Making Wise Decisions

Grounded in Scripture, this practical step-by-step plan won’t just help you choose wisely, it will lead you into greater intimacy with the Lord as you increasingly depend on Him and trust in His promises. For more messages from Charles Stanley

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Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week..

Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

You need to talk to the one who always makes wise decisions and that is almighty God and He is willing to give you direction.
He is willing every single time to answer that request. He may not answer the way you expect.
He may not answer it the way you want him to do it as far as the timing is concerned.
But he will answer next on in touch, making wise decisions.
Life is made up of decisions.
You and I have been making decisions since we were born.
The first one may have been crying when we we our diaper.
I don’t know, but you made a decision and you’ve been making them all of your life.
And the most important decision you will ever make is the decision to accept the Lord Jesus Christ, the son of God, the savior of the world who went to the cross, shed his blooded Calvary paid our sin debt in full and offered salvation to all mankind.
Most important decision is to accept him personally as your savior and Lord confessing and repenting of your sins and surrendering your life to him.
Number one decision. So when you have to make a decision.
How do you go about it?
Do you say, well, I have to make this decision, that decision, the other decision.
In other words, uh do you just make decisions on second thought or do you have a plan?
Most people have no plan for making a decision.
You have a plan for lots of things, but you never thought about having a plan for making decisions.
So what I wanna do in this message, I wanna give you a plan.
I want to give you one that I know that works because it’s been working in my life for over 50 years.
And so I trust that you will take notes because you’re going to be making decisions the rest of today.
You may end up by the end of next week making one of the most important decisions of your life.
How are you gonna go about that? You ought to have a plan.
So I wanna give you one and I want you to turn if you will to psalm uh 25.
And I just want us to read a couple of verses here.
There are lots of verses in the Bible about uh prayer and answered prayer and, and discovering the Lord’s will and so forth.
And here’s what he says in verse 12 of Psalm 25 who is the man who fear of the woman who is the man or woman who fears the Lord.
He will instruct him in the way he should go, his soul will abide in prosperity.
Now, one of the parts of that I want us to understand is if, if you notice how he says it, he says, who is the man and woman who fears the Lord?
So what does it mean to fear the Lord? An attitude that acknowledges one’s absolute dependence on God for everything?
If I fear the Lord, I’m gonna depend upon him for everything.
And so where do you turn to make decisions? Who do you talk to? Who do you ask?
Let me ask you this, who do you trust in your family or among your friends or people you work with to really give you wise advice when it comes to making decisions?
And let me say this to you, talking to other people is fine.
You need to talk to the one who always makes wise decisions and that is almighty God and he is willing to give you direction.
He is willing every single time to answer that request. He may not answer the way you expect.
He may not answer the way you want Him to do it as far as the timing is concerned.
But He will answer. And what I want you to understand is there’s a way and you need a plan that whatever you’re asking him about, you certainly want God to hear and answer your request.
And I preached on finding the will of God about lots of things lots of times, but I’ve never given you a plan.
So here’s the first step of the plan.
Clear your heart of any known sin, clear your heart of any known sin.
Because sin introduces confusion in our minds and hearts hinders our capacity to hear and receive from God because you see sin and the and the wisdom and knowledge of God don’t fit together.
And so if I’m going to make wise decisions, I gotta get rid of any sin.
And so how do I do that? That’s the first point.
How do I get rid of sin in my life?
Number one, I asked the Lord to show me, watch this carefully, ask the Lord to show me, Lord, is there anything in my life that would keep me from hearing the truth?
I don’t wanna be prejudiced, but I wanna hear the truth.
Anything in my life that would keep me from hearing the truth and exactly what the Holy Spirit will do is He’s gonna, he’s gonna point to you whatever there is in your life.
It may be a relationship, it may be a habit, it may be the way you think, but whatever is not of God, he’s gonna point it out to you.
You need to deal with this. So how do you deal with sin?
You deal with sin by confessing it.
Confessing sin means that I agree with God that this is sin in my life.
So first there’s agreement followed by repentance on the basis God that you say this doesn’t fit my life.
I repent of this sin, which means I turn away from it.
I walk away from it and I want to do absolutely whatever God says.
If you want to clear out all the static and all the humdrum stuff that goes on in the mind and making decisions, you begin with that, you begin with cleaning your heart of own sin.
