by Andy Stanley
ASK IT
PUBLISHED BY MULTNOMAH BOOKS
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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica Inc.™
Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.
Italics in Scripture quotations reflect the author’s added emphasis.
Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-60142-718-2
eBook ISBN 978-1-60142-719-9
Copyright © 2004 and 2014 by Andy Stanley
Cover design by Kelly L. Howard
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.
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Revised and updated from The Best Question Ever.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stanley, Andy.
[Best question ever]
Ask it : the question that will revolutionize how you make decisions / Andy Stanley.
pages cm
Rev. ed. of: The best question ever. c2004.
ISBN 978-1-60142-718-2—ISBN 978-1-60142-719-9 (electronic) 1. Christian life. 2. Decision making—Religious aspects—Christianity. 3. Wisdom—Religious aspects—Christianity. I. Title.
BV4501.3.S7314 2014
248.4—dc23
2014024059
v3.1
This book is dedicated to Lanny Donoho.
Solomon was right—there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. You have been that kind of friend to me. Thank you.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction: If Only …
Part 1: The Question
1: Dumb and Dumber
2: A Most Uncomfortable Question
3: The Slippery Slope
4: Climate Control
5: Stemming the Tide
6: Seasonal Wisdom
7: Looking Ahead
Part 2: The Alternatives
8: Opting Out
9: Turn Around
Part 3: A Question of Time
10: Time Bandits
11: Live and Learn
Part 4: A Question of Morality
12: Sex for Dummies
13: Hindsight
14: Life Rules
15: Extreme Measures
16: Flee!
Part 5: Wisdom for the Asking
17: Hide and Seek
18: Knowing What You Don’t Know
19: Everybody’s Business
20: Listening, Learning
Part 6: The Best Decision Ever
21: Perfecting Your Follow-Through
22: The Beginning of Wisdom
Epilogue
Study Guide
Introduction
If Only …
I see that big question mark in your eyes.
Well, not really. I can’t actually observe it from this far away—but I bet it’s there. Most of us, most of the time, are weighing some big question or two or three concerning our lives, and we keep encountering new ones all the time:
Do I stay or go?
Is he (or she) the right one for me?
Should I buy this? Sell that? Start this? Stop that? Invest here? Commit there?
I know a question that makes it easy to determine the answer to all these others.
It’s the question that answers just about everything for everybody, for the rest of our lives, and at every stage of our lives. It brings clarity and fresh insight for each decision we have to make. It pierces the fog of our self-deception and erases all those shades of gray that cloud our reasoning. It takes us beyond simple right and wrong, beyond what’s merely legal, beyond the lowest common denominator.
And if we’re honest with ourselves, God will use this question in the deepest parts of our lives to help take us to the place of our fullest potential.
Not only that, but it’s a fairly easy question to answer. In most cases, you’ll know the answer immediately.
Looking Back
This is a question that will save you a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of stress, and—more importantly—lots of tears. I can even state the case this way:
Your greatest regret could have been avoided had you asked this particular question and then acted on your conclusion.
Regardless of whether it’s an action or event you regret or an entire chapter of your life that you wish you could do over—had you evaluated your options through the lens of this powerful question, you would have avoided what may be your greatest ongoing source of pain.
As you move through the pages that follow, you may find that this single question could have changed the trajectory of your entire life.
It’s a question I ask often every day. It’s a question that guided me through my late twenties as a single man. It’s a question that has served me well through twenty-six incredible years of marriage. It’s a question I’ve taught my three kids to ask about every option that comes their way. They absorbed it, because it’s the lens through which we learned to evaluate every decision we made as a family.
Over the past thirty years, I’ve had the opportunity to teach this principle to thousands of middle school and high school students. Many of them are adults now with children of their own. Letters, e-mails, and conversations assure me that this big question continues to serve as a decision-making filter for scores of these young adults.
When I share this valuable question with adult audiences, the response is nearly always the same: “I wish I’d heard this years ago.” Translated: “I could have avoided some regret, if only …”
This single question serves as a lens through which you can evaluate all your options. It’s a filter that casts things in their actual light. It’s a grid that provides context for every choice. It will provide you with a new perspective on your love life, your career, your finances, your family, your schedule—everything. It’s a question that will shed light on issues the Bible doesn’t specifically address.
But it’s not always an easy question to ask. Sometimes it can be a bit threatening, because it exposes so much about our hearts and our motives. But that’s just one more reason it’s so revolutionizing.
Looking Ahead
This book is divided into six parts.
