- So when our kids were
old enough to drive I decided not to
give them a curfew, a curfew a specific
time to be home. And the reason is this,
my personal experience with curfew as a teenage
driver convinced me that the traditional approach
to curfew is a terrible idea. At 16 years old
curfew transformed me into an overly aggressive
weekend driver. Now on weekdays, I was fine but on Friday and Saturday
nights, not so much. And you know why? Because on Friday
and Saturday nights I found myself suffering
from five minute syndrome the five minutes syndrome. You know what this is? Well, I can stay just
five more minutes. And then five minutes later,
I can just stay five minutes. I've got five more minutes. And before long I had to
be home in, you guessed it. Actually, maybe you remember it. I had to be home
in five minutes. I had to be home in
five minutes, regardless of how many minutes it would
actually take me to get home which explains my overly
aggressive weekend driving. So when my kids started driving I didn't tell him
what time to be home. I told him what time to leave for home and thanks
to cell technology, I knew if they on time. Now, you have
experienced some version of this curfew
dynamic as an adult where your margin for
error got gobbled up with just five more
minutes thinking whether it was one more
drink, one more business trip one more sleeve of cookies,
one more pair of shoes one more swipe of
the credit card, whatever it is the outcome
is usually the same. And here's where the math
begins to fall apart. One more rarely adds anything , when it comes to
five minute thinking, five more minute thinking,
one more rarely adds anything. In fact worse, it usually subtracts one
more actually results in less oftentimes of
what we value the most. And while it's been a
while since curfew dictated your driving habits, your
current driving habits in fact are influenced
by a similar dynamic unless you are a
very unusual driver, you drive either at or slightly above the posted speed limit. And while most of us feel little to no guilt driving faster
than the posted speed limit none of us want to
get pulled over. So what do we do? Well, we choose the speed
that we're convinced allows us to break the law while avoiding an
encounter with the law. And my point? Whether it's curfew
diet, driving, spending, our natural inclination,
you know this, our natural inclination is
to live as close to the line as possible, which line? Well the line between
legal and illegal, the line between responsible
and irresponsible, the line between
moral and immoral, the line between
ethical and unethical, the line between I'm still
in control and I need help. And it's just human nature. It's human nature to
snuggle up to the edge of irresponsibility,
disaster embarrassment and to stay there
as long as possible. It's human nature to
get by with as much as we can get by with, without
becoming our own worst enemy, without being grounded,
embarrassed or expelled, fired or kicked out of the house. And here's the thing, fueling
this incessant flirtation with disaster is a flawed
assumption that informs so many of our decisions, an assumption
that, well it basically impedes our ability to
make good decisions. And this assumption is
why I think we're so comfortable living, dating,
spending, eating, drinking and driving on the edge
of embarrassment or worse. And so for the sake of clarity I'll illustrate this assumption
with four contrasting ideas. Here's the assumption
I'm talking about. If it's not wrong, well,
then it's all right. If it's not illegal, then
clearly is permissible. If it's not immoral,
it's acceptable. And if it's not over
the line, it's fine. Now, if the problem with
this way of thinking is not immediately parent. just put on your older brother,
sister hat for a moment. If you're a parent, just put on your parent
hat for a moment. I bet, and we've
never met probably but I bet you don't set the
bar that low for your children. You don't set the bar
that low for anybody that you care about. To embrace these assumptions
is to organize your life or to organize
somebody else's life around the lowest
common denominator. Essentially, we're
asking how low can I go? How close to bad can I get
without actually being bad? How close to wrong can I get without actually
doing something wrong? Or if you're religious, how close to sin can I get
without actually sinning? But it doesn't stop
there, does it ? Before long we're asking how
far over the line can I go without getting caught or
experiencing any consequences? How unethical, how immoral,
how insensitive can I be without creating
unmanageable outcomes? How long can I neglect my family or my finances or my health
without feeling the effects? How much can I indulge
an addictive behavior without actually
becoming addicted? It's a slippery, dangerous
slope, and it all begins by asking the wrong question. Is there anything
wrong with this? A question that usually
leads to a second question how did I get myself into this? Drawing our lines, setting
our limits and establishing our moral or ethical
standards on the borderline between right and wrong,
legal, illegal, healthy and unhealthy eliminates
any margin for error. It is a foolish and it's
a dangerous way to live. And here's the thing, I haven't told you anything
you don't already know. We already know this. It's why we respond the way
we do when someone we love start snuggling up to one
of those elusive lines. We don't react to what