And that’s where a lot of people stop. They say, well, you know what?
I don’t give me that because uh there’s some things in life I want to do.
Well, some things in life will make you a fool.
There’ll be decisions that one of these days you look back and say, how in the world could I possibly have been thinking that I’ll tell you why because sin clouds your mind and sin confuses the mind and sin betrays the mind.
And so the first step in coming to know what is the wise way to make?
That decision is clearing the heart of any known sin.
Secondly, is bring your desires, watch this, bring your desires to a position of neutrality, which means this, this is what I really want above everything else.
And they say this and they say that what I need to do if I want to know what God wants, I’ve got to be willing to say, Lord, I want what you want.
I don’t know what that is right now. I don’t know.
You will right now, but I really want what you want now, telling him that the first time probably won’t work because deep down inside you’ve been thinking about what you want, what you need, what you desire, who you wanna marry or what you wanna drive, where you wanna live, how you that all these things.
So the first time you say, Lord uh I want, I want what you want.
You may not, you may not mean that. But listen carefully.
When you begin to say God, I want what you want.
I want, I want to know what you know is best for my life.
I want, I want to be wise God in his decisions. I need your help.
I’m willing to listen to you. And if I’m heading in the wrong direction, please show me dear God.
Don’t, don’t let me make a mistake in this issue. Will he listen to you? Yes, he will.
You have to be willing to come to say God, what is your will?
What, what in other words, listen to this.
You’re asking the one person who knows everything about, you knows what is best for, you, knows what will work for.
You knows what will make you happy. What will He also knows what will make you miserable.
You think you can’t live without her or without Him, you won’t even begin to realize what you’re getting yourself.
Into what’s the will of God. What, what are you trying to say to me? Lord?
So Lord, I want, I want what you want, whatever it takes.
That’s what I want you to show me when you bring your mind and heart toward neutrality.
Lord, I really don’t know what to do, but I wanna know and God’s gonna begin to work in your life.
And the third thing I wanna say is you have to exercise patience.
This is where people get in trouble.
For example, there are some things I’ve prayed for for a long time before God ever answered my prayer.
But watch this. Why do you keep praying when God hasn’t answered for a while? He doesn’t know.
There’s not a verse in the scripture says, asking it should be given to you immediately seeking, you shall find it.
Now, in other words, nowhere in the Bible does it say that?
And so some things you know what God is doing. He’s getting us ready for the answer.
And so watch God’s policies are very important in his plan for our life. He doesn’t tell me now.
So this is why you came up and make decisions about important things in your life or things that don’t seem to be very important when, when you are not sure exactly what God has said to you.
So you got to exercise patience and you gotta be willing to wait.
Now, I want you to write down something. And um I want you to understand what we mean.
When we say waiting upon God, you should write this down is not simply to mark time.
Well, I’m just gonna wait upon the Lord rather, it’s to live in a confident expectation, anticipation of his actions on their behalf that God has heard you.
And he’s gonna answer that it is to refuse to run ahead of Him trying to solve our problems for ourselves.
It says be still and know that I am God now being still is very difficult sometimes, especially if there’s something that you really want my soul.
Wait in silence for God, be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait on the Lord.
Some people don’t like to wait for anything.
But if you’re gonna make wise decisions in your life, sometimes you have to wait a pretty good while.
Sometimes you don’t have to wait for long watch this. God knows where the emergencies are in your life.
He knows where the answer must come. Now, he knows when you’re not ready for the answer.
He knows when you think you are, but He knows when you’re not and He knows if you gave, if He gave you an answer now, you wouldn’t accept it because you’re not ready for it.
Think about this, just think about this, an all wise omniscient God who knows you perfectly knows what’s best has heard your request.
He knows exactly the things that need to change before he can answer your prayer.
He knows the kind of attitude you have and he knows that there may be some aspects of that attitude that need to change before God can you.
It’s not that He didn’t want you to have it. He just knows you’re not ready for it right now.
So it is required of us to be patient. Gotta have it now.
We live in the age that has to have it now and it’s an age of disaster.
I gotta have it now. I don’t have to ask God whom I cannot see when I can see her.
I know Him. So I, I know what I want and why, why should I ask God? II?
I don’t know whether he’s, why would God listen to me with that attitude?
