How Can I Know God’s Will? – Rural Reset 15/21 [17]

Host: TJ Freeman

Summary: In this episode of Back to Rurality, host TJ Freeman discusses the challenge of making big decisions, especially for Christians living in small towns. He explains the common struggle of wanting direct guidance from God to make decisions easier. Through recounting his own experience of deciding whether to move from Florida to Pennsylvania, he emphasizes the importance of delighting in the Lord, seeking counsel from others, and trusting God's plans.

Key Points:

• Wisdom from Psalm 37: The more one delights in the Lord, the more their desires will be aligned to His will. 

Listener Takeaways:

• Talk to a trusted Christian friend or pastor about your decision and seek their guidance and wisdom. 
  
  
  

Connect with Us:

• Website: backtorurality.com
• Social Media: Facebook

Transcript

Have you ever had to make a really big decision that really stressed you out? Maybe you worried about it, even got to the level of fretting over it. You started to lose a little sleep. You were thinking about this decision all the time. And at some point you thought to yourself, man. I kind of wish that God would just directly tell me what to do.

That would make this a whole lot easier. And behind that desire is the fact that you actually do want to do what's pleasing to God. And you know that he kind of has a broader view than you do, seeing how he knows everything at all and you don't. It seems like it'd be a whole lot easier if he would just tell you what to do.

Making big decisions can be really scary. Especially when it's a commitment that's going to affect you for a long time. Like, where do I go to college? Who do I marry? Where am I going to live? What am I going to do for a living? You feel it though, in smaller decisions too, don't you? Should I make this business decision or not?

Should I? Go ahead with this expensive repair right now. Do I take the vacation or don't I? Well, if you've ever wondered how to know God's will, stay tuned, because by the end of this episode, you'll be able to make your decisions with a lot more confidence. Well, hello, my name's TJ Freeman and I'm the host of this podcast.

And like you, yep, I live in the middle of nowhere. We can both identify with John Mellencamp. Who said, I grew up in a small town, I live in a small town, probably gonna die in a small town. You know, by God's grace, I've really come to love my small town.

And I'm so thankful that I've been able to pastor in my rural community for the past 12 years. Next year we'll make a baker's dozen. Why do the bakers Put 13 in a dozen, who knows? But here's what I do know. Sometimes making a decision in a small town is tough. Small town life can make big time decisions a little harder.

For one, there's a limited pool of people you can turn to for wisdom, help, and guidance. It can be hard to know who you should listen to and who you should trust. On top of that, your decisions are going to be noticed by people. You can't just blend in and fade into the background like that Homer Simpson gif or could it be jif where he's standing there and he just kind of fades into the hedgerow like he was never really there. You can't do that with your decisions in a small town because a lot of them are on display for all to see. And who wants to become the center of the town gossip?

That's You also may be limited in terms of resources. Like let's say you make a financial decision. You may not have the ability to recover from that as easily as you might in a bigger town where there are bigger opportunities. And lastly, this one feels a little weird to say out loud, but I need to just express it because I think it's true.

In a small town, you can sort of, Become ingrown in your perspective. And I say that having personally experienced this, when you leave a small town, your perspective broadens as you're exposed to some things that are different from the way that maybe people normally function in your small town, or you've historically functioned in your small town.

Having an outside perspective sometimes helps with making big decisions.

So you may just be a little ingrown in your thinking and not even realize it. So making a decision in your small town can be especially hard for some of those reasons. But to be fair, isn't decision making hard no matter where you live? Making a bad decision can always cost you dearly. And as a Christian, you genuinely want to please the Lord with your decisions.

Usually. I know that sometimes selfish motives get involved and sometimes You can kind of go against your conscience and you're thinking you're doing the best thing when you you're really deep down Maybe no, you're not but generally as a Christian you want your decisions to be pleasing to God You also know that God knows everything and you don't and you're meant to rely on him So that's why when you turn to the pages of the Bible and you don't see an answer for the specific issue you're dealing with, it can be a little upsetting.

What are you supposed to do on decisions that don't seem to be directly addressed in God's Word? Well, I faced a decision like this that was monumental for me and for my family. I was happily pastoring away down in southwest Florida. And by the way, I think I may have mentioned before that I'm pretty sure all of heaven is It's gonna be exactly like Southwest Florida when people pray thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven I'm pretty sure it's happening quicker in Southwest, Florida than it is anywhere else, but I digress I was enjoying the time in Florida.

I used to drive around thinking I just I can't believe I get to live here Lord We had made some really deep friendships there. We're really thankful for the people that the Lord put in our life during that time. And I was enjoying the work I was doing. I thought for sure that that would be the place that I would be buried.

