Scriptures for making hard decisions free#

He wants me to surrender to Him, of course, but that is so He can get me to the point where I’m choosing what’s good and right and true on my own, just like Adam and Eve did before sin.ĭon’t get me wrong.

Scriptures for making hard decisions free#

He gave us free will as a gift and wants us to use it. …often when we talk about decision making, there’s so much emphasis on how sinful our hearts, minds, and desires are that we become scared to use them at all.īut Psalm 32:9 is saying God doesn’t want this to happen. If we can find some sort of spiritual omen off of which to base our decisions, we can offload the responsibility for a choice (and the potential for it to go wrong) from our own shoulders and onto God’s. We start reading into the minute happenstances of our lives and looking for signs in everything around us. One of the ways we deal with this fear is by over-spiritualizing the decision-making process. Well, often when we talk about decision making, there’s so much emphasis on how sinful our hearts, minds, and desires are that we become scared to use them at all. So, what does that mean exactly? If you struggle with over-analyzing, you might be wondering, how have I not been using my mind? I’m constantly trying to figure out the right thing to do!

I will guide you, but I also want you to use the mind I gave you. When I read verse 9, I hear God saying, You’re not like the animals when it comes to decision making. But He also gave us reasoning powers that set us apart from every other creature on earth and it’s not always wrong to use those gifts to make decisions. When we need to make a decision, God promises to give us promptings as to what His will is (verse 8). So, though this list is by no means exhaustive, here are three points from Psalm 32:9 to consider when you need to make a decision but you’re scared of making the wrong choice.

When I came across verse 9 though, it opened up some new, incredibly valuable angles on the way God wants me to relate to following His will.

However, most of us stop there when looking for guidance. It’s a fairly popular verse, and for obvious reason: there’s a lot of certainty in it, and when we’re trying to make a decision, that’s often what we want. If you regularly read the Bible, it’s not unlikely that you’ve come across Psalm 32:8 before. Do not be like the horse or like the mule, which have no understanding, which must be harnessed with bit and bridle, else they will not come near you” (Psalm 32:8-9). “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go I will guide you with My eye. As my own struggle to understand God’s will has evolved, I’ve come to treasure a specific passage he wrote in Psalm 32: King David spent his life herding sheep, fighting battles, living as an outlaw, ruling a nation, and writing poems about his murderous thoughts and traumas. But if you’re one of those people who has an identity crisis when they’re asked to pick a restaurant to eat at, you know it’s a struggle to make choices in our lives and have peace about them. Maybe you’re not as maladjusted as I am when it comes to decision making. Whether you’re a high school graduate figuring out your next step or a couple deciding where you should move or an empty-nester looking for wise ways to invest your time, it’s a question that never really goes away. …asking about God’s will made me want to curl up in the fetal position and eat refined sugar.Īside from figuring out if we want to accept Jesus, whom to marry, and whether or not pineapple belongs on pizza, wondering what God’s will is, is probably the biggest question we all deal with. What if I did the wrong thing? How was I supposed to know what the right thing was? How could I move forward when I didn’t see things coming together? What if I was just doing what I wanted to do and not actually doing God’s will and I was going to lose my salvation because I was self-deceived and didn’t even know it? (Taking things to an extreme is my spiritual gift.) I needed to know God’s will, but the possibility of making the wrong choice caused emotional hemorrhaging. Actually, for years, asking about God’s will made me want to curl up in the fetal position and eat refined sugar. I didn’t know what God’s will was and I was scared of making a decision.

I was sad and scared and anxious because I suddenly realized that I wasn’t going to be in high school the next year and I was the one in charge of figuring out what I would be doing instead. But people got tired of hearing me scream, ‘I’M GONNA DIE!!! I’M GONNA DIE!!!’ Hope your birthday’s a scream.” Funnily enough, that pretty much described the stress I was just beginning to feel as I reached the big 1-8. For my eighteenth birthday, my mom gave me a card that read, “I used to live each day as though it were my last.