You want very important that we are patient and willing to wait upon God.
And number four, the alert to pressure. Be careful about pressure.
You’re gonna get pressure from your friends, you’re gonna get pressure from your enemies.
You’re just gonna get pressure from yourself. Maybe you’ve had things your way all your life.
You’ve not had to ask anybody anything. You’ve just done it your way.
Well, it’s time for you to learn a lesson.
Here is the, listen, here’s one of the most difficult things we have to deal with is pressure.
Now, watch this pressure. There two types of pressure, there’s external pressure and there’s another kind of pressure, we’ll come to that external pressures.
Pressure from your friends, you have to be very careful who you are listening to and especially people who are your bosom friends.
And may, maybe you’ve been friends with somebody that you’ve been a friend a long time.
You say I can trust him no matter what I can trust her.
There’s one step above that I can trust in God because my dearest friends may make a mistake.
My dearest friends watch this may because they love me. May want to make me pleased and happy.
I don’t wanna be pleased and happy. I wanna, what’s the will of God?
So we have to be careful about those pressures. Then there’s internal pressure.
You get it from the outside, you get it from the inside.
And II, I think about things that I’ve been through in life and our own fears, our own fears of loss and so forth.
And uh I’ll give you an example of probably a moment in my life that I hope God never repeats.
But when I came to uh I came to Atlanta, there came a time when we were gonna vote on a Wednesday, whether to make me the pastor or not.
So this is what happened that I’ll never forget and asking the Lord to give direction and clarity and having to trust Him in your own sense of, of the problem on the inside.
And so usually by Thursday, I’ll have my outline.
I, I don’t wanna get, I don’t wanna get a sermon to complete.
I wanna have to work on it a little bit of because I wanna, I want to be hot on Sunday morning.
I don’t, I don’t want something that’s cool off between Thursday and Sunday. So, anyway, Thursday came along.
No sermon. Hm. Not even a half of one Friday. No sermon. Saturday. No sermon.
And I knew that, that we were gonna vote on the following Wednesday, Saturday night.
I’m saying God tomorrow is Sunday.
And I don’t, I don’t even, I don’t even have a single verse of scripture.
Sunday morning. I wake up and the devil did his best to try to get me to reach back and find an old sermon or something that I could pull out Sunday morning.
I’m sitting in the chair and the choir begins to sing. So help me God. No sermon.
No text, no scripture, nothing. He just absolutely shut me down.
And I’m sitting there thinking God, I think this is about the last part of that chorus song and II, I don’t have anything to say God, nothing.
So they saying, I said, ok, God picked up my bible, walked up, opened it up and it, the pro I opened up and it fell on Proverbs 35 and six.
I read it, trust in the Lord with all your heart.
Lean not to your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him. And He will direct your path.
And I thought Lord, but you get started, this is the truth.
I started preaching and just like a machine gun for 35 minutes about something I never even thought about.
But it taught me this awesome lesson. God can shut you down when he wants to.
And then when he gets decides to open you up, it’s like a cannon going off.
The thing that I had to deal with was that interfere God, what is your will about all of this?
And uh and it’s Wednesday, then it’s Thursday, Friday and Saturday and Sunday and Sunday morning.
You know what God wasn’t in heaven saying? Oh, what’s Charlie gonna do on this, on this Sunday morning?
God was sitting back and probably saying that now I’m gonna show you what I can do and that is, he answered my prayer in the most awesome way.
And the pressure was my pressure.
That’s number four, number five, persistent prayer, er s isa persistent prayer and that is keep praying no matter whether you understand it or not.
First Thessalonians 5 17, he says we are to continue in prayer that is continuously praying.
You don’t stop in other words because you don’t have an answer. You don’t stop praying.
Pray without ceasing is what Paul said, pray without ceasing.
In other words, he didn’t promise to give us answers to give us direction.
He didn’t promise to give us that at any particular time.
And I think God takes great delight in doing what and watching us respond to him and watching how we move from doubt and fear and unrest and all the rest to begin to trust him and to begin to be confident and to begin to ask him and know absolutely in our hearts.
He will show us exactly what he wants to say to us.
And so what happens is sometimes people will say, well, I am going to pray and they’ll pray about two or three days and God doesn’t shout from heaven.
And so they think, well, you know, I just go and make this decision. I, I can’t wait forever.