they're doing, do we? We react to where heading. In those moments we
just know intuitively that the issue isn't. In fact, the question isn't,
is there anything wrong, illegal or immoral about
what they're doing? We know intuitively that there's
a more important question, a better question that
needs to be asked. A question that if we
ask it, if they ask it, will ensure a better decision. A question that if asked
and answered honestly and acted on will ensure that
they avoid avoidable regret. And the truth is this, if you'll get in the habit of
asking this better question you'll avoid avoidable
regret as well. And that question, that
question is the fourth of five questions
we're exploring in this series, better
decisions, fewer regrets, better decisions, fewer regrets. Now, if you've been tracking
along with this you know that the idea behind this
series is they often overlooked relationship between good
questions and good decisions. Good questions actually set
us up for better decisions. It could be argued that the
decisions you make are no better than the questions that you ask. And I'm absolutely convinced
that if you will ask and if you will answer
honestly and if you will act on your answer to
these five questions you will make better decisions. And consequently you
will be forced to live with fewer regrets. Your life will be better. And the people who look to you
the people who depend on you their lives will
be better as well. Because we aren't the
only people impacted
by our decisions. Are we? And we aren't the
only people impacted by our regrets either. Again, if you've been
following along in this series you'll know that the first
question we explored is called the integrity question. The integrity question, and
the integrity question is am I being honest with myself? Am I being honest
with myself really? The easiest person to
deceive in your life, is the person you see every
morning in the mirror. And as long as you
are lying to yourself you will never get
to where you wanna be because you'll never get
to where you want to be until you're honest about
where you currently are. Our second question is
the legacy question. The legacy question is, what
story do I want to tell? What story do I want to tell? When the decision you're in
the process of making right now whether it's
relational, financial,
academic, professional whatever it is. When the decision that
you're making right now, is nothing more than
a story you tell. What story do you want to tell? And the good news
is, you get to decide but you decide the
story of your life one decision at a time. Because as far as
it's up to you, you write the story of your
life one decision at a time. Now, last time we were together we explored the
conscience question. The third question is
the conscience question. The conscience question is, is there a tension that
deserves my attention? When everything
looks good on paper, when everybody's
nodding in agreement but there's something
on the inside that just doesn't feel right about an
option that you're considering. You can't put your finger on it but there's just
something not right. Pause and pay attention
to that tension. And that brings us at last
to our fourth question. And I call this one
the maturity question, the maturity question. Now, the reason I call
it the maturity question and I hope this is a
personal challenge. I call it the maturity question because asking this
requires and is evidence of, I think maturity and refusing
to ask this question, well, it takes us
back to the statement we began this series
with from Proverbs the one I suggested you memorize
"The prudent see danger." Remember this? "The prudent see danger
and they take refuge." Prudent people are wise people. They embrace the reality that one thing leads to another and they decide their
lives accordingly. The unwise, the
immature, the naive you know how this statement goes the prudent see danger
and take refuge, but the simple, the
simple they keep going and what happens? They pay the penalty. So our maturity question
is, the maturity question is what is the wise thing to do? What is the wise thing to
do, when making a decision of any consequence? I want you to pause and ask, "Okay what is the wise
thing for me to do?" The option you're
considering maybe legal, maybe acceptable, permissible
and industry standard, not exactly immoral,
but is it wise? Now, here's something
mature people understand. This is why I love calling
this the maturity question. Here's something that mature
people understand and recognize and accept as fact, a
decision don't miss this. A decision can be both
not wrong and unwise at the same time, a decision
or an option you're exploring can be not wrong,
it's not wrong, but it can be not wrong and
unwise at the same time. Let me explain this. Isn't it true? And I hate to bring this up, but isn't it true that
your greatest regret. And when I say greatest regret I'm talking about
that moment of regret. The moment that you would
give almost anything to be able to go back
and relive or undo, the decision you
would like to be able to go back and unmake. The tipping point, the
point of no return. That moment, that
moment, isn't it true that your greatest
regret was preceded by a series of unwise decisions? You weren't wrong. They weren't illegal. They weren't necessarily
immoral, but looking back they were terribly,
terribly unwise. And that series of unwise
decisions paved the way, think about it, paved the way to
