hairs on my head. Belief that the Spirit of God has been participating in this decision that I am making.

Belief that in Christ, I cannot make a bad decision.

I can make a righteous decision that may not turn out as I had hoped or planned, but that doesn’t mean it was incorrect to God.

I can make a righteous decision that may result in all sorts of unfortunate, unintended consequences, but that doesn’t mean it’s a mess that God has to clean up.

I can make a decision that displays my faith and confidently live in all the consequences because God holds the past, present, and future.

So, let’s start glorifying God in how we decide.

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“ASPIRING TO BE FRAGILE” – July 2

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”  2 Corinthians 4:7

Flimsy, frail, fragile, feeble are all adjectives that should be avoided on a professional resume.  These are not personal traits that are typically exalted and espoused.  I don’t know of a motivational speaker who bears the mantle of encouraging the strong to throw aside their strength and embrace the joy of feebleness.  The New York Times best sellers list does not have authors advocating success through the power of weakness.  Our world works very hard to deny our weaknesses.  Numerous are the methods and programs that strive to identify our strengths and diminish our limitations.

There is a message being embraced by:

the child longing to be an adult;
the student learning from the master;
the athlete training;
the aged remembering their youth;

This message shuns the idea of being a flimsy, frail, fragile, and feeble clay jar. However, that is exactly what we are.  Our true identity emerges when:

illness steals our strength;
success slips our grasp;
intellect denies our aspirations;
age bars our activities.

When our true identity weighs down upon us, we are then able to see that we really are nothing in comparison to the surpassing power of God.  When we are powerless, the knowledge that God is everything has clarity.  When we are desperate, the love of God comes easily for those who are in Christ.

However, what about when we are strong?  What about when the accolades are accumulating?  What about when all you touch turns to gold?  What about when you are at the pinnacle?

I wonder if the strong and prosperous are not in the most danger when they are at their highest.

English: pots made of clay. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

They are in danger because it can be so easy to forget who they really are.  Success can cause us to believe in a false identity.  We can begin to believe that we are something in ourselves.  At the moment that I believe that I am something other than clay, then God is not everything.  Confidence in my abilities has an insidious way of blinding me to my real identity.  I know that there are many things that I am good at.  The danger arises when I begin to believe that all the strengths that I possess originate from personal qualities.  We step into a morass when we claim success as the result of all our hard work.

This denial of our true identity strikes directly at what we love.  Loving God with everything that we are flows easily out of an understanding that He is everything and we are but clay jars.  However, a love of self is the natural parasite of a self-confident attitude.  The self-confident have lost sight of God’s surpassing power the moment they swallow the myth of their own fame, no matter how small that fame might be.

A man shapes pottery as it turns on a wheel. (Cappadocia, Turkey) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In that instant, we lose everything by believing the lie that we can do anything within ourselves.

Fortunately, we get everything and can do anything the instant that we attribute all that we are to the rightful Originator.  There is nothing that is impossible for the one who knows who they really are. The clay jar has surpassing power within it when it embraces what it really is; flimsy, frail, fragile, and feeble.

Therefore, let us aspire to be what we really are… fragile.

PRAYER: Lord, you know that I fail in holding the right attitude in my heart.  You know how my heart loves to be made much of.  You know how I am so inclined to take credit for your work.  Father, remind me of how I am.  Thank you for all that You have given me.  Thank you for all that things that You have made me good at.  Thank you for the strengths that come from You through me.  Help me to keep the right attitude.  Help me to glorify You through all that you have given me.  Give me a heart that only wants You.  I pray this in the precious name of your Son, Jesus Christ.   Amen.