In the first part, you’ll be introduced to our big question. It takes me a couple of chapters to get to it, so be patient.
The second part explores some common (and dangerous) alternatives to asking our big question.
In the next two parts, we’ll apply our question to two key areas of life: your time and your relationships.
Then, in the fifth part, I’ll let you in on a secret known by all the world’s best decision makers.
Finally, in the last part I’ll challenge you to make a decision that allows you to get the maximum benefit from this question.
The principle behind this valuable question has impacted my decisions—and consequently my life—more than any other. This is more than another book for me. This is a life message. The content isn’t simply pulled from a series of sermons; it’s drawn from the years of my life’s journey.
I hope you enjoy the book. More importantly, I hope this powerful question becom
es a permanent part of your decision-making process. If you have the courage to ask it, your heavenly Father will use this simple question to guide and protect you in the days to come. And as you experience the significant difference this question makes, I think you’ll agree that it’s one you’ll want to keep asking for the rest of your life.
You and I have something in common. We’ve both done some really dumb stuff. Stuff we hope nobody ever finds out about. Stuff we wish we could forget. There’s money we wish we hadn’t spent, cars we wish we had never bought, investments we wish we hadn’t made, invitations we wish we hadn’t accepted, relationships we wish we had stayed out of, jobs we wish we had never taken, partnerships we never should have entered into, phone calls we never should have returned, contracts we never should have signed.
If you are like me, you look back and wonder, How could I have been so dumb? So blind? So foolish? We should have known better. In some cases, we did know better, but for some reason we thought we could beat the odds—that we would be the exceptions to the rule. In spite of what common sense (and maybe a friend or two) told us, we believed we could control the outcomes of our decisions. So we followed our hearts, we trusted our emotions, we did our own thing, and now we wonder what in the world we were thinking.
If you’re like most people, some of the decisions you wish you could unmake led to chapters of your life you wish you could go back and unlive. Picking a stock based on a bad tip is one thing; choosing a marriage partner without doing some due diligence is something else entirely. Making four $24.95 payments on something that’s only worth $24.95 to begin with is embarrassing; $25,000 in credit-card debt can ruin you.
Some of our bad decisions simply embarrass us. Others scar us.
What’s obvious now wasn’t so obvious then. And what’s obvious to us now may not be so obvious to everybody around us. Chances are, you’ve already bumped into somebody on the verge of making the same dumb decision you made when you were his age. And, as I was, you were sure that once he heard your sad story, he would drop to his knees in gratitude for your life-changing insight. Having come to grips with the error of his ways, he would immediately reverse course, call off the marriage, pay cash, tear up the contract, dissolve the partnership, sell his drums, stay in school, or whatever.
But no. Instead, he endures our tales of woe, thanks us for the unsolicited advice, and continues full speed ahead into the oncoming train. And we think back and wonder, Could I have possibly been that naive? That stubborn? That foolish?
Yep.
Poor Planning
When we watch people we know—or strangers for that matter—make foolish decisions, it’s as if they are strategically and intentionally setting out to mess up their lives.
After all, it takes a lot of planning to marry the wrong person. Any marriage, even a bad one, is not a casual endeavor. Think of the time and energy it takes to set up a doomed business partnership or to start a business that has no hope of success. Think about all the paperwork people have to wade through to purchase houses they can’t really afford or lease cars they are going to lose or apply for loans they can’t repay.
Having watched dozens of people methodically waste their lives, potential, and money, I’ve concluded that while nobody plans to mess up his life, the problem is that few of us plan not to. That is, we don’t put the necessary safeguards in place to ensure happy endings.
Nobody plans to destroy her marriage, but few people take precautions that guarantee “as long as we both shall live.”
Nobody plans to raise irresponsible, codependent children, but it’s clear from looking at society that a bunch of parents didn’t plan not to.
Nobody plans an addiction, but it happens. Why? A lack of necessary precautions.
I haven’t talked to anyone who planned to be buried under a mountain of credit-card debt, but I’ve met a lot of people who didn’t plan not to be.
Our poor planning leads precisely where we had no intention of going. And once there we ask, “How did this happen to me?”
The answer to that comes by asking another question that’s far better—the question this book is all about.
Better yet, this question will help you stay out of the situations and circumstances that rob you of your potential, your opportunities, and your future.
At the age of twenty-five, I came across three verses in Scripture that totally changed the way I made decisions. I suddenly had a new filter through which to evaluate every opportunity, invitation, and relationship—everything I was asked to do, everything I was tempted to become a part of. I began to consider my whole life through this new grid, a grid that boiled down to asking one simple question.