the moment in time, you've regretted ever since. So, to avoid five more minutes
syndrome, to create moral and ethical and financial
margin, ask of every invitation, every opportunity, every
option that comes your way. What is the wise
thing for me to do? What is the wise
thing for me to do? Now, the apostle Paul, spells
this out for us in the letter that he wrote to Christians
living in emphasis. We call it the book of Ephesians
and here's what he writes. And he goes right to the
heart of this tension that all of us live with and really
that all of us wrestle with every single day
here's what he writes. He says, "Be very careful
then how you live." Be very careful
then how you live. "Not as unwise but as wise." Not as unwise but as wise. "Making the most of
every opportunity because the days are evil." So while a lot has improved
since the first century apparently human nature has not. Ancient folks and us modern
folks are equally prone to live carelessly and unwisely,
to snuggle up to the edge of disaster and pretty much
stay there as long as possible. And the apostle Paul comes
along and he says, stop it. I want you to be
careful how you live. Don't be careless. This is the grid through
which we are to evaluate every invitation, every
opportunity that comes our way, financial relational,
professional, academic, whatever it might be. And thus our question, what
is the wise thing to do? Paul continues with a
bit more explanation. He says "Making the most, making the most of
every opportunity." Literally in the Greek, this
phrase could be translated, literally, redeeming
or ransoming the time, redeeming or ransoming the time. This is where the English
word, opportunity comes from. Don't you wish? Think, about this, don't
you wish you could go back and reclaim or
redeem all the time you wasted on bad decisions? Along with all the time
you had to spend making up for those bad decisions? I do. And for you, that may
be just a few weeks or weekends scattered
around your past but it might be an entire
season of your life either way. Imagine, imagine having
the opportunity to relive or re-spend or reallocate
those days, weeks or even years not to
mention the money. I mean, what if you had
an opportunity to go back and invest that time
and more productive, healthy life-giving activities. Imagine where you'd be today? And I know this is hard, as painful as it is to
think back and to look back, it's necessary in order to
appreciate the invitation embedded in the
apostle Paul's words, because here's what he's doing. Paul is inviting you. Paul is inviting us to
invest our time wisely from this moment forward. From this day forward, you are
invited to make the most of or to redeem or to leverage
your most valuable asset, your time. To invest your time in a way
that actually propels you forward toward a
preferred future. But he's not through, then he tacks on this
kind of odd warning. He writes this, "Making the
most of every opportunity because the days are evil." Evil days, what's
he talking about? Well, you know this, we don't live in a morally
ethically neutral culture, do we? I mean, think about it. When is the last time
you heard or saw, or even read an ad that encouraged
you to be careful, to be wise, to be
self-controlled? I'm guessing maybe never. I mean, has a sales associate
ever suggested you go home and think it over before
making a purchase? Probably not. Which means, and
this is Paul's point. This is on us. We aren't going to get
much help from culture. The friends around us,
maybe, but not culture. The gravitational pull
of culture is what? It's now, not later. It's more, not less. This is why our fourth
question, practically speaking may in fact be the
best question ever. It's why I call it
the maturity question. So, in an attempt to
anchor your conscience to our fourth question,
I want to suggest that you ask this question
from three perspectives, your past, your present
and your future. In fact, this is the
version I taught my children when they were growing up. And this is the
version of the question I've taught some of you before. In light of my past experience, my current circumstances and
my future hopes and dreams. What is the wise
thing for me to do? In light of my past experience, my current circumstances,
my future hopes and dreams, what is the wise
thing for me to do? Now I imagine you're familiar with little quip that says "Those who can't remember
the past are condemned or are doomed to repeat it." You've heard that before. Well, on a personal level, it
could be restated this way. Those who don't pay
attention to what got them into trouble yesterday
are liable to wind up in the same trouble tomorrow. Not as catchy, but
you get the point. The point being this, our past, our personal
past, predisposes us to specific
temptations, addictions, blind spots just to name a few. Temptations, addictions and
blind spots that may not be temptations addictions or
blind spots to anybody else. So in light of your
past experience in light of your
personal past experience what is the wise
thing for you to do? Every decision, every
decision, every invitation, every opportunity that
comes your way needs to be filtered through
that question. I have a friend,
I'll call him Steve and Steve receives really
unsettling advice about halfway through his premarital
counseling with his soon to be wife, Shauna, the
counselor said to Steve "Steve in light of
your family history, when you and return
