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PROGRAM D-7405
We’re concluding our discussion about how to make the right decision. James 3:17 gives us some very good checkpoints for determining which decision is best. The checkpoints of that verse are: purity, peaceable, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. If we honestly take ourselves through those checkpoints we’ll have done some pretty deep and serious thinking. I truly believe that this will in most cases give us the assurance of what the mind of Christ is concerning the decision we face.
If you’ve gone through this process of determining the right decision, and find that you’re still troubled and don’t know the right choice, then perhaps it’s lack of faith on your part. Faith to believe that God really wants to give you his thoughts; faith to believe that you can indeed have the mind of Christ. In the first chapter of James we read that when we ask for wisdom, we must believe and not doubt, because the person who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.
Certainly our enemy Satan does not want us to allow the mind of Christ to control us. So, if he can’t get us any other way, he’ll put doubts in our mind. Again in James 1:6, we are reminded that when we doubt, we are double-minded, and double-minded people are unstable in all their ways, James says.
At some point we must take our stand on God’s Word and say to our enemy: “Look, Satan, God has said he has given me the mind of Christ, and he has promised me his wisdom. I refuse to doubt that I have been given his wisdom; I will not be double-minded. So I resist you and order you to leave me alone.”
I want to assure you that God did not leave us down here to grope around in the dark, taking our best guesses at the decisions facing us. He left us with all we need to make good decisions: the mind of Christ. Are you willing to allow the Spirit of God to so control you that your thinking processes and decision making will be guided by the mind of Christ that is within you?
If so, you will more and more be confident about making right decisions, because you will more and more have the mind of Christ on the issues you face.