The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - I Need to Make a Decision

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

Life is full of decisions. Each day, an individual makes countless decisions both big and small. So, is there a right way to make decisions? How can a person always be sure to make the right decision? Jeff Cavins offers his insight into good decision making by pulling from his experience and his knowledge of both Scripture and the Church’s teachings. Snippet from the Show Wise decision-making involves aligning with God’s will: “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit https://media.ascensionpress.com/?s=&page=2&category%5B0%5D=Ascension%20Podcasts&category%5B1%5D=The%20Jeff%20Cavins%20Show for full shownotes!

Welcome to the Jeff Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together and living as activated disciples. This is show 378. I need to make a decision. Welcome to the show. Hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend this last weekend, and that you had time. time to get together with your family and perhaps some friends and fellowship. I'm going to talk about something today that is really important and I think timely, especially at the kind of the beginning of summer. Summer is going to be a time when you're going to have to make a lot of decisions. And you're going to have to weigh factors when it comes to making a decision. Because the way that you go about making a decision contributes to the quality of the

decision. And typically this time of the year, while it's summer and people are at the beach and they're at the cabin and maybe traveling and doing some vacationing, they are also on the eve of big events in their life, like college coming up for the kids or school year starting up. Or maybe there's going to be a change in your employment or buying a home, something like that. And so while you may be at the beach or traveling, you're going to have in the back of your mind, no doubt, some type of decision that you have to make. And one of the most difficult things to do is to make good decisions without any structure on which to determine what you should do.

In other words, you're kind of going by the seat of your pants, you know, you're freewheeling it as far as making the decision. And so I want to help you a little bit with a few pointers about making big decisions. And I seem to be, this seems to be coming up a lot lately with talking to, other friends and family members, and a lot of young couples, too, are having to make decisions. So this isn't going to be complicated, and it's certainly not going to be exhaustive, but I do want to share a few principles with you that might help. As always, I do have scripture verses here and a catechism. Yep, I got some paragraphs

from the catechism, and there's no doubt in my mind that you would love to meditate on. certainly scripture and a paragraphs from the catechism. So if you want the notes, all you've got to do is text my name, Jeff Kaven's, one word, and you can text it to the number 3377-3377. 3-777. Hope you make a good decision about that. And go ahead and get the notes. Poor decision, trying to write down the notes when you're going down the highway.

There you go. Wisdom, inaction. Okay, so let's talk about this. for a little bit. You know, I have been sort of a connoisseur of making decisions and the smart ones, and I think the reason for that is that I have made bad ones. You know, I've made poor decisions in my life. And if we were all honest, we would have to admit that we have two. You know, we've made poor decisions. And sometimes the decisions are not that big of a deal. But other times they are, they are very costly, you know. And my wife and I, in our time together in prayer,

we often talk about this, that the decisions that we have made throughout the years, while some of them were even small, about, you know, moving to this place or this home or deciding to go out to eat that night, you know, that we didn't make the decision to go out to a particular restaurant because we thought that, wow, that lives are on the line, destinies are about to unfold and mysteries will be revealed because we. because we went to Denny's. No, we're not talking about that. What we're talking about is that even in that little decision of going to Denny's or going someplace else to eat, there might be something that happens in somebody else's life or ours by the fact that we met someone that is going to have a huge impact on somebody else's life. So every decision is big, even though we might think that it is actually small.

And you probably could give me examples of the small decisions, quote unquote, small decisions that you made, but in retrospect, wow, were they big? By the way, I'm just making an observation here. I happen to be deep in the woods of Minnesota right now. I'm looking at the lake and thinking to myself, man, this is, what a beautiful earth God put us on. That's not ADHD. That's just observing out the window. of the cabin here, the plants and the animals and everything, some of the boats way out there.

It's just really, I thank God every day for the ability to see and the ability to taste and to hear. Not everybody can do all those things, and I'm grateful. Anyway, I'd throw that in there. Caught me off guard there, Lord. So it's interesting because the small things, as I was saying, the small decisions, And so the decision to come out here into this beautiful place in the woods today, that may have some kind of result later on.

