by Ken Costa
We may, conversely, experience a red light. I remember when my wife, Fi, and I tried to purchase a very attractive property. All seemed well. We went through to the final stages of negotiation. We had viewed the property, seen its potential, and looked forward to the project of doing it up. We had considered all the angles: financial, personal, and practical. And yet as we prayed about it, we couldn’t shake a nagging doubt that we might have been dragged along by the momentum of the deal.
One morning I woke up early and decided to write down the pros and cons for buying the house. I prayed over each one. Through this process, the right outcome became clearer and clearer, until the decision virtually made itself, by which I mean that the praying and pondering made a definitive result possible. It became clear to me that I had made a mistake: I had romanticized the idyllic countryside opportunities for recreation and enjoyment and had not done enough objective analysis to stop myself from being carried away. Attractive as the property undoubtedly was, I realized it would be a distraction from our primary calling.
After a conversation with Fi, I picked up the telephone to call our agent and explained that we would be withdrawing. He was understanding and helpful on how to extract us from a difficult situation. Somehow the prayers had also spilled over to the extraction process! Fi and I both felt enormous relief and never looked back.
But as I write this, I can remember the desk where I wrote the pros and cons. Above all, I remember the clarity of the decision. It was as if the con side of the page stood out highlighted, as the pro side faded away. Often at these times the Holy Spirit is like a bright LED light illuminating the key points on the tablet while the others fade into the background.
Fi and I were in agreement on this occasion, but sometimes clarity is provided by a couple’s inability to unite around a decision. In such cases, we need to be honest with each other and work it through together, however hard the circumstances may be.
One of the greatest dangers in trying to make effective decisions is to be drawn too deeply into a process before you are ready. Extraction is much more difficult the farther along the path we travel.
Tom and Alison had to face the momentous decision of whether to move to Bogotá, Colombia. Tom had been offered a job with a company based there for a two- or three-year stint. He had been to several interviews, each one registering his intent that if he were to be offered the job, he and his wife would be ready to make the leap. However, it wasn’t until the job offer came along that Alison suddenly had overwhelming fear about the prospect of relocating to such a foreign part of the world. It was as much a case of miscommunication between the two of them as anything else. Tom assumed that, as he went from each interview stage to the next, Alison was on board with the obvious outcome of events. She wrestled and wrestled with it, writing down all of her fears and praying over each one. Tom was desperate to accept the offer, but she couldn’t bring herself to agree. They were keen to start a family, and the thought of raising small children in a dangerous part of South America was too daunting for her. To this day, they do not know if the decision they made was counter to God’s will or was being led by God’s will, but the outcome was that Tom got another job, happily, and life in London continued. Interestingly, though, God used the decision-making process to work on their marriage. The decision to withdraw was hard for Tom, and he had to learn to forgive Alison’s reluctance to go to Bogotá, just as she had to forgive his reluctance to see and accept her fears. They both learned a lot about submitting to each other, about compromise, and about extending grace to each other. All these lessons have enriched and deepened their marriage.
The most important aspect of the clarifying process, however, is that we remain open to hearing from the Lord. When the prophet Samuel was called as a young boy in 1 Samuel 3, he assumed at first that he was being spoken to by his master, Eli. Every time God spoke, Samuel would get out of bed to find out what Eli wanted from him. It was only when he responded directly to God—“Speak, for your servant is listening” (v. 10)—that Samuel was ready to hear the message God had been trying to tell him.
We, like Samuel, need to invite God to speak into our lives. “Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths” (Psalm 25:4 ESV) is a great verse to repeat when in the clarifying part of the decision making.
4. COURAGE
“Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD” (Psalm 27:14).
It takes time to clarify decisions, especially major ones. We become impatient with God when decisions don’t happen quickly. He often restrains us from moving forward, to test us or prevent us from charging headlong into a dead end. A nudge from God is what we need to know when the time of holding back is over.
The time of waiting is often plagued by doubt. In Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, the Trojan prince Hector said to his father, the king of Troy, “Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.”2
Doubt will be with us in every one of our choices until we have made up our minds to walk a particular path—and sometimes afterward too. Doubt is the traveling companion of wisdom, and God can use our uncertainty as the humility necessary to remain dependent on him. Doubt is part of being human.
