Four things that determine the quality of your life – Part 3

 

Click below to listen to the Audio

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Below is the transcript of the audio.

Praise the Lord my dear brothers and sisters! It’s Moses here at Christian Motivation; I hope and believe that you are doing well.

As usual, it is an opportunity and a pleasure for me to share with you the things I believe will help you reign in life. Today we are continuing with our topic of the four things that may determine the quality of your life.

Now, if you are reading this from somewhere other than the website, I would encourage you to go to the website at ChristianMotivation.tv so that you can read about the first two things that were discussed. We are going to be discussing the third one, but at ChristianMotivation.tv, you will find the other two things, and many more resources that will help you to reign in life.

Just to do a short recap of what we discussed in the first two videos; I talked about the four things that determine the quality of your life which are your thoughts, your decisions or choices, your relationships, and your time. In the first video, we discussed about time and we read the scripture where the Psalmist prayed asking God to teach him how to number his days so that he may apply his heart towards wisdom. I shared about how we can be able to manage our time more efficiently in order to reap the results of the quality of life we desire. In the second video, we talked about thoughts as seeds which are planted into the mind and then into your heart. These seeds may be in the form of a good idea or a temptation. They may be a word from God, a word from self or a word from the devil. What we do with those seeds is a big determinant to the quality we get out of life. Today, I will be discussing the third factor that determines the quality of our life which is the decisions or choices that we make in life.

Wherever we are in life today, we are reaping the consequences of the decisions we made yesterday. In other words, the decisions and the choices that we are making today are deciding our future. We must realize that human beings are the only creatures in all of God’s creation that have the power to choose. Even God himself, our creator, does not violate our ability to choose. When we make a choice to do something, God will allow us to do what we have decided to do whatever the consequences may be. Now, he gives us clues to enable us make the best decisions that we can make in our lives. The Bible is a manual for human beings that has been written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In other words, when we look in the Bible, we are able to find examples of people that have made good decisions which we can follow. We can also find warnings about people who have made poor decisions and we can learn from them too so that we can make better decisions in our lives. Therefore studying the Word of God enables us to learn how we can make better decisions.

Man is the center of attraction. By this I mean we have God on one side and the devil on the other side. Our choices move us to one side or the other. Life is on one side while death is on the other side. Light is on one side, darkness is on the other side. Good is on one side, bad is on the other side. Health is on one side, sickness is on one side; we, who have the ability to choose, are in the middle and hence the center of attraction. Every moment we have something we are focusing on, either God’s side or the devil’s side.

With Life on one side and death on the other, we are presented with a choice of where we want to go, whether we want to go towards life or we want to go towards death. Now, make no mistake to think that the choices you make in life are just mere choices. Every choice and decision that we make, however small it may be, will either tend to life or it will tend to death. It may not look that way but that is what it is. God said that He had placed before us life and death and He gave us a clue to choose life; but it is up to us to make the decision/choice.

Now, let me also say that if you do not make a decision, you are worse than somebody that has made a poor decision and this is why; if you make a poor decision, then you have the ability to turn around and change that decision and make a better one. We just hope that the decision that you made is not the final decision that you cannot change around. And you realize in your life, that most of the decisions, unless you make that decision and die immediately, every decision has the ability to be changed and to be turned around. There’s something that you can do about turning a bad decision around. Sometimes people just don’t want to make the time or are afraid of doing that; but when you make a poor decision, you have the ability at least to change it. You are better off than somebody that has not made a decision.

When a person does not decide, he is as good as dead. When you do not decide, it means that you are stagnant and as human beings, any point where we are stagnant, we are as good as dead. If we are not moving forward, then we are as good as dead. You don’t want to be caught up in a place where you are not making a decision. It is important that you make a decision whenever necessary. You would rather make a bad decision, turn around and correct it than just stay in one place without making a decision.

Let me give you four things that I believe can be of help to you in making quality decisions.

1) Gather ALL the necessary information.

Many times we make decisions without having all the information we need and there are many        examples that are out there that you can see or have heard, for example, people have been falsely imprisoned because somebody did not gather all the necessary information. Even in our personal lives, there are things that we decide upon or choices that we make short of all the information that we need. In order to make better decisions, we need to learn the habit of gathering as much information as needed to be able to make a quality decision.

2) Get into the habit of inquiring from experts.

No man is an island. Sometimes we think we can do things just by ourselves but there are people that have gone ahead of us. There are people that have made decisions similar to the decisions that we want to make and they could probably give us more clarity on the situation that we are facing and the issues that we need to make decisions about. It is therefore important that we get into the habit of learning to inquire from experts or trusted resources. It is imperative that those experts are trusted resources. It could be a good friend, a pastor or the lawyer. Sometimes people claim to be experts but they are not. So you must make sure that you are getting the information from trusted experts which will enable you to make better decisions. The word of God states that in a multitude of counselors there is safety. However, please remember that at the end of the day, really, it’s not the multitude making the decision. It is your responsibility to make the decision.

3) Don’t be in a hurry to make a decision.