from your honeymoon, you need to come back
and see me alone." Then it got worse. The counselor said, "I
want to introduce you to another counselor who
specializes in family systems." Now like most men, I mean,
I can identify with this. You know, Steve felt
like he'd already gone the extra mile by attending
and paying for four premarital sessions
with his counselor, and now this. And Steve's next question
was the question I think most of us would have asked, "How
long is that going to take?" His counselor smiled. He told me this story, his
counselor smiled and said, "Well probably several months." Of course, you know Steve
is stunned, he was shocked. Actually he said "He got mad." And here's the quote I love. He said, "I got so mad. I pretty much confirmed my
need for more counseling." And their counselor
recognized that Steve and Shauna were not
going to be grappling with typical first-year
marriage problems. They were about to
hit the (indistinct) of Steve's preexisting
condition, his past. Now, fortunately, Steve
did what very few men in my experience
are willing to do. Two weeks after the honeymoon, he's back in the counselor's
office alone, why? Well, in light of
Steve's past experience it was the wise
thing for him to do. Think about it. It wouldn't have been
wrong not to go back. It wouldn't have been illegal or immoral not to go back,
but Steve would tell you it certainly would have been
unwise, that was years ago. He's convinced that
that second round of counseling
saved his marriage. His words, "I would have
blown it up and blamed her." So what about you? In light of your
past experience, what is the wise thing
for you to do financially, professionally, academically? Where are you set up to fail because of something
in your past perhaps something you
had no control over in light of your
personal past experience, what is the wise thing? Not to get by thing, not the what everybody
else is doing thing. What is the wise
thing for you to do? In light of my past experience and then my current
circumstances, my
current circumstances. Now, you know this,
life is seasonal, so you owe it to yourself
and the people around you to take your current emotions,
your current state of mind into account whenever
you're making a decision. Most of my apologies,
most of my apologies stemmed from my propensity
to react in the moment, to the moment, when I wait,
my responses are better. When I wait, my responses
are more polite. When I wait, my responses
are more accurate, when I'm mad, when I'm
mad, the wise thing for me to do is nothing. So when asking our
fourth question we would do well to take
into account what's going on right now in light of
your current circumstances in light of your
current state of mind, what's the wise
thing for you to do? Did you just get out
of a relationship? Would it be wrong to jump
back into another one? No, but in light of your
recent circumstances and the emotions
trailing along behind, is it the wise
thing for you to do? Remember our greatest regrets, and I'm talking about usually our greatest relational regrets, our greatest regrets are
almost always preceded by a series of unwise decisions. Jumping back into the
dating game, on the heels of a divorce or a breakup is
usually a gateway decision. It leads to regret, in light
of your current circumstances what is the wise
thing for you to do? And that brings us to our
third and final perspective. In light of my past experiences, my current circumstances and
my future hopes and dreams, what is the wise
thing for me to do? What is the wise
thing for you to do? Now from time to
time if you tune in, or if you're a part of
one of our churches, I'll ask you, what
breaks your heart? What breaks your heart? And I'll tell you
what breaks my heart. It's related to the third
facet of this question. What breaks my heart
is watching people make decisions that
undermine their own future, their own future
hopes and dreams. It breaks my heart
to watch individuals or couples make relationship
decisions that are going to undermine
their relationship. It breaks my heart
to watch teenagers make decisions that
are going to result in consequences
that trail around behind them for maybe
a decade or even two. It breaks my heart
to watch parents parent in a way that will
eventually drive a wedge between them and their children. It breaks my heart
to watch people engineer their own unhappiness. Perhaps that's why I'm
convinced this third application to our fourth question is the
most important application. In light of your future
hopes and dreams. in light of your future
hopes and dreams, what is the wise
thing for you to do? Chances are you have some idea of what you want your
future to look like, right? I mean, you have a mental
picture of a preferred future, what it could be and
what it should be. You may have gone to the
trouble of writing it down. You may not have a plan
of how to get there but you have some sense of
where you want to be, right? And I'm guessing that when
you envision your future you don't envision yourself
alone, because nobody does. But here's the challenge. Here's the challenge. When it comes to dreams,
when it comes to your dream the deck is stacked against you because the life
is hard on dreams. There's always a headwind. And that being the case,
if we're not careful if you're not careful, you have
the potential to contribute to the demise of
what you hope for. And here's the thing, I don't want you to rob
