#STRask - Should I Stick with My Decision if I Prayed About It Beforehand?

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

Questions about whether you should stick with a decision you made that didn’t work out as you hoped if you prayed about it beforehand and how you can know for sure if God is calling you to do something. If a decision you made after much research and prayer didn’t work out as you hoped, is it okay to change direction, or should you stick with it since you prayed about it beforehand? How do you know for sure if God is actually calling you to do something?

This is the Hashtag SDR Ask podcast, and this is a 20-minute podcast. I'm trying to say that with a straight face. It's supposed to be. We try to keep it at 20 minutes today, but it does get a little bit longer sometimes. But we depend on your questions, so we're going to start with a question today from Catherine. And she asks, without getting into the specific scenario, my friend made a decision based on a lot of research and prayer that has not worked out as she hoped. It is something easily remedied, but she's unsure about changing direction because she prayed about it. I don't think praying about it means her decision was God's decision and she can't change it.

I would appreciate your thoughts on prayer in the decision-making process. I think Catherine's right here. Um, praying about something doesn't, um, guarantee that whatever you choose as a result of praying about it is going to work out the way you have in mind. You might say, I prayed about it, got a good counsel, and I think that's the way to go. Incidentally, not kind of tilting your spiritual ear towards heaven, trying to figure out what God's telling you to do, nudge, nudge, hint, hint. But the decision is up to us. That's the New Testament model within certain parameters, and those parameters are God's moral will. In other words, there's some things we must do and

some things we can't do, and so those will constrain the decisions we make. And also, wisdom is really critical. God wants us to be smart, and this is why we're to get counsel from other people, etc., etc. But with that in mind, that doesn't guarantee that the plans that we pursue, even if they're morally acceptable and sound as far as it goes, are going to succeed. And it might be that in God and His sovereign purpose, and this is something we don't have access to, this is the man behind the curtain, so to speak, and we don't know what the sovereign purposes are in the individual things in our life—that God's sovereign purpose is for us to go through the process and then get frustrated with a certain sense of failure of what we thought we were going

to do, and then it doesn't work out that way. And now what? Okay, we don't know what God's sovereign purposes are. I remember a question we had, Amy, maybe a year or two ago with a family that had prepared for the mission field for a long time and then finally went overseas to the mission field, and within just a couple of months, circumstances obtained that made it impossible for them to continue, and they had to return to the United States, and they were very, very frustrated and distraught. Now what? Now what do we do? And it would have been a mistake in my mind for them to think, well, we really made a wrong turn early on if this is the way it turned out. There is no guarantee that good decisions will have a good ending, okay? I mean, just think of relationships and marriages and things like that. Everything could start out

really, really good and all be all your ducks in a row with all the wisdom and everything, and then all of a sudden, something else happens. And then it becomes very difficult the way that you never anticipated. You could have children and you could have your kids baptized, or you could have them dedicated, and you'd have them go to Christian schools. And then all of a sudden, they go south. What happened? We did all the right things. And the answer is you can't control everything. We can do the right things and the best that we know how, but that doesn't mean that everything is going to turn out just the way we want it to turn out. And this is where trust in God is really important. When things don't turn out the way we expected them to turn out, which is most of the time.

When you think about it, I saw a little clip from a movie many years ago, and it's always stuck with me. It was just 30 seconds of a black and white movie I saw as I was channel surfing. And it was a man and a woman from a movie from the 30s or something, black and white, and they were reading a piece of paper, and this is what he read thoughtfully. He said, a man's life is like a diary in which he means to write one story, but he writes another. A man's life is like a diary in which he means to write one story, and he writes another. I think it was John Lennon who said, life is what happens when you're making other plans, you know.

But same idea there. Things never turn out just the way we expect. Sometimes it's better. I look at standard reason. I never expected standard reason to be what it is now, 31 years after its inception. That's great. Other areas of my life didn't turn out the way I wanted, and it's much more difficult. Okay, so that's the way it is.

Things rarely turn out the way we want. Even when we are making good choices, we're praying about it, we're trusting God. The trusting God doesn't end when we make the good choice. Trusting God continues through all of the ramifications of what might have been a good choice, even though it didn't work out the way we expected. And that just extends the trust in God into a different arena. I don't want to see anyone get stuck in one decision and feel like they can never make a new decision. Every single moment is a chance to be wise and to seek God's wisdom and to make a new decision. Every single moment is a chance to be wise and to seek God's wisdom and to make a wise decision. Everything you said, Greg, is so important because even,

you know, it could be God wanted her to fail at this. You know, what God wants for you doesn't always look like, quote, working out. He wants to shape us. He wants to make us into new people who look like Jesus. So when, let's say, you make the wisest decision in the world and you're confident that God is smiling on you in this, and you go into a situation and things go really bad for you. Turns to dust, right? Well, that doesn't mean that isn't what, I mean, this, I'm going to have to clarify this, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't what God wanted for you. You have been faithful in making a wise decision.