You never know. But they say that we make about 30,000 decisions a day. Obviously, most of them are small. You know, eat this, turn here, look over there, you know, whatever it might be, clean out the car. We'd make about 30,000 small decisions a day. Some are very small, beef or chicken, you know, on the sandwich. And then we make some big ones, too. We make big decisions about taking that new job or building a home or selling our car or deciding that, yes, the kids are going to go to college on the East Coast.

Big decision there. And then there's other decisions too, you know, who are you going to marry, all those types of things. So we have to examine the inner process of making the decision. And I want to start off by laying down a principle that I really should lay down, no, matter what I'm talking about. Because if you don't start with this principle, then all of your decision making after this, after this time is going to be skewed if you haven't laid down this particular principle. And that principle is this, that we need to figure out what our priority is. Now, I've talked about this. I've talked about this many times.

you know, throughout the last five, six, seven, eight years on the show. And I think I talk about it a lot because it's really important. My question to you, what is your priority? What is your priority? And people might answer that with, wow, gee, let me think. Wow, let's see, my priority. Well, you know, I have a problem. My family is a priority.

Yes, my family is a priority. Okay. And then they think and they go on to. And, yeah, my job is a priority, too, that I do it right and I do it for the Lord. That's a priority. Oh, and I have a priority to retire early, to be a good saver. That's really important. And I have a priority of living in the right neighborhood.

I want to protect my children, so forth. Okay, so we can continue to go on with this list of your priorities. But as I mentioned on another podcast not too long ago, that this idea of priorities, plural, is actually a new idea. I think it was a 14th century that this idea was really brought up in earnest to begin with, but it really didn't really become a huge thing until the last 150 years or so, that people always thought of the singular priority. I have a priority. But then with the busyness of life and so many choices,

and now certainly with the Internet, people have a lot of priorities. The problem is that it's hard in making a decision when you have to juggle 10 to 15 priorities. So you have to start with what is your priority. Now, Jesus told us in John's Gospel what his priority was. You could break it down and you could certainly say, well, one of Jesus' priorities was the disciples. Another priority he had was prayer.

Another priority he had was building his kingdom. Another priority he had were the children. Another priority was, we could go on and on with that list, too. but he reveals what his priority really is, and that is to obey the father, to do what the father sent him to do. And that's what he says in his high priestly prayer. He says, Father, I have done what you sent me to do. I have done this. I have obeyed you. I have given them your name. That was his priority. His priority was between him and his father, and he was to do his Father's will, done. No more priorities after that. That is the priority of Jesus. And so I decided

quite a while ago that I was going to do away with priorities and that I was going to see all the decisions that I make as lining up with the one priority that is in my life. And that is to love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ as a disciple. That's my priority in life. I have nothing else that even compares to it. And I have nothing else that even rivals it. That is my priority to love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ as his disciple. So now that's going to mean that there's going to be a lot of a list things that I should be paying attention to because I am a man of priority now. And so once I have established that, I've answered the question, what is your priority, Jeff? what is it? My priority is to love and serve the Lord, Jesus Christ, to be obedient to the Lord as a

disciple. Now, somebody may say, well, don't you have a priority to raise your kids as Christians, as Catholic Christians? Don't you have a priority to do that? No, I don't. Will you do it, though? Yes, I'll do it. But why are you going to do it? Because it's in line with my priority. Run that by me again, Jeff. Yes, my priority is to love and serve the Lord as a disciple. So when it comes to raising my children, I have to ask myself, how should I go about this, given my priority? Well, given my priority, I need to put some good time on this one, and that's to raise my children. It could be a job, it could be, you know, where to live, or how I, you know, prepare myself for retirement someday, which I'm not planning on. But that's the important thing.