The Bible is full of wise people with doubts: Moses was unsure of his gifting to tackle Pharaoh; the Psalms are filled with David’s doubts about himself, God, and those around him; Thomas doubted the resurrected Jesus; and the devil used doubt to try to thwart the start of Jesus’ ministry, declaring, “If you are the Son of God . . .” (Matthew 4:6) and seeming to plant doubt in Jesus’ mind about his very identity. Modest doubt—such a truth!
We need to live through doubt, not just with doubt, and that takes courage. Often decision making is tumultuous, like being tossed every way by the waves of the sea. At a crucial moment in my life, when I faced a period of insecurity about the future, I read Psalm 107:
Some sailed over the ocean in ships,
earning their living on the seas.
They saw what the LORD can do,
his wonderful acts on the seas.
He commanded, and a mighty wind began to blow
and stirred up the waves.
The ships were lifted high in the air
and plunged down into the depths.
In such danger the sailors lost their courage;
they stumbled and staggered like drunks—
all their skill was useless.
Then in their trouble they called to the LORD,
and he saved them from their distress.
He calmed the raging storm,
and the waves became quiet.
They were glad because of the calm,
and he brought them safe to the port they wanted.
(vv. 23–30 GNT)
It was a brilliant and releasing picture. I felt the roller-coaster ride. And I felt the nausea of seasickness as I rode high in expectation, only to be rolled over by a crashing wave of dashed hope. It is true that when life feels turbulent, we often feel as if we are stumbling and staggering and losing our courage. This is a feeling I recognize during troubled times.
I have made no major decision in my life without finding myself crying out to God. And at times it has been from the depths of my being, as the psalmist described. But God brings the sailors and me out of distress. In the metaphorical stormy seas, the ships are piloted to safety, and so we are led through the turbulence into the right port. Now that is a liberating thought: after the terror of the ride, we are led to peaceful waters.
Making a final decision takes a deep breath and conviction. The Bible promises that if we are courageous in pursuing the ways of God, he stays with us. Undergirding all our decisions is this great reassurance: “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27).
5. CONTENTED
Paul said in his letter to the Philippians that he had “learned to be content whatever the circumstances” (Philippians 4:11). This is about as difficult a lesson
to learn as any. I am helped by the fact that he said “I have learned.” Even for Paul, this response did not come instantly or effortlessly; it took application for him to be content regardless of outcome or circumstance. It’s so easy to be content when we get what we want, not so easy when we don’t.
A well-made decision results in experiencing relief that the decision has been made, as well as the “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (v. 7 ESV) that comes from the Lord. It is almost like a reward for the mental anguish that the decision-making process often entails, a kind of “well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21).
Sometimes at this stage a confirmatory sign will corroborate the decision. Or looking back over past decisions can confirm a choice we have made was the right one. What we mustn’t do, however, is live in the past. We mustn’t look back and think, If only this had happened, or, If only I’d not done that.
Ecclesiastes tells us, “Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). This is a great piece of advice. It can be so easy to question our past decisions or wish that things had worked out differently. But this is fruitless. We can’t even begin to imagine how God has used some of our strange decisions to shape us for the better.
Steve Jobs, the genius behind Apple, reflected that “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.”3 He had dropped out of college but kept returning to attend the classes he found interesting. The one that particularly made an impression was the class on calligraphy.
He said, “I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.”4
None of this had any practical application to his life at that time. However, ten years later, when he was designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to him. And he designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If he had never dropped in on that single college course, the Mac would not have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.
He said, “Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.”5 And so it is with our lives.
We need to cultivate a relationship of trust with the Father, who loves us. He will guide us by his Holy Spirit to make the next choice the best choice.
It can be dangerous to seek confirmation of your choice by analyzing whether you now have the perfect job or the perfect life. Nothing is perfect this side of heaven, and often God allows us to choose pathways that will be filled with challenges and obstacles. These do not mean that we have taken the wrong path.
There are clearly times when we make decisions we regret. If I make a mistake, I am always comforted by knowing that I took care in the process: I considered thoughtfully, I sought the counsel of others, I took steps to clarify—and I chose the best available option at the time in the light of the information and alternatives available. We cannot see into the future, so I try not to beat myself up for decisions that don’t end up as I had hoped. I do my best not to linger or indulge in introspective self-examination. Of course, sometimes, in retrospect, I see that I acted in haste, or at a time of distress, or without taking time to hear God’s voice. What then? Does it mean that I am forever trapped in a wrong path? No. That is when I realize that God’s grace is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9). If I have done something wrong, then I may need to repent, set the record straight, and allow God to lead me without having to undo the decisions.