What happens now, you can trust that God is shaping you through it. What happens now, you can trust that God is shaping you through it. It could be that having everything go bad is way better for you than having wild success. And I shouldn't even say could be. It generally always is better for you as a human being, generally, because that's when we're shaped to become like Christ, and that's God's real goal for us. So when things start going bad, that's when you make another wise decision. And that doesn't mean we're stuck in a bad place either because this is what God wanted for me. You may be stuck in a hard place. It doesn't mean it's a bad place.

But it also doesn't mean you're stuck, that you can't make changes, that you can't do what's wise. We don't have to figure out what God wants for us. You said this, this is His secret will, and we don't have to figure out what His sovereign will is at all. We just make faithful, wise decisions in whatever situation we're in, and we rest in the fact that God is sovereign and that He is using everything that's happening for a good purpose. So, yes, I agree with you that Catherine is correct that just because you prayed about something doesn't mean you can't make another decision. Pray about another decision. Don't expect God to give you some sort of a sign, but do expect that He will give you wisdom if you ask for it and if you seek it, and you will learn how to make better decisions. Maybe God's desire is for you

to maybe not make the best decision, and then you learn wisdom from that. So in every way, you're still growing towards God. He hasn't let go of you. You're not losing out on His best will for you or anything like that. God uses even our sin in all sorts of ways. And so he redeems even that. Don't worry about that. Just move forward and try to be wise. I have a suggestion, something to read. The best characterization of these points, I think, is made in the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, because every single story there, there's six or seven of them, involves people planning one thing and a whole different kind of thing happening until you get to the very end of the story and you see it's all woven together in a plan that, in this case, Aslan had purpose to

take place. Aslan is the Christ figure there, the lion. And I think Lewis got a lot of this from MacDonald, who came before him. I'm thinking of, I think the story is called The Golden Thread, and it's following this thread to a destination that they thought was going to be good, but it ends up taking them on all this circuitous route that they didn't expect before finally arriving at the destination. And, of course, in this case, the destination isn't the point. It's the journey and what happens to the individual and the stories there. And you see this in spades in the Chronicles. And, of course, our destination is guaranteed.

So we know where we're ending up. We know eventually we will be made like Christ. We will be resurrected. We will be with God. All those sorts of things. So whatever happens along the way is working towards that. Here's a question from Christina. How do you know for sure if God is actually calling you to do something?

For the most part, that's not possible, at least the way people think of calling right now. Calling is not the way God distributes ministry. This is a common misunderstanding. I mean, it's virtually a universal misunderstanding, because you hear people say, well, God called me to this, that, and the other thing. The pastor says he called me to ministry, I was doing this, and then God called me to this, that, and the other thing. And what people envision, and sometimes this is explicit in the characterization of it, is that God does something supernatural that seems to be—that amounts to a series of hints to drive a person in a certain direction. A nudge, nudge, hint, hint, being led by the Spirit, you have this idea, you get a confirmation, the open doors are there. And so, these are all ways where God is moving you forward, okay?

Now, what I just described is a cognitive process. So, in other words, if you're trying to figure out what God wants you to do, people are thinking about these particular things that are the way you cobble these things together to come up with the answer to the question, what is God calling me to do? Oh, now I figured it out. He's calling me to this. Hope I'm right. The question that's offered is an understandable one for people who follow that methodology, which, by the way, isn't even remotely biblical. All of the particulars there of having a peace about it and open and close doors and feeling led by the Spirit, those are biblical terms that mean something entirely different. They can't be cobbled together into this system of decision-making that is a biblically sound system.

I've talked about this for years and years and years, but many people who listen for a while know what I'm talking about. But what it does, and this I think may be behind the question, is it creates a lot of uncertainty. I hope I'm reading the signs correctly. I hope I'm putting them together. I'm not sure. How can I be sure that this is God's call in my life? That's the question. And my response would be, if you are not sure that whether God is calling you to this, then he isn't calling you. Now, I want to qualify that, but I just want to underscore this. If you're not sure that he's calling you, then he's not calling you. Now,

why do I say that? Because there is no time in the entire Scripture where God attempted to give some instructions to someone, and they didn't get it. Even Balaam, you know, God used a donkey to talk to Balaam. Even Saul of Tarsus, who was murdering Christians, completely unregenerate, in complete rebellion against God. No trouble hearing Saul. Saul, why are you persecuting me? If God wants to say something, he says it, and he says it without ambiguity. And I want to instruct people back to an argument that Paul makes about speaking in tongues in the congregation without interpretation. Okay, and this is in 1 Corinthians 14. And he says, look it, he gives an illustration I call the lesson of the bugle.

But he says if the bugle produces an indistinct sound, how will it be known what to do? See, bugles were like comms in battle. And so one bugle would alert them to advance, another to retreat, and you better get them right. You don't want to get them confused. And then Paul makes the application of his illustration. He says, so also with you, now speaking of tongues with interpretation, or in this case, tongues lacking interpretation,

unless you speak with the mouth, words in this case, tongues lacking interpretation, unless you speak with the mouth words that are clear, how will it be known what the Spirit is saying? Well, a lot of people are of the opinion that the Spirit is speaking with'm saying is my basic instruction here is that the New Testament teaches that we make decisions for ourselves. We make the decisions. There are responsibilities, okay? In marriage, Paul talks about marriage, 1 Corinthians 7. He gives all kinds of pros and cons and instructions, moral boundaries and everything. He never says, ask God.