But then I had this weird idea when my wife and I started having kids, we started thinking about our own childhood. And what it was like growing up in the mountains of Pennsylvania, letting our kids just be able to go out and play in the backyard. And especially having them be closer to family. We started lightly considering the possibility of what if we could get within a day's drive from where we grew up instead of an airplane ride? Well, a whole bunch of circumstances that you don't care about happened. And I ended up finding an opening for a position For a pastor in my wife's hometown, which was only a little bit down the road from where I grew up as well.

We like the idea of being closer to family. There were a lot of advantages to moving back up north and When I was offered the role of senior pastor at the church where I now Pastor I wasn't really sure how to know if that was where the Lord was calling us You As I had heard it put, or if he would have us to remain there in Florida. It's really the first time in my life. I remember feeling like a stalemate. I was completely torn down the middle. I would have been totally happy to stay in Southwest Florida.

And I would have been totally happy to come to Pennsylvania. And I just didn't know which was best. And you know what I started to do? Started to lose a little sleep over it. Praying, was talking to people about it, was thinking about it a lot. I definitely crossed the line into fretting over that decision.

Which is not advisable, by the way. Nor is it biblical. And a friend kindly pointed that out to me. I was blessed to have a friend who worked at a biblical counseling center. So it's kind of like cheating a little bit. But I said, Terry, Here's my dilemma. I really don't know how to make this decision.

And I wasn't sure what he was going to say. I thought he might have some wisdom like, hey, put out a fleece. You know, go stand outside, and if the next car that goes by is yellow, you'll know you're supposed to go. Of course, he wasn't gonna say something like that. Why not just go pick up a Magic 8 Ball, shake it, and ask that thing?

You know, that's not the way that the Lord works, but I didn't know exactly what he's gonna say. And he just goes, oh, you need Psalm 37. So we opened there together, and I read Psalm 37 verses 3 to 5. I'll just give you a little snippet of it here. Trust in the Lord. Do good. Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust him and he will act well in. There is a lesson that we all need to get our minds around, and it centers on what you see in verse four. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

So here's what I assume you've done so far. You've taken your decision and you've asked is. Making this decision going to be sinful and if it is it's an automatic. No, so like newsflash Sorry to be the one to drop this nuclear bomb on you. But no God is not calling you to marry that unbeliever No, God is not hoping that you're gonna decide to lie to get out of trouble No, God is not pulling for you to go deep into debt so you can get that thing.

You've always wanted so badly if something's sinful or clearly spoken about in scripture in a way that would prohibit you from doing it, of course, the matter is kind of already resolved. I'm talking again about those things where it's like, eh, this is kind of like a, a jump ball. It's a toss up.

I'm really not sure what to do here. I could go either way and not be sinning. This is where this verse comes in so clearly. What you really need to do is delight yourself in the Lord. What could be better? than growing closer to the one who made you to find your satisfaction in him. God, in fact, is using the tension of this moment in a way that's meant to point you to him so that you can know him more, trust him more, delight in him more.

That's the secret sauce. The outcome of your decision really doesn't matter that much if you are growing in your love for and relationship with the Lord. If you're delighting in Him more, that objectively is the best possible outcome. And you will find that as you do that, the second part of the verse comes into reality.

He'll give you the desires of your heart, which does not mean that if you get close enough to the Lord, he's going to be like, oh, here's all that other stuff you wanted too. No, God changes our hearts as we draw closer to him to want the things that he wants. Someone said once that when you get, when you become a Christian, you get a new wanter.

And the closer you grow to the Lord, the more you just want the things that He wants. And that's so true. I think about the Psalm, it's at 84, Psalm 84, that tells us, the psalmist just says better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. He talks about the fact that he'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

So just being a doorkeeper in God's house is better than any wrong choice you could ever make. And being in the presence of God for a day is better than being anywhere else. Even somewhere else really good. Even Southwest Florida! for a thousand other days. So you want to delight in the Lord in a way that draws you closer to him.

And this is why you should stop fretting, because you can trust God with the outcome, no matter what decision you make. If the decision you're making is not a sinful decision, it's just a, it could go either way and you're still honoring the Lord with it, then just focus on delighting in him and trusting him with the outcome.

And probably either way. There are going to be some things that happen in the wake of your decision that you wish didn't happen. You might even be tempted to wish you had gone the other direction. So let me give you an example. We chose to move to Pennsylvania and there were some things that happened when I got to Pennsylvania, namely winter that were just brutal.

It was one of the coldest winters I think we've had. I think it might be the coldest winter we've had in the almost baker's dozen years that I've been here. And I struggled with that. I struggled going from sun almost every single day to like, Oh, I think I might have seen the sun a couple of weeks ago.

