Making Decisions in a World of Grey

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media] 

Many decisions we make have simple, clear-cut answers if we’re striving to follow Jesus. To yell at the coworker who made an honest mistake, or to not yell? To cheat on the physics exam, or to not cheat on the physics exam? To lie to our spouse about how we spent money, or to not lie? These answers are, in most circumstances anyway, pretty black and white. They’re rarely the ones we spend a lot of time worrying about though. Decisions that eat up our worrying time are usually all sorts of grey, with any number of solutions that could be God-honoring. Where to go to college? When to have kids? Whether or not to take the new job? While we can be confident that God will use whatever situations our choices place us in, that confidence doesn’t provide much practical help in how to actually make the decision.

Photo Credit: Behr.com

In the story of King Rehoboam, we see a decision maker who started off in a good way. Instead of making a rash, rushed decision when the people came to him asking for a lighter workload, he told them to come back in three days and then sought counsel. First he asked the wisdom of the elders who had seen the country through difficult times in the past. Then, he decided to get a second opinion by consulting the men he had grown up with and who knew him well. Up to this point, Rehoboam was actually making pretty good decisions. It can be advantageous to get input from various types of people, maybe some who have a better understanding of the situation and some who have a really good understanding of us as a person.

Unfortunately, things went downhill from there. Instead of carefully weighing the input he had received from the elders and from his friends and then using that information to make the best possible decision, Rehoboam simply opted for the advice of his not-so-wise friends without considering the consequences. He didn’t just ignore the people’s request for a lighter workload, he did the exact opposite and gave them more work to do, as well as threatened them with whipping.  

As we seek wisdom from those around us, we have to remember that not all the input we’ll receive is equal. The older advisers had spent time with Rehoboam’s dad Solomon as he ran the country and had a good understanding of how the people worked and what they would respond well to. Rehoboam’s friends knew him well, but they clearly didn’t have his or the country’s best interest in mind with their advice.

Not everyone has deserves the right to speak into our lives or into a particular decision we’re trying to make. Building a strong community full of people with wisdom that can be trusted takes time and effort--it’s not something we should simply stumble into overnight. Inviting people into our lives and allowing them to see who we really are, even in our most unpleasant, unglamorous moments can be God’s way of shaping us into better versions of ourselves. True wisdom sometimes looks like letting trustworthy people who are striving after Christ help us at the times we need it most.  At the same time, if others seek our input, we must consider our words carefully, taking into account everything we know about that person and the situation they’re dealing with. It is a gift and also a weighty responsibility to be invited to speak into someone’s life. We must use our words to build up, encourage, and guide. Even wise people can inadvertently give advice that misses the whole picture.

Our decisions are ultimately our own, but there’s no reason we have to make them completely on our own. We can learn from Rehoboam’s mistakes and seek out wisdom from good places, and then truly take the time to consider it carefully and match it up with what we already know. Making decisions and trying to follow God’s will doesn’t have to be as grey and murky as we often make it, as long as we have put in the work ahead of time and have community around us to help guide us along the way.

[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She writes about faith, growing up, and whatever else pops into her head on her own blog, and tweets (largely about food) at @bwitt722.]

Flowers, Birds, and The Way of Holiness

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

On my third pass stomping from the garage, through the laundry room where my mother was calmly ironing my hubby’s shirts, down the hall and into the kitchen, sighing, slamming, a little tiny bit of swearing…my mother asked, “What’s wrong?”

Clearly something was wrong.

“I lost my driver’s license. I have looked everywhere, dumped out my purse, checked every pocket possible and stuck my finger under the seats, around the seats and even in the seat cracks where no fingers should have to go. I do NOT have time for a lost license. Do you know how awful it is to go to DMV to get a new one? I have no idea where else to look.”

My calm mother, still running the hot iron back and forth over JR’s thirty fifth shrink and wrinkled work shirt asked, “Did you pray about it?”

Did I PRAY about it?

What kind of a question is that - did I pray about a lost driver’s license? As if Jesus wants to have a conversation with anyone about their silly little inconvenience. No, actually, I didn’t. 

Photo Credit: Fré Sonneveld

But then I did. I went in the bathroom which adjoined the laundry room where wise mother ironed, pretended to be using it by staying in for about that long, flushed the toilet, turned on the water and washed my hands. And I talked to Jesus. The prayer may have taken on an embarrassed, whiny, somewhat desperate tone. But I prayed. 

