The Valley of Decisions
Making the right decision is not always easy. The decisions that we make can cause us to prosper, or they can cause us unnecessary turbulence in our lives. According to various sources, humans make an average of 35,000 decisions everyday-from food to clothing choices, even the decision to tell a lie or to tell the truth. However, it only takes one wrong decision to ruin years of work. Whether you’ve been putting in work in your relationship, your career, your business, or even your health, it only takes one wrong decision to set you back and set you on a path of disappointment.
Our decisions are often based on our prediction of what will give us the best outcome. However, if our hearts are not in alignment with God’s heart, our decisions are susceptible to being based on greed, selfish ambition, comparison, lust, and even pride, which can cause us to miss out on the blessings that God has for us.
In the scriptures, after four of his fighting men killed the last of the giants, King David made a decision to take a census of the number of men he had in his army. Now, for any military commander or King, knowing how many people serve in your armed forces is not a bad thing. However, because David’s heart was not in alignment with God’s heart at this moment, David, out of pride, made a decision to count his men because he wanted all of his enemies to know —if four of my men can take out giants and destroy their armies, imagine what I can do with one million one hundred thousand fighting men.
This decision didn’t go over well with God because now David was putting his trust in his own power rather than in the one who put him in power. David wanted his enemies to fear him because of the size of his army rather than the size of his God. Consequently, God caused a plague to take out 70,000 of his men.
Making the right decision always starts with our hearts aligning with God’s heart. When we lean on our own wisdom, understanding, experience, or pride to make a decision, we set ourselves up for disappointment. The scripture says it like this, “Lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your path straight.
With the decisions that are before you, start by ensuring your heart is in alignment with God’s heart. The heart of God is interested in serving others. Out of alignment, our hearts seek to serve ourselves. The heart of God desires that we would seek his face. Out of alignment, our hearts are interested in saving face. God’s heart seeks to give us continuous grace. Out of alignment, our hearts quickly judge others and do not see our own faults and shortcomings.
When we position our hearts to make decisions that serve the heart of God, God will cause our decisions to be correct and filled with peace, and we won’t have to second guess whether or not we’ve made the right choice.
Listen, in this life, there are going to be some decisions that we get wrong. However, we can make the choice to acknowledge God in all of our decisions. I believe that when acknowledging God becomes our habit, we then will set ourselves up to be the conduit by which the Lord’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