When I was young, I had a long-held dream to go to Oxford University. I was obsessed with the notion of it. And then I received a rejection letter. There was no place for me there. I was absolutely devastated as a dream fizzled out in front of me.
Then, out of the blue and quite unexpectedly, I got an offer from Cambridge University. I know you might well think, What a spoiled brat to have had such a choice, to have to put up with Cambridge! But disappointment is not rational but emotional—and I felt acute disappointment over the lost dream of Oxford. However, I went to Cambridge University. As I was a late applicant, there was no place for me to stay in the college, and I had to live five miles outside the university. When I first arrived, I had no friends and I was miserable.
But, as a result of being there, my faith in Jesus Christ came alive because of some of the friends I did eventually make. God used a great disappointment to grow me and nurture me in incredible ways. It was there that I met Nicky Gumbel, the founder of Alpha, and Nicky Lee, the founder of the Marriage Course, who remain two of my closest friends to this day. I made more friends than I could ever have imagined in that place, and we began to see God working in our lives and in the lives of other people around us. My dream to go to Oxford might have fizzled and died. But God’s dream for me was just beginning.
CALLED TO THE CROSSROADS
The fact that God gives us choices is an incredible, liberating truth. But it can also be a scary one. It means that we will eventually be held accountable for those choices. Our work will be tested: “the fire will test the quality of each person’s work” (1 Corinthians 3:13). This is a sobering thought. What we build and, more particularly, how we build, has eternal consequences. My business, if built on good values with Christ as the foundation, will survive any testing by fire. Conversely, if I build a business by deceiving or exploiting others, by choosing to act in underhanded ways or by breaking the law or by failing to operate with transparency and decency, then my work will not withstand the judgment test of 1 Corinthians 3:13. Nor will it give me the peace within which to enjoy the fruit of my labors.
But it’s not simply by our ethical choices that we will be judged. We will also be asked to account for the choices we didn’t make—moments when we let the status quo linger because it was simply too difficult to confront those nagging questions that lingered in the recesses of our minds.
In Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he begged them to “live a life [literally “walk in the path”] worthy of the calling you have received” (Ephesians 4:1, emphasis added). Paul was urging his congregation to make choices worthy of the calling that God had placed on their lives, not choices dictated by the immediate pressures of the moment. He was urging them to be intentional in their decision making and not to resign themselves to going through the motions. The Message version of Ephesians 4 translates as follows:
In light of all this, here’s what I want you to do. While I’m locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences. (vv. 1–3)
This is important to remember when we come to what I call crossroads moments. Sometimes I have prayed with people and felt clearly that God was bringing them to a crossroads. New opportunities were opening up or circumstances were changing, and God was forcing them into making choices about what their lives were going to look like going forward.
I think of Tim, a successful banker in London who was caught up in the banking crisis. He was exhausted and felt, in my view rightly, that it was time to leave. Eventually, his exhaustion brought him to a crossroads moment, where he had to think about what might be next. It wasn’t easy or simple, but then life-changing decisions often aren’t.
When we come to such points, the pressure to make a decision can be unbearable. Confusion reigns, and the intensity of frustrated praying merely exacerbates an already-difficult situation. I sympathize with those in this position. I have confronted many crossroads threatening to d
etract from the very relationship of trust that is needed to navigate the way ahead.
Yet, without a shadow of doubt, I believe that God allows these crossroads to come into our lives in order to build up our trust in him and to strengthen us for the road he has called us down. Very often, a choice is complicated by alternative options. In my experience—painful as it is to have to examine the crossroads—it is in these moments that we truly confront the questions of our callings and our relationships with Christ. His purpose is always to bring glory to his name, and we are called to make our crossroads choice in the light of that fact. As we take our first faltering steps in a new direction, God promises that he will be beside us, supporting us. But the choice has to be ours.
The provocative, and yet reassuring, promise from Jeremiah says: “This is what the LORD says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls’” (Jeremiah 6:16).
No person who seriously wishes to make the most of his or her life will escape crossroads moments. It is in these moments that we trust that what appears to be an ending is, in fact, part of Christ’s plan, and that it also contains a beginning and a new path. The end of one stage of life is not the end of the calling. God has not finished with us. After all, when Jesus cried out on the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30), he did not say that he was done. He rose again. A task had been completed, but he wasn’t finished. He could now start a resurrected life.