The fourth time into the garage, I opened the back door again, laid my hand under the driver’s seat again and set it on top of the driver’s license. I am not kidding. I cried. I am not kidding. When I came in the house crying my mom asked again, “What’s wrong?” And with tears I showed her the little plastic card.

“So why are you crying?” calm mother asked.

“Because I can’t believe God cares enough about something so insignificant. I can’t believe he would answer my belligerent plea for help and I didn’t even think to ask until you told me to, which I thought was silly at first and I didn’t even go to the bathroom,” I replied.

Eye rolling would have been justified. But my mom smiled and reminded me that God wants us to talk to Him about everything, anything, anytime, anywhere.

I wasted a big dose of worry, but the Lord didn’t waste that experience. I have not forgotten how I felt seen by God and responded to immediately even with my poor attitude. That one on one cheap life lesson has helped direct me to live into the truth that He cares about my basic needs, so of course He cares about what matters Most.

Sunday morning, Pastor Dirk pointed us to Matthew 6: lessons learned from birds and flowers. Birds trust God for their basic needs without worrying. God is their Master, but he is our Father, so we don’t need to be anxious. Flowers are frail and their life is short, and yet God takes care of clothing them in unmatched beauty. Jesus wants us to live as if it were true, that God sees every single one of our needs and our wants. And he cares for us, and will take care of us. When we worry, we elevate the object of of our worry to the status: What Matters Most. Jesus is teaching those who follow him that in God’s kingdom, life is more than food, clothing, politics, paychecks, work, school, housing, transportation, and vacations. What matters Most is who we are becoming, our souls, His transforming work in us. God does not want anxious thoughts to disturb our hope, our sleep or the enjoyment of this life he gave us.

How can we chase after what matters most to God? What would living look like if we ended aiming our anxiety at worldly concerns? Jesus gave a command: don’t worry. And he gave the alternative: Seek First Holiness, which is the way of God’s kingdom. Jesus said First Seek Righteousness, which is knowing God, not just knowing about God. Bring first your frustrations, your discouragement, your sorrow, your anger, the hurt that makes you hurt people; bring your exhaustion, your fears, your feelings of being trapped; bring the dreams, the longings, the helplessness, the tiniest bit of hope that’s left--bring it to God. You can trust him with it all. Bring it first thing in the day. First before the phone. First before food and friends and family. Chase after what matters most and be thankful as the Holy One does Holiness work in you. Becoming more trusting, more thankful, more forgiving, more kind, and more accepting should not surprise you when you are Seeking God First.

I’m still prone to dramatic frustration and door slamming, though less so than years ago when I lost my license the first time. I continue to learn that God is trustworthy in the minutia and the mountains of living. Though I struggle with anxiety, I keep showing up First thing in the morning to talk to Jesus, to look for His best for me, to listen for what He needs me to hear.

What if you took one small action this week to learn from lesson of the birds and the flowers, to Seek first Holiness, to First seek what matters Most?

You can trust that your life is in good hands. 

[Laura DeGroot likes to laugh out loud, drink good coffee and eat delicious food...with Jesus her family and friends.  She has lived from the West to the East coast but Grand Rapids is home as of one whole year.  As The Caffeinated Woman, she speaks to groups of people about how ordinary life is profoundly better knowing an Extraordinary God, and works at Art Of The Table.  And she loves books.]

How to Find God's Map for Your Life

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media] 

“I wish God would show me a map of my life,” I’ve often said. When we’re trying to figure out what God wants us to do, it seems like giving us very clear directions would be the kindest thing. Yet, at least in my own life, I rarely find the answers as easy as typing in my destination on Google Maps. Seeking God’s will seems like a great thing to do, but actually finding his will can seem nearly impossible. When we look to the Bible for people who faced difficult decisions, Esther is an excellent example. 

Photo Credit: Andrew Neel

At first Esther's story seems picture perfect. Plucked from obscurity, she won the favor of the king and and was chosen over all the other beautiful women to become the next queen. As she lived a life of luxury in the palace though, not all was well for the rest of the Jews in the land. One of King Xerxes’ advisors schemed to eradicate the entire people group. For Esther, “hiding” in the king’s palace may have seemed like a literal lifesaver as news of this plot spread. But then a letter from her Uncle Mordecai reminded Esther that even she would not be safe forever, and her position as the queen offered a unique opportunity to perhaps make a difference. While the dark tone of Mordecai’s letter seems almost threatening, he also tells Esther, “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”” (Esther 4:14).

