Making Wise Decisions Pt.2         Wisdom     11-5-2002

How many of you are facing a somewhat significant decision right now, and you are seeking guidance from God regarding what you should do?

What do you do?  The Bible gives us general principles, but how do you make decisions about things that are not addressed in the Bible?

-	Which godly person to marry
-	Which job to take?
-	Move, or stay in your house? 
-	Buy an older car and spend a fortune on repairs, or should you buy a newer car and spend the whole fortune right up front?

How do you know God’s leading on a moment by moment basis?  Does God have a specific will for everything?  Or only the big things?  

Does He care which socks I put on this morning?  If not, at what point does God start caring about what I do?  Can you know for sure?

Does God speak today? How? Can you know for sure a voice is from Him?  Does the Bible give any guidance on whether I wear the blue shirt or the red shirt? Yes.

But exactly how does God guide us through life?  Inner feelings?  Omens?  

Let’s begin by asking this: Why do we want to hear God’s voice beyond what the Bible says? Why do we seek to know what He wants us to do? 

We want that info to help us make decisions. Life is a constant stream of decisions.

A reporter investigating the citrus industry went into an area where he found a man sorting oranges. The oranges came down a conveyer belt, and the man would put the large ones in the large holes, and the small in the small holes, and the bad ones in another hole. After watching this man perform this painfully boring job for a while, finally the reporter said, “How can you stand this job? Just putting oranges in holes all day long day after day?”

The guy answered, ‘You don’t know the half of
it. From the time I clock in till the time I leave it’s nothing but decisions, decisions, decisions!”

Some jobs require more difficult decisions than others, but that guy doesn’t have to make any more decisions than anyone else. Every one of us make decisions every moment, and those decisions — even the little decisions, determine our future. For a kid, the decisions to hang around with the wrong friends can lead to the decision to commit crimes, drugs, etc. and eventually ruin his life.

A man made a decision to go to McDonalds in Boulder in 2000, and that decision cost him his life (car accident).

You see, it’s not just our decisions that determine what will happen in the future, it’s our decisions combined with the other events that will take place. For that reason, all through history, man has tried to figure out ways to get some inside information about the future to help in decision making.

Leo Oppenheimer, in the dept. of Near Eastern Studies at the U of Chicago has studied ancient cuneiform writings of Sumaria, Assyria and Babylon, and he says that about 90% of all the writings found — secular and religious — have to do with divination (the attempt to find out from the gods what will happen in the future, so they will know how to make decision~ There were countless methods, including examining animal intestines!

astrology, fortune tellers, palm readers, auija baords, channelers, psychics, and countless other superstitions — even in our culture, where we pride ourselves on being scientific and rational.

It will always be that way. Man will always be involved in divination, because our decisions, combined with the other things that we can’t foresee that will happen in the future, determine our destiny. 

So you can understand why people are so interested in divination, because for us, the future is pitch black — we can’t even see one second in the future (no one can). So decision making is hard —especially for us. In our particular culture there are so many options. (well over 100 million car choices)

What about these people who seem to have an inside track on decision making – they are always talking about what God told them.  While the rest of us are struggling with trying to make wise decisions without a knowledge of the future, these people just ask God what to do, and God tells them.  (prof at Moody)

Does God Speak to us in that way?
Are people like that super-spiritual?  Are they on a plane way above the rest of us? 

Many would say, “yes.”  Some would have you believe that if you were really spiritual, you would go around saying things like, “God told me to go to that city and spend a year there doing business, and if I do, I’ll make money.”

But James says God wants you to say this: if the Lord wills. . .  The “if’ means you don’t know for sure. God wants you to live and make decisions based on wisdom rather than inside knowledge into the future.

When we as Christian look for inside knowledge into the future, I think we become guilty of Christian divination.

Examples:

* Some people clear their mind, and assume that the first thought that comes into their mind is the voice of God. — kind of a holy hunch
* Others play Bible roulette (let it flop open, or scan for a verse that pops out at them, and then claim it)
A variation of this are those Bible promise boxes (hundreds of “promises” taken out of context).

 One well-known Christian leader’s wife was in the ICU facing death. He pulled one out that said, I am the R and the Life. He that believith in Me will never die.” (Jn.1 1:25) He put it back in and pulled out another one: “I shall not die but live” (Ps.1 18:17)

He took that as a word from God, and went to the hospital and insisted to the nurses that she would live. The next day she died. God’s name was blasphemed in that hospital.

Many people have turned the Bible into a book of magic, and have crossed the line into divination. They end up using God’s own Word in a way that is detestable to God.

•	Another popular method is to look for peace as proof of God’s guidance. 

People assume that if they are in God’s will, they will have a feeling of peacefulness, and vice-versa. 

If that’s the case, why was Jesus crying out with loud shouts and tears and sweating great drops of blood when He was right in the middle of accomplishing God’s perfect will for Him? He was undergoing turmoil on the inside that is impossible to imagine.