And I heard that it might come out in a month or two, that can be tough. And then there's just always going to be hard circumstances. And if you're not careful, you can, in your head, start to think, you know, if I would have decided differently, I might not be having to deal with this uncomfortable thing.

You know, there's going to be uncomfortable stuff no matter what. And if you're delighting in the Lord, He is the one who helps you to overcome those things. So, you know, winter's still coming this year. But I'm going to do my best, with God's help, to delight in Him and not worry about the fact that I don't like it when the temperature drops below 80.

I don't like it when I don't see the sun for a long time. I don't like it at all. If I'm not careful, even right now, I feel that little dread starting in my heart. But I'll tell you what, better is one day with my God, than a thousand days in the sunshine somewhere else. I would much rather delight in the Lord, and just trust that He's using all my circumstances, even the ones that make me uncomfortable, actually for my good, because He loves me.

He works all things together for the good of those who love him. I can trust the Lord no matter what. So I made the decision, parts of the decision made me feel uncomfortable, but I am delighting in the Lord more today than I was yesterday and more yesterday than the day before that. God just helped me to grow in that, and I think He'll help you, too, as you delight in the Lord and just trust that He gives you the desires of your heart, namely, by aligning your heart with His.

That should help you as you think about making decisions. You know that you don't want to make a decision that's gonna be a sinful one, something that Scripture would oppose. You know that a lot of your decisions are not directly spoken about in Scripture. Doesn't tell you exactly which college to go to.

Doesn't tell you exactly what to do for work. Doesn't tell you 100 percent how to use your money. Doesn't weigh in on things like vacations. There's, there's just a lot. And you're gonna have to make those decisions. And you're just going to have to trust the Lord that as you delight in Him, God's going to use it.

And no matter what you decide, God is capable of course correcting. He's capable of continuing to work all things together for your good, no matter which way you go. It's not like there's some hidden path, and if you somehow step off that hidden path because you didn't guess right what God's will was that, you know, your life's just going to crumble, that's the wrong way of thinking. You know what the narrow path is that God talks about? The way to find life.

Broad is the path that leads to destruction. You know why? Because most people don't want to follow the Lord. But that's not you. You've trusted your life to the Lord. If you've become a Christian, you're on the narrow path. And by the power of his spirit, as you follow the lamp unto your feet, which is the word of God and make decisions best you can, you're not going to fall off the path.

In fact, did you ever hear that song? He will hold me fast. If you have never heard that, go to the YouTube machine right now and put in, He Will Hold Me Fast and just listen to that. That should be a rich encouragement to you. I know it has been to me. The last thing I want to say about decision making, the Bible does tell us that there's wisdom in many counselors and that some of our plans fail because we don't seek counsel.

So when I talk about your filtering your decisions through God's word, that's part of what I mean. I assume not only that are your, your decisions are going to be not in opposition to Scripture, but that you're going to want to filter them through the wisdom of many counselors. Now, those counselors are not the ultimate decision makers.

You may receive opposing counsel and that can be really frustrating. You still have to be the one to make the decision, but you should open that thing up. If there's an expert that needs to weigh in, ask the expert. If it's something where you feel like talking to your pastor would help, talk to your pastor, talk to your parents, talk to friends who know you well.

We aren't meant to just make decisions in isolation. We're meant to make decisions with the input of many counselors. But at the end of the day, you're the one who's got to make the decision and you need to do it in a way that's Well, let's just review. What did we learn today? We learned that it's very common to wish God would just speak out loud and tell us what to do, but that's not the way God works.

He's given us his word. He's given us his spirit. He's given us other Christians in our lives to help us make wise decisions. But most of all, God wants us to delight in Him. That is the best possible outcome. That doesn't change the fact that you have to make decisions and that you have to live with the decisions you make, but you should just trust the Lord that He is in your decisions.

If you're not opposing Him in sin, if you're taking into account His Word in your decision making, if you're laying it out to Him in prayer, these are the kinds of things that will help you make wise decisions. Delight in the Lord. Turn it all over to him. Trust him with the outcomes, grow closer to him.

That is the best experience you will have no matter what decision you make. So don't worry about putting out a fleece. Don't wring your hands, wondering if you're going to. Just bomb this whole thing by failure. Trust the Lord, delight in Him, make wise choices. Hey, this has been part of a series called Rural Reset.

If you want to hear the whole series, just go back to episode 3. It's kind of like a course on the basics of Christianity. This one on decision making has been an important one in my life. I hope it's a blessing to you as well. But for now, let's get back to life and back to Rurality.