It can’t have been an easy choice. Esther knew that she only became queen because her predecessor, Queen Vashti, had been removed from the throne for disobeying the king. By planning to approach the king without being asked, Esther was about to disobey in her own way. She had no way of knowing what would happen, and the stakes were high: Either she'd come out of the encounter still alive, or she would be dead. Her response, while maybe offered with terror in her heart, was, “And if I perish, I perish.” 

Rarely do decisions in our lives have such high stakes, yet we often waffle over them much more than Esther did. Mordecai had faith things would turn out somehow--“Relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from some other place”--but Esther was willing to make the choice to do the hard thing she knew was right. What we see in Esther is her willingness to make a choice. She didn’t do it naively or without consideration--she and her attendants and Mordecai and all the Jews in Susa fasted and prayed for three days--but then she made the choice and carried out her plan.

Circumstances in our own lives might not come with a clear right and wrong answer, which can make it even more confusing when we’re trying to discern God’s will. Deciding between two colleges with good programs, deciding whether or not to sell our house, deciding which church God wants us to attend--we can become so afraid of making the “wrong” choice that we make no choice at all. In my own life, there have been times where I waited days or weeks under the guise of “seeking God’s will,” when really had all the information I needed and was simply delaying the inevitable. The book of Esther never explicitly mentions God, but from her action of praying and fasting, we can safely assume she had some level of relationship with him. If that’s true in our own lives, we can make our decisions with the confidence Mordecai had that deliverance would come from somewhere. 

We can’t forget the true peril Esther was in, though. She didn’t know what the outcome of her story would be. Yet even if the king had ordered her to be killed, I think we can still draw the same lessons from her story. Esther used the information she had to make the best decision she could in the moment, then trusted God enough to let him use her however he saw fit. Picking the college we think God wants us to might not go perfectly--the classes might not be as good as we thought they would be, or the friendships might not develop the way we had hoped. Buying a house might eventually lead us to financial distress. Going to a specific church might result in hurt feelings and divisiveness. It can make us question if we got God’s will wrong along the way. But maybe the more important question is if we trust God enough to use whatever happens to make us better, holier, and more like him. 


[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She writes about faith, growing up, and whatever else pops into her head on her own blog, and tweets (largely about food) at @bwitt722.]

New Year's Fresh Start

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://encounterchurch.org/messages] 

Photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons user Nanagyei

As the countdown to January 1, 2017 began, my thought process looked a little something like this:

I really should make more time to exercise; we bought that elliptical last year after all. And instead of watching reruns of 24, maybe I will create and implement a cleaning schedule for our house. While I’m at it, I might as well re-organize our closets and pantry, shedding all our excess stuff and starting fresh. And I should definitely be consistent with my devotions each day, and probably learn how to teach my baby sign language, and the list goes on and on.

New Year’s resolutions often seem like the one opportunity each year to get it right—to finally eat healthy food, exercise often, read good books, focus on professional development, spend more time with family, volunteer, or reach a number of personal goals. The hype around a fresh start can’t be ignored, with countless advertisements for discounted gym rates and the “new year, new you!” mantra popping up on our screens. It’s easy to get sucked in and think that this might be your year to change whatever bad habit, fault, or shortcoming you may have.

However, I think we often lose sight of the big picture when we focus on temporary artificial improvements in our lives. And, unlike the media’s portrayal of New Year’s, we get an opportunity to change more than once per year. God offers us an opportunity to experience eternal change when we meet Him and encounter His love, grace, and salvation—and that can happen at any moment.

Paul writes in Ephesians 4:22-24:

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

The Ephesians are being reminded that the only way to move on from your former life and “put off your old self” is to allow the Holy Spirit to renew your mind and start making you more like Christ. When you allow God to meet you where you’re at, He can remove your brokenness and sin, and begin the process of eternal change.  When you act upon your faith, you are being continually renewed in Christ.

So this New Year, instead of focusing on which habits to break or artificial changes to make, consider allowing God to renew your heart through personal relationship with Him. Through that intimate connection with Christ, your heart will change and it will be evident in everything you say and do. Allow Christ to give you a fresh start—to no longer let sin define who you are, but to accept the salvation of the cross and act in faith to begin a personal relationship with Him.

[Megan Stephenson is a proud new mom to her six-month-old son August and spends her days trying to figure out how to take care of her tiny human. She also works for a private education group in Grand Rapids as an Assistant Registrar. Megan loves spending time with her husband, Ben, trying out new breweries, restaurants, and local attractions. She also self-identifies as a crazy cat lady, despite owning no cats of her own, thanks to her loving and allergic husband.]