Make your decisions count

The decisions you make every day influence your future and create your past. You are who you are today as a result of the decisions you have made up to this point. The quality of your decisions will affect the quality of your life.

God is looking for people to make good decisions. He is looking for people who will seek Him in their decision-making, to do His will and not their own.

How to make good decisions:

1. Be obedient to the things you know and understand. As you are obedient in the daily, mundane, mediocre things in life, God will reward and expand you. (Read Phil. 3:12-16 and Matt. 25:21-23.) If you want to know God's will for your life, read the Word. Pray. Fast. Witness to what you already know.

2. Go to God's Instruction Manual, the Bible. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path (Ps. 119:105). God's Word gives advice on everything that you may encounter.

3. Learn from the lives of others. You don't have to learn everything by personal experience. Look around you and learn from others' successes and failures.

4. Learn from your own mistakes. Evaluate your failures. Determine what you did wrong and how you could do it differently next time. Don't be discouraged with failure, or punishment. Turn it into a lesson for future success.

5. Make your decisions before you are in the heat of the battle. Just like practicing fire drills at school, have a plan for your actions. Before you are confronted with compromising situations, determine what you are going to do, then stick to your plan.

6. Never make a big decision when you are under pressure. Quick decisions don't usually hold up. Resolve to think through all major decisions. Give yourself time to calm down, think through, and be confident in your choice.

7. Consider the effects your decision will have on others. It may be your life, but all decisions you make have a ripple effect on those around you. Take time to think about them and the impact your decision will have on their lives.

8. Ask God for wisdom. If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you (James 1:5). God's help is there for the asking.

9. Ask for the mind of Christ. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5). What He processed in His mind in making His daily decisions, you can do likewise in your mind with your decisions. Tap in to what Christ offers you.

10. Seek godly counsel. For with wise guidance you can wage your war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory (Prov. 24:6). Just make sure the advice comes from people who, by their lives, demonstrate a reliance on God and seek to do His will.

From It's Time by Richard Crisco, copyright (c) 1997. Used by permission of Revival Press, an imprint of Destiny Image Publishers, Inc., Shippensburg, Pa., 1-800-722-6774.

Richard Crisco leads the youth at the Brownsville Assembly of God Church. Involved in youth ministry for 13 years, his purpose is to raise up youthful missionaries to reach their peers. Richard and his wife, Jane, live in Pensacola, Fla., with their two children.