I’m Paralyzed by Indecision — What Should I Do?

00:00:00.000 | A podcast listener named Elisa with a historical connection to you, Pastor John,

00:00:04.760 | writes in to ask this, "Hello Pastor John, thanks for your ministry over all these

00:00:08.160 | years. Incidentally, we," that's her and her husband, "we met you when we were post

00:00:13.920 | Stanford students attending InterVarsity's Western Leadership Conference

00:00:18.040 | sometime around 1985. I was one of the worship leaders at the conference and

00:00:23.000 | vividly remember you speaking on Christian hedonism, a life-changing

00:00:27.440 | paradigm for us. Now that we're empty nesters, my husband and I are asking the

00:00:32.620 | question, 'How do we spend the next portion of our lives?' However, for better or worse,

00:00:37.160 | my dear husband is something of a perfectionist and doesn't want to make a

00:00:40.880 | mistake in answering this important question." So the question becomes this,

00:00:44.840 | "When the stakes are so high, how do you not become paralyzed with the fear of

00:00:49.160 | making a mistake in this huge decision?"

00:00:54.040 | I have to ask, "How can you be a perfectionist as an empty nester? How can you live that long and still be a perfectionist?"

00:01:03.440 | Well, anyway, he is, so we're gonna deal with this. So Elisa, this is wonderful to be

00:01:08.760 | reminded of those days at Stanford. I remember them, and I remember them pretty

00:01:14.520 | clearly for reasons that are not altogether positive, because I remember

00:01:20.240 | that the leader of the inner varsity group and I were moving in different

00:01:25.920 | directions, it seemed. I'm gonna close with that in just a few

00:01:30.600 | minutes and apply that to your situation. So here are the things that come to my

00:01:35.480 | mind, and I'm exactly in your situation. You're younger than I am, but I'm

00:01:40.120 | thinking about that kind of question. So here are my thoughts. Number one, one of the

00:01:45.360 | best ways to overcome the fear, perfectionistic fear, of making a mistake

00:01:50.640 | in what you decide to do is to realize that deciding nothing is the biggest

00:01:55.760 | mistake. There's your deal breaker. That'll get you going. In other

00:02:01.080 | words, you're not in a neutral zone. There are no neutral zones. Not to move toward

00:02:09.800 | a God-sized goal in this next season of your life is to disobey. So standing

00:02:16.760 | still is not an option, because it means you're drifting. You're never standing

00:02:22.000 | still. You're drifting, and you're coasting with the culture and the way of

00:02:25.040 | the world. That's the first thing. Second thing, God loves to steer a moving ship.

00:02:32.840 | If you're tied up in the harbor of comfort and leisure, God ordinarily will

00:02:38.640 | not give you clear direction. He gives direction to captains who point their

00:02:44.120 | ship out of the harbor, into the storm. Think about Jonah. Kind of a

00:02:51.160 | counterintuitive illustration. Even Jonah was moving in exactly the wrong

00:02:56.840 | direction, and God stopped him. He didn't send him home, say start over. He didn't

00:03:03.160 | send him home. He made that journey part of the journey, and he sent exactly where

00:03:08.620 | he wanted to be. Not exactly in the way he wanted, but he got him where he wanted

00:03:13.560 | to go because he was moving. Number three, one of the ways to be moving without

00:03:19.800 | knowing exactly where you're going is what I might call investigative moving.

00:03:25.720 | You're moving when you are pursuing possibilities with serious

00:03:30.880 | investigation. That too is moving. Number four, take heart from the many

00:03:38.520 | promises of God that in his great mercy he will give you the guidance you need

00:03:45.800 | when you trust him. For example, Psalm 25 8, "Good and upright is the Lord, therefore

00:03:53.560 | he instructs sinners in the way." So we qualify, right? He instructs sinners in

00:04:00.960 | the way. He leads the humble—people who know they're sinners and admit it and

00:04:07.000 | cry out—he leads the humble in what is right. He teaches the humble his way. That

00:04:12.960 | is a precious promise of guidance. Number five, pursue with all your might what is

