You will make better decisions when you learn to depersonalize the way you make any decision at all.
Skillful Living Series – Message # 10The message today is Decision-making.
The history of man and probably even your history is loaded with times when you have made poor decisions. People have come to expect that many of us will make poor decisions at almost all times. Decision-making is the ability to choose and to do what is best to do when we don’t have the courage to wait for what is best to happen for us.
People who are the most skillful at life learn to become great decision-makers. They understand that life follows how they think. So, what they do is first seen in what and in how they think. They learn and understand that thinking is the key to acting so they focus life on becoming the best they can be at how they think.
Many of us are poor decision-makers because we have no inherent way to examine the merit of what we think we want or must do. Many people suffer because those in positions of authority over us make poor decisions. Many nations have been destroyed because of poor decisions made by their leaders.
Scripture is full of examples of people making poor decisions. In the book of Genesis 13:9-11 Abraham allows his nephew Lot to choose the land to live on from among all the land before them. Lot in his selfishness, chose the best of the land. That happened to be the land of Sodom – the very land God later destroyed by fire because of its moral decays.
Lot decided to choose what was best for him. Why didn’t he say to his uncle “you choose first – you are the elder?” Why didn’t he have the insight to know the best land would have attracted the worst people? Why didn’t he have the sense to know if it was too good not to have it was probably too good to have?
Well, Lot had no control of his basic desires. He had no values or principles on which he based who he was, so he did what was convenient for him to do. Lot had no wisdom. Wisdom is the one thing that is key and even essential for us to live skillfully. For the successful person, wisdom is the basis of their thoughts.
The Lord did not mean for us to go through life without a full tank of wisdom. James 1:5-6 says this to us about wisdom. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”
Skillful living and sound decision-making is found in living a life through the power of wisdom. Many of us don’t ask for wisdom because we don’t really know what it is. Wisdom is the ability to think about your thinking before you act on your thinking. It is the insight you get from having the ability to think and act using the uncommon sense gained when you learn to discern what is learned from what you have already learned and understand.
Wisdom is enlightenment. Wisdom is insight into what cannot be seen in the natural state of things. It is the ability to restrain yourself from acting simply on what you see, or on what you want, or on what you desire.
So, if you want to learn to be more skillful at life and you want to learn to become a better decision-maker you must learn to act more with wisdom than with your skills, knowledge and understanding. If you are too impatient to know wisdom for yourself, strive to know it for others. How you live your life will impact how others live their lives with and around you.
Here are some things you can do to help you become a better decision-maker:
- Ask the Lord for the blessing of wisdom. If you ask, He will give it to you.
- Never listen to anyone who does not listen to the Lord. If in the secular world, never listen to anyone who does not listen to someone better.
- Often you must take your instructions for what you do from those who have authority over you. Always do what a person of authority asks you to do; it will be better and safer for you. However, give them your obedience but never give them control of your thinking.
- Test your thoughts to make sure they are sound before you act on unsound thinking. Power, position, authority do not make your decisions sound. Sound insights and wisdom are what makes your power and authority good.
- Make decisions of Purpose more than you make decisions of want and desire. You cannot have all the things you will ever want in life. Let that be your first decision of wisdom.
Those who learn to live skillfully, master themselves and how they think before they try to master all the things they will want to do and to have in life. Let this be you. Learn to live Delivered from your desires and from your wants. You will become a great decision-maker when you learn to live skillfully with the wisdom that is right before you. Live a Delivered Life. Love you.
Live Delivered 