How To KNOW WHAT GOD WANTS You To Do | Biblical Decision-Making

hey guys welcome back to my channel today's video is gonna be all about how to know what decision god wants you to make or how to know how he's guiding you or what he wants you to do in some particular situation I'm making this video because historically this is an area I've gotten really stuck in when I'm trying to figure out a decision I really want to know and to try to find clarity as to what God is guiding me in and because of that I can sometimes get really paralyzed or stuck making decisions and usually the more important the decision it feels the more stuff I have the tendency to get recently there's a decision in my life I've been trying to think through and I had just been going back and forth one week I would have so much clarity that this is what I wanted to do and then the next week I was totally questioning it and it was in the middle of all this back and forth that God brought a verse to my remembrance that really just speaks biblical wisdom into the process of decision making and I think it actually lays out a two step checklist for us or not a checklist but sort of a guideline for how we can make decisions and so if you are trying to figure out what God wants for you in some situation or what decision he wants you to make or you're trying to choose between two options and you don't know where God is guiding you this video is for you if you are new to my channel welcome and if you are turning welcome back if you haven't please don't forget to hit that subscribe button I do all sorts of faith in lifestyle videos but now let's get into how to know what decision God wants you to make so the verse I'm referring to is a verse you have probably heard before but you've maybe never associated with decisions but it totally is this is a verse I had heard all the time growing up going to a Christian school and going to church and it was probably not until maybe two years ago that I realized it speaks directly into how we make decisions the verse is Romans 12:2 and it says do not be conformed to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that by testing you may be able to discern what is the will of God what is good and acceptable and perfect how does that apply to knowing what God wants you to do in a particular situation well I'm gonna tell you how according to this verse the first thing we need to do when we're trying to figure out what decision God wants us to make is we need to be renewing our minds I loved finding this verse and seeing how to apply to this topic because I realized that it was kind of putting words to something I was doing intuitively for me when I'm making decisions like with the example I gave you before I've kind of always just had this check in my heart that as I am bouncing back and forth between the two options I tend to only trust the one I'm feeling more when I'm more consistently spending time with God so if I'm going back and forth between two decisions and maybe the week that I was really thinking this was a good option I was really spending consistent time in God's Word spending time in prayer and I felt really sure and a lot of clarity about this decision but then this week I was kind of questioning it and maybe it was a week where I woke up late a couple times I had a rushed quiet time and I wasn't really consistently spending time with God I tend to really trust this decision more or at the very least I don't tend to trust the decision I was feeling when I wasn't spending time with God because I know that it's probably a lot more influenced by my emotions and my circumstances rather than the unshakable truth of God's Word and how he is guiding me through it we renew our mind by reading God's Word but I want to say something really important here I think a lot of times when we are trying to make a decision on something we will just go to the Bible and kind of do that whole like I'm going to open it up and see where it lands and that's what God is telling me to do I think that this can be really dangerous and I also think that it can be really ineffective to not be reading God's Word at all but then we're trying to make a decision so we look at one verse to try to tell us what to do that's not really what we're doing your mind is referring to I want to give you an analogy to help explain this a little bit more I've used this analogy before and I'll use it again because it helps me understand this concept so much and it is the analogy of rocks becoming smooth because of water rushing over them if you've ever been to any sort of river or a lake or any sort of area where you see those big rocks that are just super smooth because water has been rushing over them how did those rocks become smooth they did not become smooth because one drop of water hit them one time that would do absolutely nothing those rocks became smooth because water was consistently rushing over them over time giving shape to them and smoothing them out and the same is true with our minds we cannot renew our mind by showing up to church once on a Sunday or opening our Bible and reading one verse one time in one month like that's really just a drop of water on the stone we renew our minds by continually washing over them with God's Word but even more than that we renew our minds by being mindful of what other things are influencing the shape they take so our minds are gonna take the shape of whatever it is that is most consistently rushing over them so if we are spending one hour a week reading God's Word accumulative throughout the whole week and we're spending the whole rest of the week what is it like another 167 hours we're spending those other hours filling our minds with all this stuff that is not glorifying to God that is not drawing us closer to him that is influencing us toward other things well then our minds are really not going to be renewed according to the shape of God's Word and according to his design for our lives they're going to take the shape of that 167 hours that have been washing over them with this other stuff we make decisions using our minds and if we want to ensure that those decisions are in line with what God wants for us then we need to make sure our minds are being influenced by the word he's given to us we need to be reading God's Word spending time in prayer maybe seeking a godly counsel from those who are older and wiser than us another one here when it comes to renewing our minds and trying to discern and hear how God might be speaking to us is that we need to slow down for me when I was going back and forth with this decision I realized that the pace of my life was so quick that it was hard for me to even feel like I was in tune with or connected with what I was thinking and feeling and most importantly with what God was speaking to