I don’t know anywhere in the Bible that God says that He’ll answer prayer at a certain time.
Watch this when He does not answer the way you expect.
What is he doing? He’s teaching us to trust Him when we don’t have any evidence that he’s heard anything.
Can you trust him like that? He’s teaching us to trust Him.
He knows he’s gonna answer it.
And if you’ll think about it, we start out by saying this in God’s book.
He says, ask and it shall be given you not at 10 30.
He doesn’t say that. See you.
He doesn’t say today, knock and it shall be open instantly. He doesn’t say that.
So his delays are on purpose.
And when I think about his purpose, it, it’s certain to teach me to pray, teach me to listen, teach me to trust Him, just have to trust him.
And so that’s why Paul said, pray without ceasing and watch this.
And I’m not to move ahead until I get direction.
He was still afraid about that for two solid weeks like it was eternity.
Prayer is the greatest gift God has ever given us apart from salvation.
And then there’s number six, once he’s done, I rest in God’s promise.
He makes He, he promises. Here’s what I’m gonna do.
And if you think about it, the Bible is the most valuable resource we have in making decisions because it’s full of wisdom and what it is.
It’s the mind of God in print. Think about this.
You want to know what God thinks about anything yet in the word of God.
And here’s what the word does.
The word filters my thinking when it’s not exactly right, filters my uh desires.
The, the word of God is, is a filter and our minds are continually bombarded by what the world thinks and how they think.
But when you and I get in the word of God, we begin to read His word. What happens?
He sifts and he’s only while he’s sifting, he’s also building our faith.
God said, God promised. And if God said, and God promised, I can go with it and remember this, he gives us promise after promise, after promise, he will hear and answer our prayer if I distrust him, be patient, wait upon him and then the seventh, wait for his peace, wait for his peace.
And that very worthy Greek in the Greek means to bind together the peace of God.
He and I are together about this decision. Therefore, therefore, I can, I can trust him.
And I, I love Colossians 3 15.
Listen to what he says in that passage and you might want to turn to it.
Colossians 3 15 and listen to what the Apostle Paul says in the third chapter 15 verse, listen to what he says.
He says, let the peace of Christ, listen to this.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful.
Let the peace of God rule in your heart.
That is when I have his peace, I know that I have the answer. That’s God’s grace.
God is willing to give us the grace of absolute assurance.
And so when I think about all the things that would keep us from knowing the will of God, I think about we have a plan and I wish somebody had given me that when I was a kid, the plan.
Now you have the plan, whoever you are, wherever you are, what we’ve talked about here, you’ve heard, you’ve seen what works here, works everywhere in the world where Jesus Christ is preached.
And people understand who He is. If you have never trusted Him as your savior.
This is the time to do it. Ask Him to forgive you of your sins.
Tell Him, your repenting of your sins, confess and repent of your sins. Surrender your life to Him.
God, I give up, I’m I here’s my life. God.
I want to find out what you will do with me. Listen to this carefully.
You listen, say amen. It has nothing to do with your nationality, your language, your color, your inheritance, it has nothing to do with anything.
Are you willing to believe him?
And until you trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior, this won’t work.
The most important decision you’ll ever make is to trust the Lord Jesus Christ because that decision determines your whole entire eternity.
Decision. Number one, decision, number two, follow him every day.
If you’ve never trusted him as your savior, we’re gonna have a prayer in just a moment.
You can be saved seated right where you are. There’s nothing says you’ve got to do anything but that.
But you need to tell somebody, you get safe in your eternal destiny changes.
You’re gonna wanna tell somebody about it. So let’s pray, father. We thank you for your love for us.
And now I pray for the person seated here today who has never trusted you as their savior.
Maybe they were afraid to, maybe they didn’t understand what confession repentance means to turn away from sin and to surrender their life to you and recognize that the shedding of your blooded calvary paid their sin debt in full.
And that’s why you said come unto me, all you that labor in heavy laden and I’ll give you a rest, believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved.
So I pray that those who need to be saved will pray that prayer right now and trust you, they keep your word.
And then the Lord that this message will become a part of every person’s life.
In Jesus name. Amen. If you’ve been blessed by today’s program, please visit us at entouch dot org in touch leading people worldwide into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ and strengthening the local church.
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