yourself of your own future. Nobody plans to undermine
their own future, they just don't plan not to. But asking the wisdom question and acting on the
wisdom question, that's how you plan not to, in light of your future
hopes and dreams, what is the wise for you to do? Asking this question with the
future in mind brings, well it brings clarity to whatever
option you're considering. It serves like a
purifying light. All the deceptive
shades of gray, they almost
immediately dissipate. Our best option or our
best options become, well, they become
clear painfully clear. In fact, they become so clear we're tempted to look away
to excuse ourselves away but I'm not hurting anybody. I can handle it. There's no law against it. God will forgive me. And here's the thing. Our excuses, our
excuses are persuasive because they're mostly true. You aren't doing
anything wrong yet. You can handle it, initially. It isn't illegal. God will forgive you. But so what? That's all beside
the point, right? The purpose of this
fourth question isn't to stop you from
doing something wrong. It's to keep you from
doing something unwise again, unwise is a gateway. It's the gateway to regret. It paves the way to
that tipping point, the point, in some cases
the point of no return. So would you be willing? Here's the challenge, would you be willing
to put away your old worn out excuses
once and for all? Come on, they have
never served you well, they just silence
your conscience. They cloud your reasoning. And ultimately they
really just diminish your ability to hear the voices
of wisdom around you. Our excuses, you
know what they do? They escort to the
threshold of regret. Once they get us there. Do you know what
your excuses do? They abandon you there
with no margin for error. You've been there. I don't want you to
ever go there again. So just decide to be
done with all that instead of excusing
yourself forward dream and plan your
way forward ask, in light my future
hopes and dreams, what is the wise
thing for me to do? In light of where you want
to be financially five or 10 years from now? What's the wise thing to do now? I mean, you're going
to be somewhere five or 10 years from now
financially, right? Shouldn't you decide,
do you know what? If you don't decide, you
know who will decide? Retailers and lenders who
care nothing about you, they will decide for you. And what's true financially
is true relationally, academically,
professionally as well. So come on. Where do you want to be? Decide, write it down. If you're single, come on. If you're single in light
of what you ultimately want relationally even romantically,
what's the wisest way to control your
relationships right now? What are you doing now? Think about it. What are you doing now
that has the potential to rob you of your preferred
future relationally? Now, that's a hard
question to answer honestly which takes us back to our
first question in this series. Really are you being
honest with yourself? Are you being honest
with yourself really? Are your relationships? Come on. Are your current
relationships paving the way to your preferred
relational future? Or are they escorting you to
a place you don't want to be? A place you swore
you would never go, in light of what you want later, what is the wise
thing to do right now? If you're married and you're
planning to go the distance with your spouse
to finish together to maybe enjoy
grandchildren together what can you do right now
to facilitate that dream? What or who puts
that dream at risk? What is the wise thing to do as it relates to
protecting your marriage? You have children? Come on, what do you envision for
your children in the future? What do you envision in terms of your relationship with
your children in the future? What's the wise
thing to do right now to protect that dream? Here's the thing, you know this, everybody ends up
somewhere in life, right? I want you to decide
to live and to end up somewhere on purpose and
wisdom paves the way. Now when teaching this
question to university students or high school students,
I always encourage them to commit the following
little rhyme to memory. It goes like this. I wrote this many,
many years ago. There's good and there's
bad, but that's not my cue. But rather what is
the wise thing to do? There's good and there's
bad, but that's not my cue. In other words, good and bad. That's no longer the filter through which I'm
making decisions. My filter is better than that. There's good and there's
bad, but that's not my cue. But rather, what is
the wise thing to do? Don't settle for good. Don't settle for legal,
permissible, acceptable or even tolerable. If you do, you'll eventually find
yourself living dangerously close to regret. You're better than that. You deserve better than that. Your family, the people
who depend on you they deserve better than that. Think about this. You are a unique blend. You are a unique blend
of past experiences, current circumstances and
future hopes and dreams. And this question, the
wisdom question allows you to customize the
decision-making process to your specific professional,
financial, relational or academic aspirations. So ask it, ask it even if
you don't plan to act on it. What is the wise
thing for me to do? You owe it to yourself to
know, I think you owe it to the people depending
on you to know as well. So one last time, in light
of your past experience, your current circumstances and
your future hopes and dreams what is the wise
thing for you to do?