And what about Jonah? He was on that ship sailing away, and he had such a deep, inner peace that he could sleep through a terrible storm!

•	Another method has been to “put out a fleece” In Judges 6 God spoke to Gideon in clear Hebrew and told him to attack Midian. G wanted to know for sure that it was God, so he asked for a miracle. So God gave him one. Gideon prepared a sacrifice, and God sent an angel and consumed the offering with fire from the angel’s staff.

So Gideon was convinced. He gathered an army. The men knew it would take an act of God for them to win, so Gideon asked God for two more miracles to prove He was with them. “If there is dew on the wool fleece, but the ground is dry, then you know the Lord is with us.” Then the reverse.

People read that and put out “fleeces” to get direction in life. One girl put out this fleece: ‘If my dad sends me money, then it is God’s will for me to go skiing.”

See the problem? What’s the difference between that fleece and Gideon’s?
Gideon was asking for a miracle to confirm that the voice he heard was from God.

To be comparable, that girl would have to hear a voice from heaven saying, Go skiing.” Then she would say, “I want to make sure this voice is from God, so God if you really want me to go skiing, let me get a letter from the President of the US telling me to go skiing with a check enclosed.”

“I want to really make sure. Today let me get a letter from the Queen of England...”

The purpose of miracles is to confirm the words of God. Anytime you think you hear a voice from God, this is a good way to test it. 

One woman was debating weather or not to go on a trip to CA. She prayed about it, then woke up the next morning and the digital clock said 7:47. She took that as God’s voice. But what biblical foundation do we have for assuming that? Lots of people wake up and look at the clock at 13 minutes before 8:00. (Now if it said 7:67 or DC 10, that would be something else)

Can God speak to you supernaturally, directly, miraculously? Yes. He can, and sometimes does. But should we live our daily lives looking for that? No. God can and has spoken through a donkey, but 1 don’t go down to the barnyard for guidance in decisions making.

Sometimes people use circumstances as some kind of signal from God about His will.

I have a job prospect, and every time I try to in contact with them, something happens. “Maybe God is trying to tell you something.” That’s the approach the people on Malta took. When Paul escaped a shipwreck, but then got bit by a snake, they said, “He must be a murderer.’ Then when he didn’t die, “He must be a god.”

When you try to divine God’s thinking by interpreting circumstances, you run into a big problem: what’s the correct interpretation? It’s like interpreting dreams. Usually when people interpret circumstances as God’s voice, they end up just reading their own ideas into whatever happens. If they really don’t want to do something, and it rains, they say, “God must be telling me to stay home.” But if they really want to do it, they say, Boy the enemy sure is attacking today.”

Scripture absolutely forbids divination of any kind.
Dt 18:10-13 Let no one be found among you who . . . practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. 12 Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD

God’s voice is not ambiguous. God is capable of making Himself perfectly clear.

Those who dissagree with this will often argue by saying, “How can you say God can’t speak to me in my prayer life?”

Nobody is saying that.  God can do anything He wants. If He wants to speak to someone audibly, He can do so. He has the power to communicate any way He wants. If He wanted, He could send you an email. 

But the question isn’t what God can do, the question is what He does do. 

Compare the modern claims to hear God’s voice with every example in the Bible.

Someone might say, “God told me to go over and talk to that person – something about his marriage…”

Is that the way God speaks?  Some vague thought about a general topic?  In Scripture, when we see God speak, it’s in clear, complete sentences (with subject and predicate, etc.).  

He is quoted word for word.  When Eve sinned, He didn’t just cause some vague, indistinct thoughts to come into her head (“Eve…childbearing…pain…husband…rule”

Gen.3:16
To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.  Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." 

When we studied that passage we studied every word and paid close attention to the grammar and structure.  We didn’t just study the general concepts, because we understand that God speaks in sentences. 

Today you hear people say, “I’m sensing that the Lord is telling me to leave this church and move on.”

Compare that to the Lord speaking to Ananias Acts 9:15-16   But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name."  

People today would have us believe that hearing the voice of God is a game of Wheel of Fortune.  “This man is my chosen _______________ to carry my ___________…”

BTW, those two examples are 4000 years apart.  This is the way God has always done it.  And nothing happened at the cross that obscured God’s voice from then on.

In fact, when we look to the future, it seems He will still be speaking the same way: 
Rev 1:17-20   When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: "Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. 18 I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades. 
19 "Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later. 20 The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches…. 

He spoke to Abraham and Moses in Hebrew, He spoke to Ananias in Greek, and if God were to speak to me I would expect that it would be in plain, clear, complete English sentences. 

Having said all that, I should tell you that I have never heard God’s voice.  God speaking verbatim out of heaven is a miracles and has the same purpose as miracles in general.

“Are you saying God does not speak to us today? Has God said everything He is going to say in the Bible?  Does He provide guidance in the day to day decisions of life?”  

YES!  God does give us guidance through life, but not through speaking to us.  

How does God guide us? 