So again, I'll ask you now, think about this. What is your priority? your priority and don't say well it's my priority is what jeff said you have to come up with that you have to land on that yourself it may be very similar but you got it's got to be yours so now given that i need to ask you this question do you live your life today based on principles or preferences Now, this is important if you're making a big decision in the next week or month from now or today, maybe you're in the middle of it now. But if you're making a big decision, you've got to be able to distinguish between making a decision based on principles or making a decision based on preferences. Huge difference.

one will be very wise the other one will be very foolish okay so do you live by godly principles or do you live by preferences personal preferences big one to you know a big question to answer there so in think about that for a moment i'm going to take a break when to come back we're going to develop this now and try to help in making good decisions you my friend are listening to the jeff caven show Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz. I wanted to let you know about an exciting announcement that could revolutionize the way you listen to the Bible in the air and the catechism in the year. Ascension has released a new Bible and Catechism app called the Ascension app. No, here's what you get. In this app, you get the entire text of the Great Adventure Bible.

Just incredible. You also get the entire text of the catechism of the Catholic Church, as long with the Catechism in a year podcast and the Bible in your podcast and transcripts for each episode. If you're like, I'm tired of listening to that guy, I just want to read it. There's a complete transcripts from each and every episode. One thing that makes this app incredibly unique is that it includes special features that they make connections between the Bible and the catechism so crystal clear through color-coded references and all these links. The hyperlinks are amazing.

I tried it out and I'm like, oh my gosh, it kind of has changed the way I read through the catechism, kind of changed the way I read through the Bible. These features will help you navigate the Bible and catechism even more seamlessly so you can get more out of your experience. Also, the app provides almost 1,000 answers to Bible questions. The people who listen to the Bible in the year, they wrote in with their questions. Almost 1,000 answers. And those answers come in the form of audio clips, video clips, as well as resources excerpted

from some of Ascension's published works. If you want to download this app for free, super simple. Just go to the app store and search for Ascension app. I am telling you, if learning about the Bible and the catechism is important to you, then this app will change your life. Thank you for coming back. That was a good decision, by the way. We're talking today about this whole idea of, Jeff, I need to make a decision.

And we've laid down the importance of having a priority in life. Not 30 priorities. It reminds me of, you know, some of these programs in your computer about to-do lists and things. You can set them up, you know, where you've got 15 categories. And then each category has to-do lists. And every to-do list has one-star. two stars, three, four, five, and you set it all up and you've got, you've got 120 tasks to do in your life, divided into ten areas with a lot of them being ones and a lot of them being

fives and some threes, twos, fours, and you're looking at it all going, oh my gosh, I don't know what to do. Yep, that's because you got too many priorities. So that's one of the issues that we covered in the first part here is priority. The second is, do you live by godly principles or personal preferences. So here's the deal. Godly principles are the principles that affect our moral and ethical actions and thoughts that honor God.

So you've got moral and ethical actions. You have moral and ethical thoughts and they are either based on principles. or they're going to be based on preferences, preferences. So when we talk about a principle, we're talking about God's wisdom that does not change. Society does. You're aware of that.

And there you are in the middle. Society's changing on the left hand and on the right hand. You've got God's wisdom. You have God's word. You have Jesus, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so we as Christians make decisions based on immovable things. like wisdom and love and faithfulness and mercy and justice. We make decisions based on godly principles, which means that at some point in your life, you've got to start

collecting these principles. You have to start to amass them, to understand what the principles of the kingdom are. Now, I've suggested for a long time that you write these principles down, that you write down these immovable things that you can go back to when you're making decisions and ask yourself questions. Father Mike Schmitz and I put together the Insight Journal at Ascension Press. You can get an Insight Journal, which will help you in remembering the principles that God has revealed to you that do not change. These are principles that you could pass on to your kids, your grandkids. And I'll put that in the notes for you. If you're interested we'll put a link to that to the Insight Journal at ascension press so that's one thing these

principles are based on the immovable and preferences are it's where we get the idea of you know i prefer you go out to eat what would you like to order mr cavens well i should probably get a one of those greek salads with a little shwarma on it but you know what i would prefer for gravy and biscuits. Okay, yeah, that's what I'd prefer. Now, is that decision to get the gravy and biscuits, which kind of sounds good right now, actually, is that going to be a decision based on preference,

or is that a decision that is based on principles? Is there a principle in my life that says biscuits and gravy are always going to be better for you than a salad? Well, I think we all know the answer to that. So anytime I get biscuits and gravy, it's probably preference. So you have these principles, these moral and ethical actions and thoughts that are based on the principles of God, or you have preferences. And these are typically desires, likes, and dislikes.