The reason I consider it such a uniquely valuable question is that it has the potential to foolproof every aspect of your life. It will give you a new perspective on your love life, your career, your finances, your family, your schedule—everything. This question sheds light on issues the Bible doesn’t specifically address. It provides you with a context for addressing questions of where to draw the line morally, relationally, and ethically. Like a piercing light, this powerful question cuts through the fog surrounding so many of your decisions and enables you to see clearly.
And yet, as you are about to discover, it’s not an easy question to ask. It’s not that the words are difficult to say. It’s just that the question exposes so much about your heart and your motives that it is, well, just not an easy question to ask. It’s like walking out of a dark building on a sunny day—there is something about this question that will make you want to retreat to the shadows where your eyes have already adjusted. Like direct sunlight to the unshielded eye, this question can be extremely uncomfortable.
Here’s why.
The Art of Self-Deception
You see, in addition to making the occasional dumb decision, you and I have something else in common: We are good at deceiving ourselves. Really good.
Self-deception comes naturally to me. I can make a bad decision look and sound like a great decision with one hand tied behind my back. I can make a poor financial choice sound like an investment opportunity. I’ve made poor relationship decisions sound like ministry opportunities. I’ve missed countless workouts under the guise of “I need my rest.” I’ve rationalized gallons of ice cream with the phrase “Everybody needs to live a little,” as if ice cream adds to the quality of life. I’ve wasted massive amounts of time doing all kinds of things that seemed important at the time but had no cumulative value. And given enough time, I can even find a Bible verse or two to support my foolishness.
Every kind of addiction begins with similar self-deception:
“This won’t hurt anybody.”
“I’ll only do it once.”
“I haven’t had any for a week.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“I can handle it.”
“I can quit whenever I want to.”
Sound familiar? Chances are, you don’t have to think past last week to come up with a bad decision or two that you talked yourself into. Probably some of your greatest regrets started with choices that you convinced yourself were good ones. But, in fact, you were actually robbing yourself. Your bad choices ended up costing you relationally, financially, and maybe even spiritually.
And the strange thing is, most of the time we are fully aware of the game we’re playing. The fact that we have to give ourselves a reason or excuse at all ought to tip us off. Think about it. You don’t have to go through a series of mental gymnastics to convince yourself that it’s a good idea to eat a serving or two of vegetables every day. You never have to rationalize why you ought to exercise, save money, or avoid bad company. You just know. You don’t sit around looking for reasons to do the right thing; it’s the bad decisions that require creative reasoning.
Reading the Gauges
This human habit of self-deception can make our big question so uncomfortable to ask. This question exposes the irrationality of our excuses. It reveals
our true intent. It penetrates the walls of rationalization behind which we are prone to hide. It dismantles the arguments we use to keep the truth at arm’s length.
All of which is fine if you really want to do what is right. But this little question can become a nuisance on those occasions when, instead of trying to make a right decision, you are trying to make a decision right. On those occasions, this question has the potential to aggravate as well as illuminate. Because of that, it is very important for you to pay close attention to your emotional response. Your reaction to this dynamic little question will tell you a great deal about yourself. And this is one lesson you cannot afford to miss.
Let me take you now to those verses that altered forever the way I make decisions. We find them in the apostle Paul’s first-century letter to Christians residing in the city of Ephesus. You know it as the book of Ephesians.
The letter opens with an inspiring reminder of the believer’s new identity that resulted from being adopted into the family of God. For three chapters the author expounds on all the benefits of being “in Christ.” Beginning in chapter 4, however, Paul turns a corner.
He begins the second half of the book with this plea: “I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received” (Ephesians 4:1). In other words, live your life in a way that reflects the changes God has made in you. Or as a friend of mine is fond of saying, “Don’t live the way you used to live. After all, you are not the person you used to be.”
From there, Paul launches into one of the most practical sections in the Bible. He talks about everything from sex to marriage to alcohol to … you name it. He gives instructions on what is permissible to talk about, think about, and even laugh about. The entire discussion is intense, thorough, and, frankly, somewhat overwhelming.
Gimme Traction
Paul goes so far as to suggest that we become imitators of God! My gut response? Yeah, right. Not in this lifetime.
It’s not that Paul’s list of lofty standards isn’t worth striving toward. It’s just that I know me. I’m not that good, that consistent, that disciplined. Besides, just about everything in Paul’s list runs directly against the cultural current. So let’s face it; I’m not going to get any support out in the real world.