Pr.6:20ff., talking about the commands and teachings of wisdom:
Bind them upon your heart forever; fasten them around your neck. When you walk, they will guide you;’ when you sleep, they will watch over you; when you awake, they will speak to you. 

How does God guide us through life? In what form does His guidance come? Wisdom.
God wants us to make decisions based on wisdom, not knowledge of the future.

And He makes this promise: if we make decisions based on wisdom, He will take care of the events in the future.
Ps 1:6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Ps 37:23 If the LORD delights in a man’s way, he makes his steps firm 

Even seemingly random things: 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap, but every decision is from
YHWH

If you make wise decisions, God will take care of the other ingredient (things that happen out of your control).

In fact, the promise goes even beyond that. If you are a believer, God will carry you through life. He will see to it that you end up exactly where you are supposed to be. Pr. 16:9 In his heart a man plans his course, but YHWH determines his steps.
19:21 Many are the plans of a man’s heart, but it is YHWH’s purpose that prevails.

That’s why 20:24 says A man’s steps are directed by YHWH. How then can anyone understand his own way?

Look back over the last 20 years: You made all the decisions along the way, but did you determine that path? Who can understand is own way? I can’t figure out how I got here. When I was 10, I didn’t plan on going to CA, ILL, MN, OK, etc. I made all the decisions along the way, but Someone else is masterplanning the whole thing.

Do you realize what this does? It eliminates regret. We are always tempted to think, “If I had just made this or that decision different, I would be in a totally different place now.”
No, you would be in the same place, you would have just taken a different road.

Some people have argued that God doesn’t have a specific will for your life, because if He did, you would make one wrong decision, and be off it forever. No, God keeps you on it regardless of your decisions.

“But if God will see to it that I end up in the right place, why does it matter what decisions I make?”
God will take care of getting you where He wants you, but you decide to take the hard way or the easy way.

Pr.l9:25 Flog a mocker, and the simple will learn prudence; rebuke a discerning man, and he will gain knowledge.
God will see to it that you learn the lessons you need, but you decided (in part) whether you will learn those lessons through a simple rebuke or though a flogging. 

YASHAR

We spend way too much energy fretting about where we will end up in life.  We make all our decisions based on where we want to end up.  

That’s why we get so freaked out when we have to make a decision in which we have so little control over where things end up.

But God has not called you to end up at a point.  He has called you to walk a certain path.

The same goes for finding your calling.  For years I had this idea that I was being prepared for my calling, and at some point I would reach that position.

Your calling is whatever God wants you to do right now.

God is the only one who controls where you end up.  Your only concern is to take the right path in getting there.  

God will take you from point A in life to point Z. But He lets you decided if you want to take the crooked route, or the YASHAR route.

The ideal is to have a path through life that is YASHAR. Pr.3:5,6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths YASHAR

What is a YASHAR path? NIV “straight” also “level” or “easy” or “without obstacles” also “correct” or right”

The idea is you will be on the right road, and that God will remove the obstacles and pave the way in front of you.

The opposite is crooked (several words). The person who misses God’s call gets on to a crooked, obstacle-filled path.

This is not saying the Christian life is without difficulty, and everything is smooth for the believer. It’s not that superficial.
Pr.5:6 Her paths are crooked and she knows it not. If that just meant “difficult” she would know that.

The crooked path is one of frustration. Ps 146:9 The LORD.. .frustrates the ways of the wicked.

The idea isn’t that you have obstacles and so life is less fruitful and requires more toil. You get less for more. You never get anywhere. Your efforts are frustrated and come to nothing. But the YASHAR path, while it may be difficult, and may require great effort — it is effort that accomplishes something. You make great progress in life.

-like riding a bike. The YASHAR path is like riding on a paved road with a super-efficient bike.  You make hundreds of yards of progress. 

The crooked path is like being in sand. You push the pedal with all your might and the wheel just spins and you go nowhere and your effort is wasted.

If you are on the YASHAR path, that doesn’t mean life will be effortless. You will come to steep passes that seem impossible and require a huge struggle. The difference is the wise person rides up the pass on pavement, and the fool in sand.

The person on the crooked path can’t get any traction in life.
5:6 Her paths are crooked and she knows it not.

What she doesn’t know is that she is spinning her wheels in life. And the reason is Pr.5:6 She gives no thought to the way of life

So if you are a believer, God will superintend the direction of your life, but you decided if it happens the hard way or the easy way. 

For example, maybe God decides it’s time for you to learn to trust Him. You can do it by delving into His Word, and mining out the principles that give you the right perspective, and develop patience that way, or you can just sit around and do nothing, so God has to send all kinds of painful trials into your life to teach you patience.

We would prefer to have God, who can see the future, just reveal to us what decisions we should make. We want the inside info — that would save us the hard work of decision making. But God doesn’t want us to live that way. Instead, He wants us to live by faith. He wants us to make wise decisions, and leave the rest up to Him.

The Bible teaches us wisdom. God didn’t give us a map; He gave us a compass.

And the compass is wisdom. 

How to get wisdom?  Next time.