Desires, likes, and dislikes. Now think about it for a moment. If you think you're going to navigate through life making dozens of decisions a day, not to mention the 30K, 30,000 that some say we, make up to a day. Small ones, obviously. If you run around making decisions just based on desires, likes, and dislikes, what do you have? Well, you've got an American. That's what you've got. That's right. You've got a modern American running around making decisions based on desires, likes, and dislikes. So that's the battle that's going on here. Principles or preferences. what do you do with your body?

What do you do with your time? What do you do with your money in your treasure? What do you do with your thinking ability? What do you do with it, you know? So you've got your body, you've got your time, you've got money, you've got your mind, you've got your heart, you've got all of this. And you're in the middle of this.

So what do you do? Now if you stick to God, principles, he is going to give you the desires of your heart. If your heart is set on godly principles and the wisdom of God in scripture and the tradition and in whole, the word of God, then the scripture tells us in Psalm 374, it'll be in the notes, delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. So before you make a decision, you need to know your priority, you need to know the difference between preferences and principles, and then you need to delight in the Lord. And I would suggest that, quite honestly, before you make a decision, have a time of

praise, have a time of adoration at your local adoration chapel, and delight in the Lord. Now, how do you delight in the Lord? You delight in the Lord by number one making a decision to be with the Lord and to clear your mind and then to offer up praise and thanksgiving to God for all that he has done in your life, all that you have been given, all the opportunities that you have delight in the Lord. You might not feel like it if you're just beginning it, but it's a great exercise to do is to begin to give thanks to God for everything in your life. So when you delight your self in the Lord, he will give you the desires of your heart. Now, what does that say and what does that not say? Well, right away, people are going to say this. They're going to say, delight in the Lord,

and he'll give you the desires of your heart. And what are the desires of your heart? Well, those happen to be my desires, my likes, and my dislikes. Yeah. So, Jeff, you just gave me a magical verse that says that if I delight in the Lord, he's going to get me exactly what I want. It's going to get me what I prefer. You see how we do that? There's a whole movement in Christianity that believes that, that type of theology, which I can't even really call it theology. It's just, it's self-help type of stuff, and it's very American. There is nothing in the Bible that says, if you delight yourself in the Lord, he'll give you what you prefer. He'll give you the desires of your heart. He will place in your heart his desires. The

principles of his kingdom that are lasting. That is such a big deal. So listen to what the Catechism says about preferences. This might help you out just a little bit here. It's paragraph 1768, and it says, strong feelings. Who doesn't have those, huh? Strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons. Oh, that's good. Tell you what, marinate in God's Word. Marinate in the Catechism, you're going to be better off. Strong feelings are not decisive. They are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons. Your strong feelings don't cut it in terms of decisive morality, decisive holiness.

They are simply the in ex, what's simply? Strong feelings. Strong feelings are simply the inexhaustible reservoir of images and effect. in which the moral life is expressed. Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action. And passions are morally evil in the opposite case when they contribute to evil actions. The upright will, like in your heart, your will, you've been given this by God, you have a will. the upright will orders the movements of the senses, the passions that we have and the desires,

and it appropriates, they appropriates them to the good and to beatitude. An evil will succumbs to disordered passions. If you've got an evil will that is not formed in the principles of God, then you will succumb to disordered passions. Your will is not strong enough to bring you to that place of preferring God's principles. And not only will you succumb to the disordered passions, but an evil will exacerbates them. It's like it teases them and moves them on to even a deeper, deeper abyss. Emotions and feelings can be taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices.

So even your passions, these strong feelings that you have, they have to be taken up into one of two things, virtue or vice. And those passions of yours will end up being very good decisions based on whether you have taken up your passion with virtue or whether it's with vice. It'll be a very poor outcome at that point. so another thing to think about here is that wisdom chapter 7 verse 27 says in every generation wisdom says she it's a woman in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of god so godly wisdom is not fleeting but godly wisdom is enduring your preferences change when you delight in his principles. Have you, do you remember what you were eating as a kid?