Don’t put yourself under pressure to make a decision. Many times we will make decisions because we are under pressure or we think we need to make a decision right away. I have come to the realization that sometimes, actually most of the time, we can buy ourselves some time. Get some time just to be quiet, think about it, pray about it, wait on the Lord, and inquire with the Holy Spirit, so that in the end the decision made is one of quality. Pressure can really mount up, for example, when people are looking to buy a home or a car, they will be pressured by the real estate agent, or the salesman. The reason why this happens is because salespeople mainly car salespeople have a belief that all customers are liars. When customers say that they will be back, chances are they will not come back. So they will do whatever it takes to try and put them under pressure to make the decision right away. But you really don’t have to make decisions in a hurry. You can always find time to think about the situation and pray before you go ahead and make that quality decision.

Now, I must clarify this point by saying that we shouldn’t make buying time an excuse. In other words, we don’t want to get caught up in the situation we talked about earlier of not making a decision at all, because then we become worse-off than somebody who makes a poor decision. So don’t make buying time an excuse for you to indefinitely put off the process of making a decision.

4) Don’t make decisions based on emotions.

Many times we do things out of emotions like anger and we end up saying things that we shouldn’t have said to people if we had taken control of our emotions. Other times we act on impulse say when we go to the mall and end up buying stuff we don’t need just because our emotions told us it looks good or it has been discounted say 20% off (even though it’s still expensive despite the discount); so, without even thinking about it twice, we end up spending beyond our means or above our budget to impress our emotions the will change shortly. Most decisions based on emotions are not logic based. To make good decisions, we need to let our emotions calm down so that our logic can kick in.

So just to review, the four things that will help us make quality decisions include gathering all the necessary information, inquiring from experts, don’t be in a hurry and last but not least don’t make decisions based on emotions.

Brothers and Sisters, as children of God we are very privileged to have the Word of God as our source.  When we look at these four things that I’ve just shared with you concerning making quality decisions, you will see that they are based on the Word of God. In other words, the Word of God is all the information we need. All we have to do is to take time to search the Word and find out what God has said concerning the area we need to make a decision in. However insignificant the area may seem to be to us, every situation we come up against in life has an answer in the Word of God. All we need to do is to take time to look in the Word of God. It is all the information we need. Expert counsel from people should be just an addition to what the Word of God says. My encouragement to everyone is that we must make the Word of God final authority in our lives. All children of God standing on the Word of God have the backing of God himself and the guidance of the Holy Spirit in decision making.

I would like to say that if there is someone reading this article today and you have not yet accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and personal Savior, I want to let you know that it doesn’t matter how good your decisions may be in life – if you have not accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, your decisions will ultimately end up in death and that’s not where you want to go; because during our life here on earth, we only have two ultimate choices. You are either moving towards life or death. There is no middle ground.

Now, we must realize that the time that we have here on this earth is so small compared to eternity. In other words, the time that we have here on this earth is like a drop of water in the ocean. So you can’t just make decisions based on this life and forget to make decisions based on eternity. So I don’t care how good your decisions may seem to be – if you have not accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, your decisions are going to end up in death. This is what I mean. Based on that Life and Death decision of making Jesus Christ the Lord of your life, when you die you have to go to the side you choose when you were still alive and that is either the death side or the life side. If you choose the death side, all the so-called good decisions that you made here on earth will be pointless. So my desire for you is that you take that step and make Jesus Christ the Lord of your life. It will literally make a world of difference in the decisions you make.

You may have a question, “how do I do that?” Well, the Word of God says that man believes with the heart and confesses with your mouth. But you cannot of course believe something that you don’t know.  You’ve got to have somebody talk to you about the Lord Jesus Christ. The same Word of God that I talked about as our manual here in life says that how will people believe if nobody tells them, and who will tell them if nobody is sent? I just want to let you know that there are people that have been sent to speak the Word and I happen to be one of them that would love to speak to you about accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and personal savior of your life. So I want to encourage you that if you are a person who is reading this and you are saying that is something I want to know more about, I want to know more about this Jesus, I want to know how to make the best decision I can ever make in life and that is accepting the lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, then here is what I want you to do. I want you to send me an e-mail. If you go to the website at ChristianMotivation.tv, or better still if you are at the website, go to the contact me on the page that says contact me, there is my e-mail. Just shoot me an e-mail and let me know that you want to know more about the Lord Jesus Christ. I will share with you more about this Jesus the Christ. I will point you to some more resources that will do that for you and then I will help you along the way in making that decision and I guarantee you that when you make that decision, all the other decisions will be better. And you will know at least that, all the other decisions, as good as they are, they are leading you to life and not leading you to death.

For those who have already accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, I just want to encourage you, as the Bible says that as we have accepted him, let us also walk with him. Let us be sensitive to His leading and guidance. The Lord Jesus Christ longs to make decisions with you. The Holy Spirit has been given to us to counsel us, to guide and lead us into all truths and to show us things to come. Spend time with Him, fellowshipping with him and he will help you to make better decisions in life.

Until next time, it’s Moses here at ChristianMotivation saying that stay blessed and keep the faith.

Go out there and reign in life because we have been created to reign in life.

God bless you.