00:04:20.560 | crystal clear as God's will in Scripture. For example, 1 Thessalonians 4 3, "This is

00:04:29.560 | the will of God for Elisa and her husband, your sanctification, your

00:04:36.280 | holiness." If you have a full, deep, wide, rich understanding of holiness, it's not

00:04:43.720 | bad advice to say, "Pursue holiness with all your might and do as you please." God,

00:04:48.840 | just do! Just do! Because if you are passionate about being holy and

00:04:54.440 | maximizing your love of God, then it'll happen. God loves to give direction,

00:04:58.920 | fruitful direction, to lovers of holiness who pursue it with all their hearts.

00:05:03.440 | Number six, in this process of prayer and investigation, dream bigger than aging

00:05:12.920 | fatalism would allow you. I find in my own heart at age 70 the temptation to

00:05:20.360 | think, "I don't have long to live, so I should be probably restricted in my

00:05:30.720 | dreams of what I can accomplish." Now, I think that's a mistake. I think it's a

00:05:37.360 | serious mistake, and I'm trying to strive against that thought. I have no idea how

00:05:45.360 | long I have left. You don't either. I never have had any idea how long I have

00:05:51.600 | left, but when I was younger, I assumed that I could accomplish more simply

00:05:58.080 | because of the amount of time that was in front of me, probably. But in fact, the

00:06:04.000 | accomplishments came because of God's blessing on a particular season. It

00:06:10.560 | wasn't the length of life. It was the power of seasons, and who knows, who knows

00:06:17.960 | what you might accomplish in the next season. So don't let the fatalism of

00:06:24.520 | aging limit your dreams of fruitfulness. And the last thing relates to Stanford

00:06:31.920 | 1985. One of the reasons I look back with some sadness on those Christian

00:06:37.960 | hedonism talks is because little by little as the series of messages

00:06:46.240 | went on, I saw myself through interacting with students and the leader, I saw

00:06:50.840 | myself going in a different direction than the inner varsity leader at the

00:06:55.680 | time. His stress was on the wonder and the glory of the fact that God works for

00:07:02.880 | us. We are not God's employees trying to earn wages. We are the patients of the

00:07:09.760 | great physician who is using all his wisdom and his skill to serve us and our

00:07:15.120 | eternal health, and that's true, and I love it, love it. But the note I was

00:07:23.040 | striking then and have been ever since was when God works for us, the goal of

00:07:32.040 | his work is to fit us for enjoying God himself. That's what the physician does,

00:07:39.480 | not like any earthly physician. This heavenly physician is trying to get

00:07:44.440 | our disease healed that makes us find substitutes for God so that in our

00:07:50.080 | wellness we will see him, know him, love him, be satisfied in him. God himself is

00:07:55.680 | the all-satisfying treasure, and as I recall, the students back then began to

00:08:01.600 | discern a different trajectory between me and the leader. So here's the way it

00:08:08.000 | relates to you. In your case now, the question perhaps finally is this, what

00:08:15.400 | new vision for our next chapter of life would cause us to taste most fully the

00:08:23.680 | power of God, the wisdom of God, the grace of God in our lives? How can we get more

00:08:29.840 | of God? And I think if that's the passion, God will show you the answer. That's a

00:08:36.280 | very helpful word, Pastor John, for all of us who are faced with a season of

00:08:39.920 | decision and stuck in indecision. We need to act, thank you. And moving the

00:08:45.020 | conversation from the paralysis of indecision into the realm of boundless

00:08:49.400 | decision-making, the next question is, in the age to come when there will be no

00:08:54.200 | sorrow for sin and there will be no sin at all, when we will experience perfect

00:08:59.600 | freedom for the first time, so will heaven be a place that we can do

00:09:03.640 | whatever we want all the time? That's the question next time. It's a good one.

00:09:08.800 | Pastor John and I will return on Friday and he will explain the four stages of what it

00:09:13.120 | means to be really free. We'll see you then.

00:09:18.440 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

I’m Paralyzed by Indecision — What Should I Do?

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