He said, here's the plan. You figure it out. I think you'll be happier if you're single, but that's up to you. Okay? And a whole host of things like that. The only exceptions are when God does a timeout. He says, stop. I'm jumping in.

I'm telling you this. And in the book of Acts, it is always supernatural. Whenever we have details of God, the way God communicates, it's an angel shows up. It's a vision. Jesus stands next to Paul in Corinth in a vision, speaks to him there. The Holy Spirit speaks and says this, you know, Philip carries Philip supernaturally, tells him to go talk to the Ethiopian eunuch, and then he carries him away. All the supernatural stuff that's going on, okay? And so when God wants to tell you to do something specific, it's going to be absolutely crystal clear, and it's going to be supernatural. The motifs are a voice, a vision, an angel, something like that.

Not anything that can be misconstrued or vague, okay? And in the absence of that, you make your own decisions based on the gifts that you have and the counsel you've been given. And there's no guarantee of perfection on that. That's what we were talking about earlier. You can make mistakes, but that's okay. That's all part of the way God works. I think people use the word differently, too, because here's how I use the word. If I say I was called to something, I'm not saying I heard a voice and I did it. Or you felt nudged. Or you felt nudged.

Or I felt nudged. It's nothing like that. What I mean is this is where God has brought me. This is where I am. This is what I'm called to do in this situation. Sometimes it's here's the wisdom he's given me. This is what I'm called to do. I think of a calling as a vocation.

a calling as a vocation. So your calling is wherever you are right now, and you're supposed to live in a wise and godly way as you are. That doesn't mean you can't change your situation. It just means right now that is your calling. Yeah. So, but in this sense of the word, and you're absolutely right, there are two different ways that people use it. There is nothing to, in a certain sense, figure out and see if you've got the right deal, which is the nature of the question, right? Right. It's not about listening. It's just about—it's just describing where God has you now and what you're called to do in that situation.

So hopefully— Called to do. I know. What's so funny is I don't think about people hearing it that way. So I've got to be careful about that because I'm just, here's where God has me. But that's actually another cultural way of saying it, because when you look up kaleo, which is the word translated call in the New Testament, it's there, you know, hundreds of times, but almost never does it refer to a God calling someone to do some particular thing. Okay? Now, Paul said, I was called as an apostle.

Well, he was called literally, Saul, Saul, you know, kind of thing. But characteristically, even biblically, those words are not being used in either of those ways. In common parlance, the way we talk about it, yeah, those are two distinct ways. And the one you described there I think is completely consistent with biblical teaching, even though it doesn't use the word call that way characteristically. The other one is not consistent at all with biblical teaching, but it is one that many, many Christians are clinging to because it's a received tradition. And sometimes it frustrates them trying to get this thing to work. So we have some training at Stand to Reason called Decision Making in the Will of God where I go through all these details. And we also have a booklet called The Ambassador's Guide to the Voice of God. I think that's the title.

Yeah. And we have three articles online, Does God Whisper, Part 1, 2, and 3. articles online, Does God Whisper, Part 1, 2, and 3. So if you haven't heard these ideas before, those are great places to start. There's even a long book by Gary Friesen called Decision Making and the Will of God that goes into great detail about what the Bible says about decision making. And I don't know if it has anything about prayer specifically. I mean, it must have something about that there, but it must address that idea. So, yeah, those are all ways to look into this a little more deeply. And, of course, we've done a bunch of episodes on this in this podcast also. And if you have more questions, feel free to send them in.

Now, Greg, I had one more, but— 20 minutes. There it is. I'm going to save it for another time. It was somebody asking about a couple specific verses. And since we only have 50 seconds left, and I promised everyone this would be 20 minutes. So this is what happens. I try to squeeze the last one in, and then it just, you know, gets out of control. All right. Let me just give you some instructions for sitting in your own question. You can go to our website, str.org. If you look at the top of the page, you find our hashtag STR Ask podcast page. You'll find a little link there. You just click on that link. You send us your question, but please keep it short. Sometimes

people send really long questions and they're like, well, sorry, this is so long. Okay, yeah, so am I, but I can't use it if it's that long. So try to keep it down to a couple sentences. And if you need to give me a little bit of explanation, that's okay too. Or you can go through X and use the hashtag STRask. And we try to find new questions all the time. And if you are looking for a particular topic, I encourage you to look on our website because we have all of our archives there. And I think

on our website, I think on our app, it only goes back six months, maybe a year, but we've got years and years on our website. So please take a look at our website. All right. Now I've gone over 30 seconds. STR.org, just for the record. All right. I won't focus on this every time. Don't worry. All right. Thank you for listening. We really appreciate it, and we hope to hear from you soon. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.