me and so I had a week-long period where I took as much as I could off my plate and committed to an earlier bedtime and woke up on time instead of hitting snooze so that I could make sure I was getting unrushed time with God in the morning a quick story to illustrate that so I work in a communications role for a utility and a couple years ago we did a field trip with some people on my team to a power plant that's a couple hours south of where I live and this power plant uses ocean water to turn it into energy I don't really know how it works but we went there to visit it and they're giving us a tour of the facility and we get to this one room where all these generators are working and it's super super loud it's bringing in huge volumes of ocean water and so in order to go into this room they made us put in earphones because they said that without them we could actually do damage to our ears and these were heavy-duty high strings ear plugs not just like the kind you get at Target or whatever and they completely blocked out any noise so they're handing these out to us and we're getting ready to go into the room and this whole time that we had been doing the tour because we're near the ocean you could hear all these sounds you heard the waves crashing against the building and against the rocks you heard seagulls flying overhead you heard the whirring of these loud huge generator machine things and then we put in those ear plugs and we stepped into the room and you heard nothing but instead something interesting happened because I could hear nothing happening externally all of a sudden I was a lot more aware of what was happening internally I heard the sound of my heartbeat in my ears I heard the sound of the steps I was taking as I walked and it was like the fact that everything in this external world had been shut off actually caused me to be so much more aware of and in tune with what was happening in my internal world these things were always happening my heart was always beating I was always taking steps throughout this day but I had never paid attention to them up until that point I had never heard those things up until that point because they'd been overshadowed by the noise of what was happening in my external world and the same is true of our spiritual lives we live in a very connected fast-paced world and there's rarely a moment where there's complete silence and stillness even if you are waiting in line somewhere or you have a free moment it can always be filled with checking this little guy right checking our social media responding to something we always are going and we're always stimulated and I think something I've noticed for me is that that actually makes it a lot harder to really still my mind even when I am reading the Bible I have to consciously cut out any distractions or any outside noise because if my mind is going a million miles a minute with all these other things and even if I'm reading God's Word I might not hear what he's speaking to me and so the first thing you need to do if you are trying to figure out what decision God wants you to make is that you need to be renewing your mind if you are going back and forth on a decision and you realize that you really haven't allowed God's word or prayer or godly people to influence that decision-making process at all I would just say pause and stop right there because that's your first step and even in just doing those things for a little bit you might start to get clarity in one direction or the other that'll totally remove some of the confusion you're feeling but oftentimes we are renewing our minds we are reading his word praying seeking godly counsel and we're still not sure what decision to choose and that's what brings me to the second point this verse presents to us and that is to discern by testing I've shared this analogy on my blog before but again I really love it and it's helpful to me so hopefully it's helpful to you too but think of it like a GPS so one time I was down a couple hours south for work in an area that I wasn't super familiar with and I had punched in the destination to the hotel I was going to be staying at in my GPS and I was in an area where the service wasn't super great so it wasn't loading super quickly and so I got to one intersection where I could have either gone right or I could have gone left and my directions hadn't quite caught up to me yet and so I didn't know which way I was supposed to take and I stopped there after approaching this intersection I didn't know which way to go and I'm like come on Siri load and it wasn't loading and I didn't know what decision to make and I felt paralyzed but then I just realized you know what I'm just gonna take a left because if I turn left and that wasn't the way I was supposed to go well then Siri will reroute me once she catches up to herself and guess what I turned left and that wasn't the way I was supposed to go but right around the time I turned left the GPS caught up with itself and it rerouted me and told me the next direction I was going to go and that's the beauty of GPS right that no matter how many wrong turns you take it is faithful to reroute you each and every time but here's the thing the GPS stays silent when you stay stationary so if I had just parked there at that fork in the road and waited for forever even though there were cars coming up behind me the GPS can't reroute me but if I'm making forward movement then even if I start to move forward in the wrong way that GPS is going to be faithful to reroute me and it's the same with God I think sometimes we want God to give us a hundred percent clarity and certainty before we take a step forward but oftentimes it is in and the taking a step forward that God begins to guide us I think a big way that God can often guide us is through the opening and the closing of doors but the thing is we can't know if God is opening or closing the door unless we try to open it and I think this is what the Bible is getting at when it says to discern by testing if you are trying to figure out if God wants you to have a specific job but you haven't even applied to it yet well maybe start with applying to it as you're simultaneously renewing your mind and see if you get the job or not because that's going to be a very clear indication of whether or not God wanted you to have it at least in this moment if you're trying to figure out if God wants you to be with some person but you've never even talked to them well maybe take that first step if you're trying figure out if God wants you to make some big change or move in your life maybe start taking steps towards that and see what doors open or close I think that oftentimes we want to rely on signs from God and make it really clear to us what we're supposed to do and the reality is is that oftentimes that's