What did you prefer as a kid? I mean, be honest, what did you prefer? Well, we know what kids prefer. And the question is, have your preferences changed over the years? Well, probably, might have. I eat differently than I did as a kid. I read differently than I did as a kid. I watch TV differently than I did as a kid.

I read different books? No. than when I was a kid. And so my preferences have changed over the years, but I'll tell you why they've changed. And that is because over the last 45 years, I have been trying, at least with all my heart, to delight in God's principles. And so my preferences have actually changed. Without God's principles and without the guidance of the Holy Spirit, man, you're a mess.

You're an uncontrollable mess. And you're going to be dipping into all kinds of things that are going to bring you all kinds of trouble. wisdom is the ability to handle life with skill that's what that is wisdom is the ability to handle all of life with skill godly skill based on principles not just mere preferences so principles are much more important than preferences and uh this is just an important thing to you know to think about to look at or examine all sides of a situation and make a decisive choice that is right and good, pleasing to God. It takes principles. So, for example, I was in a discussion with a friend this last week and a half or so ago, and we were talking about making decisions. And if you're married and say you've got four or

five children and you are married and you're going to make a decision, you have to make the decision based on your priority, which is Jesus Christ. Now, this is where some people really get messed up. They make a decision that is not in line with the priority of serving God. How do I know that? Because they just made a decision that's going to cost their children a lot. They just made a decision that is going to put tremendous pressure on their marriage. You see, when you make a decision, you are not allowed to sacrifice people. If you want to sacrifice yourself, have at it. Enjoy. But you cannot sacrifice other people for your preferences. In my word, this happens so much. You wouldn't believe the number of emails I get in,

the number of people I spoke to who said, my husband, my wife, my spouse took this job, did that, or this. And it has crushed. us. You have no right to sacrifice people. A family should work together. Some decisions are quick and obvious and others need study, prayer. They need counsel. They need time to think about this, all the different sides of this based on their priority and based on principles versus preferences. Well, yes, I would prefer to live in San Diego. You're from, let's say you're from Baltimore. I would prefer to live in San Diego. Well, a lot of people would say, who wouldn't? but the principles in my life and my obligations to my family and to serve the Lord and to carry

out all these things that he's given me, that might not be a very wise decision at all, especially if your parents are coming to that age where, wow, they're going to need you. Do you know how many senior citizens are alone? They feel isolated. They're starting to have memory problems and preferences have caused their family to all move away. Just thinking. Just saying. Not judging. Just talking. Wise decision making involves aligning with God's will, not my will, but yours be done, Lord. Remember that? Luke 2242 and Matthew 6.10. I'll put them in there for you. And finally, let me say this from the catechism.

Paragraph 1697, the way of Christ leads to life. A contrary way leads to destruction. The gospel parable of the two ways remains ever present in the catechesis of the church. It shows the importance of moral decisions for our salvation. There are two ways, the one of life, the other of death. But between the two, there is a great difference. Wow. Just some thoughts today. You know, you might be running.

You might be driving. Maybe you are going on vacation. Kids in the back seat, they're sleeping right now. thinking, well, I'm going to, I'm going to listen to the old podcast. And maybe this was of some help. I'd love to hear from you. If you want to write me, you can write me an email. It's easy.

The Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. And I appreciate you liking the show, too. It actually does change the algorithm. And it might just give this show as an answer to a search. If other people are searching for these types of things on how to make a decision as well. Well, I love you. I want to pray for you now. will you join me in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit lord i lift up my friend to you

and i thank you for for their life and what you've called them to and where they find themselves now i pray lord that you would help them in discovering the priority in their life and i ask you lord to help them to distinguish between principles and preferences and to help them to give the passions in their life, either to virtue or to vice. They help them to be strong and courageous. I pray that they will make the most of every opportunity and discover your will and walk accordingly, for this is the secret of life.

I thank you, Lord Jesus, that as we delight in you, you will give us the desires of our heart. I pray that for my friend right now, in Jesus' name. Amen. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I love you. I really do. Pray for me.

pray for you, happy decision making.