As a young teenager, I got burnt. Seriously burnt. Often seriously burnt. I spent summers on and around the water – fishing from dawn to mid-morning then boogie-boarding at the beach into the afternoon before casting a line back in around dusk. I remember using sun cream but rarely a hat. My cousins, brothers and I were in and out of the water too often and they were just intrusive.
It didn’t feel like it at the time, but I was making the decision to get sunburnt.
As an older teenager, married man and father I have become paranoid about the sun and wear sun cream and a hat regularly. But the decisions I made earlier have begun to catch up with me.
I get my skin checked regularly and just this week my Doctor said it was time to start using some cream that will slowly burn some pre-cancerous spots off my nose and face. Before long, I will look like a clown and feel like Rudolf. And it is all because of the decisions that I made way back when.
We make decisions every day, some big, some small, some inconsequential, some of great significance. Many we make without much thought or consideration of what might happen next. This is totally understandable – life is busy and who has time to think when situations require impulsive wisdom and reflex thinking. We rely upon our minds to be able to be wise and to keep growing in wisdom so we can do the least damage to ourselves and others while doing life.
So how is your mind? What is driving its decision making ability and are you training it in the way it should go? Paul writes in Colossians 1:9-10:
We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way.
For those who follow Christ, doing the “best” by themselves and others is of secondary importance. Our first goal is that we may live a life worthy, do our “best”, in God’s sight. In order to do that we need to be filled with the knowledge of his will through all wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives. This sounds complicated, but really it is about listening to and doing the spirit-inspired Word of God that is living and active today – hearing God speak from the Bible. Being soaked in his word will ensure our impulsive wisdom and reflex thinking is indeed pleasing and good.
As you make your decisions, what voices are you listening to, and whose is the loudest?
In Christ
Nigel