just not how God works I'm not saying that he never gives us those little personal touches to affirm what he's wanting us to do in a situation but I think more often than not we're seeking that out as sort of a quick fix easy answer when we really haven't even spent time in God's Word consistently and praying about it or talking to trusted people but I am personally a believer that God totally can use little things that happen to affirm him if we're doing those first two things let me give you an example when I was back in college I studied abroad in London my senior year and it was literally the best decision I could have ever made it was one of the best experiences but getting there was not easy I first started thinking about the idea of it probably a year before we left and I was just so torn and so uncertain and back and forth I had never really done something like that before and the idea of living in a completely new country and not knowing anybody else in the program really scared me and so I was just so torn and trying to figure out if this was something God wanted me to do or not and it was something that weighed on me for several months but I was in God's Word consistently I was praying about it God show me what you want show me if you want me to do this because I'm scared and I need your affirmation if this is something you want me to do and I was also talking to friends about it and a couple mentors as well and one day I went to go meet with one of those mentors she was my spiritual director at the time which is kind of just a more formalized version of mentorship and it was something my Christian College Biola offered and so I was meeting with her over on campus and just processing through this decision with her and talking about how I was so afraid and I didn't know if my fear meant that it was a lack of peace that meant that the decision wasn't from God and that I shouldn't do it and she was just talking to me about how God it doesn't use fear to guide us into something so he might give us a lack of peace about something or he might very clearly close or open a door but he doesn't use fear to keep us from something usually fear is not from God it's from the enemy and she told me something in that meeting that literally blew my mind and just stuck with me and really made such an impact in me and she said Casey courage is not the absence of fear but rather courage is stepping forward in the midst to fear after meeting with her I was walking back to my apartment which was just across the street from campus and as I was walking back something shiny on the ground caught my eye and so I stopped and I looked at it and what was there on the ground but a little tiny charm that said in big bold letters on it the word London and there was actually a really cool full circle moment with that charm once I was in London if you want to read about that I'll link the blog post below in the midst of fear but I just don't think that that was a coincidence to have been processing through this decision to have been seeking God on it reading his word seeking counsel and then to see that little charm I saw that as God affirming this decision that he was guiding me toward through these other things through reading his word through praying about it through seeking counsel and so I totally think that God can use what we would consider signs to affirm decisions that were in the process of making but the danger comes when we rely on those signs alone if I had thought about the idea of studying abroad on a whim hadn't spent any time in God's Word hadn't spent any time praying about it or talking to trusted people about it and I just so happened to be walking one day and saw that charm and thought this is a sign God wants me to study abroad in London that would be questionable because we know that signs are not the primary way that God speaks to us the primary way he speaks to us through his word but if those things are already in place as a non-negotiable foundation then I do think he can use little things like that to just affirm where he's already guiding us I do think there's biblical evidence I think of Gideon's fleece if you know that story and then I also think of the story of Isaac and Rebecca when Abraham knows that he is about to die he sends his servant off to go and find a wife for his son Isaac and he sends the servant with very specific instructions telling him what kind of woman not to pick because this type of woman wouldn't be living in a godly way and about what type of woman to pick because this type of woman would so this servant goes off looking for this woman at the direction of Abraham with these biblical principles in mind but when the servant gets to this country that Abraham and sent him to he says this prayer to God saying God let me know that it is the right woman that you have for Isaac by the fact that she will come to this well and she won't just offer to draw water for me but she'll also offer to draw water for my camels and sure enough Rebekah comes up to the well and she does exactly what servant had prayed for and it was by that prayer and it was that confirmation that God used to affirm the servant of who he was to select as this wife for Isaac so I do think I can affirm in specific ways like that but we always need to make sure that we're starting with the basics I think sometimes we want direction for our specific scenario without doing the ongoing work of training our minds to be able to make decisions that are in line with God's will but that is where God's Word commands us to start do not be conformed to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that by testing you may be able to discern what is God's will what is good and acceptable and perfect if you are in the middle of trying to figure out what decision God would have you make I truly hope this video was helpful to you if it was please be sure to give it a thumbs out I would love to hear your thoughts about this video down in the comments and also maybe any other biblical principles or verses that have really helped you in terms of making godly decisions and so leave that down in the comments thank you so much for watching this video and I'll see you next time bye [Music]

Channel: Kaci Nicole

Views: 46,541

Rating: 4.9638929 out of 5

Keywords: what decision should I make, how to know where God is leading you, how to know what decision to make, how to know what God wants you to do, how to know God's will for your life, biblical decision making, christian decision making, christian youtube channel, how to know what God is telling you to do, how to know if my decision is right, what decision to make, how do I know where God is leading me, how to know what God is calling you to do

Id: XJPhZAt6Ljo

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 13 2019