You Can't Mess It Up

Here's some good news - You Can't Mess It Up (by Erik Raymond at the Gospel Coalition)

One of the odious scents of the Fall is our poor decision making. Let’s admit it: we do dumb things. We say, think and do things that we should not do. To make matter’s worse we get the lingering scent of our dumb decisions in our nostrils. This is called regret. Can you imagine a world without such a stench of failure?

Among the things that strike me as so compelling about the Bible is the fact that it does not shrink from this truth. From Genesis to Revelation people, often the “heroes” of the book are shown to be misfits who seem to do their very best to jack everything up. Think of the patriarchs. Abraham feared man and lied. Isaac did the same. Jacob was deceptive and manipulative. The sons of Jacob sold their brother into slavery after faking his death and breaking their father’s heart. David was an adulterer, lier, and complicit in murder. The disciples were cowards. Judas betrayed Jesus. We could go on and on. The bottom line: the is full of people doing dumb things.

But you know what is even more striking about this? God still works through and in spite of these people. In other words, people doing dumb things cannot derail God from doing great things!

We know about all of the examples listed above because they have something to do with the bringing about of God’s plan of redemption. God brings about his plan amid our messes. It’s like we burn down the house and yet God still makes the flower grow amid the ashes.

This is good news for those of us who have realized that we have the tendency to do or say something foolish. As I’ve heard Tim Keller say before, “You can’t muck up your life.” How liberating is this? This frees us from the paralyzing fear that we might do or say something that causes the entire plan to go up in smoke. We know that if we burn down the house then God will use it for good and the furtherance of his purposes. This frees us from the fear and liberates us to live with courageous, humble trust in God. We can’t shut down his sovereignty and neither can we fully understand his wisdom. We may not always know the ultimate answer to the “why” question, but we always know the truth of the “what” question. God will most certainly use our missteps to further his plan—this for our good and his glory.

Deciding

Good piece from Charles Stone - 5 Ways to Improve Decision Making:

A leader must make lots of decisions. The better decisions we make, the better our leadership, the better our churches and ministries, and the better those around us perform. So what can we do to improve decision making? Consider these five ways.

5 Ways to Improve Decision making

1. Avoid decision fatigue.

Decision fatigue refers to the phenomenon that occurs when the quality of our decisions degrades after a long string of successive decisions. When important decision face you, make them when you are the most refreshed, usually in the morning (although night owls may make better decisions at night). Learn more about decision fatigue here.

2. Get enough sleep.

The U.S. CDC stated in 2013 that 35% of adults aged 25-65 reported that they unintentionally fell asleep during the previous month. And the same percentage reported that they get less than 7 hours of sleep each night, although sleep experts recommend that we get 7-9 hours each night. When we don’t get adequate sleep, here’s what happens. (For a more detailed look at leaders and their sleep, read this post).

Our attention, alertness, and mental response speed decrease.

Creativity gets dampened.

Our brain’s CEO (the pre-frontal cortex) that is responsible for executive functions like planning, emotional control, decision making, and abstract think gets compromised.

If sometimes you just can’t get enough sleep, a short 10-20 minute nap can boost your alertness and the quality of your decisions.

3. Practice metacognition.

Metacognition is a fancy word for ‘thinking about your thinking.’ Often we get caught up in a thinking auto-pilot mode. And since our brain has five time more negative circuits than positive ones, thinking usually turns negative. It’s called the negativity bias. So, practice pausing during the day to ask yourself, “What am I thinking about right now?” This discipline can help you avoid wasted mental energy on unprofitable thoughts. The Apostle Paul counsels us to do this in Philippians 4.8.

Grace & Decision Making

"Sometimes Christians speak of each decision of their lives as though they were launching a moon-shot where a single miscalculation would send the capsule into a trackless void. Even space scientists do better than that, correcting the flight of the space-probes by radioed signals. God does much better. He knows that we are often incapable of distinguishing trivial decisions from momentous ones, and that we are foolish and imperceptive. He knows--and he keeps us in his hand."

-Ed Clowney, Called to the Ministry, p. 77

Hat Tip: Buzzard Blog: Decision Making