By Pastor Patrick Cho

As a fairly new par­ent, I am under­stand­ing more and more clearly that merely teach­ing my child to behave a cer­tain way does not nec­es­sar­ily solve the prob­lem of dis­obe­di­ence. If my child’s rebel­lion springs from her heart, then her heart needs to be addressed and not only her out­ward behav­ior. If the heart is not addressed, even if one behav­ioral prob­lem is “cor­rected” another one is sure to arise. She will sim­ply find some other way to man­i­fest her rebel­lious atti­tude. I might get my child to come to sit still dur­ing din­ner, but she might later delib­er­ately throw her food to the floor in anger. The prob­lem is that she is not learn­ing to lov­ingly trust me in obe­di­ence, and her self­ish heart is not being addressed. She is sim­ply being taught that she will get in trou­ble with Papa if she doesn’t sit still.

The same fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple applies to adults as well. Oftentimes peo­ple make deci­sions with­out ever con­sid­er­ing if there is a bib­li­cal basis behind those deci­sions. Although they might pro­fess that they seek to honor God with the deci­sions they make, when it actu­ally comes time to make day to day deci­sions, God is not really on their minds. They don’t turn to the Scriptures to fig­ure out how God might direct them. Instead, their deci­sions are made based solely on prac­ti­cal­ity, con­ve­nience, and ease. If it isn’t con­ve­nient for them, peo­ple don’t seem to care about pur­su­ing the most God-glorifying deci­sions. They rea­son to them­selves that there can be no other way. They look at their cir­cum­stances and con­clude that their deci­sion must be best. They fail to exam­ine what are the real desires of their hearts.

Let me illus­trate this with an issue that has been a fairly hot topic at Lighthouse in recent months. In my per­sonal con­ver­sa­tions, peo­ple have brought up the issue of day­care prob­a­bly more than any other topic, so let’s think through it. For what­ever rea­son, more and more par­ents are choos­ing to place their chil­dren in day­care instead of hav­ing Mom stay at home to raise her chil­dren. Regardless of what your posi­tion is on day­care, whether you think it’s ok or not, the issue I want to address is the rea­son­ing behind the deci­sion. Perhaps the cou­ple looks at their finan­cial sit­u­a­tion and con­cludes that they need a sec­ond income. Perhaps the wife sim­ply doesn’t want to stop work­ing because of all the hard work she put into her career. Perhaps rais­ing a child has proven to be too chal­leng­ing and she sim­ply needs a break dur­ing the day. Regardless of whether you con­clude that these rea­sons are good or bad, the sad fact is that they are only based on prac­ti­cal­ity. There is no thought of “How does the Bible instruct us in this?” or “Is there a bib­li­cal prin­ci­ple that could help guide our deci­sion making?”

The big ques­tion to con­sider is: What is the basis behind the deci­sions you make? Too often peo­ple are say­ing things like “That’s the way our par­ents did it, and we came out fine” or “All our friends are doing this and they go to church” or “I know of churches that have their own day­cares and their pas­tors are ok with it” or even “You’re being legal­is­tic to tell me I can’t” to jus­tify their actions. What isn’t being con­sid­ered is “Is this really what God would want me to do?” or “Is this the deci­sion that would be most con­sis­tent with what His Word says?” or even “Am I really seek­ing to glo­rify Him in this deci­sion or am I only look­ing to get what I want?”

I sup­pose this begs the ques­tion, does the Bible actu­ally teach that all deci­sions are to be bib­li­cal? My answer is a resound­ing YES! Someone might argue, “Some deci­sions are too triv­ial to fil­ter through a bib­li­cal frame­work.” To which I would apply, “Doesn’t the Bible instruct us to do all things to the glory of God – whether we eat or drink or what­ever we do (1 Cor. 10:31)? Or doesn’t the Bible instruct women to dress mod­estly, not with gold or pearls or costly attire (1 Tim. 2:9)?” Certainly there are few things more mun­dane than what you eat or drink or wear. These are not the big life chang­ing deci­sions we make, but the way we make them mat­ters to God!

2 Timothy 3:16–17 speaks of the inerrancy, author­ity, and suf­fi­ciency of the Word of God. Through the wis­dom given in God’s Word, the believer is given every­thing they need per­tain­ing to life and god­li­ness (cf. 2 Pet. 1:3). The psalmist praised the Scriptures for the com­pre­hen­sive instruc­tion it gives so that in it we are given all we need to live this life in a way that pleases God (cf. Ps. 119). To not go to the Scriptures is like say­ing, “Thanks God, but I think I can han­dle this on my own.”

Besides, there’s an unde­ni­able cor­re­la­tion between the com­mands given in Ephesians 5:18 and Colossians 3:16. In the one pas­sage, believ­ers are com­manded to be filled with the Spirit. In the other, we are called to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. The rela­tion­ship between these verses is such that at the very least there is an inti­mate rela­tion­ship between being Spirit-filled and Word-filled, and at the very most these two ideas refer to the same thing. The greater issue is that these com­mands are present tense con­tin­ual com­mands. There is no time in a person’s life that he should stop being filled with the Spirit. And there is no time when it is ok not to have the Word of Christ dwell in him richly. What true believer in Christ would ever say, “I don’t desire to live a Spirit-filled life.” So, in what deci­sions we make are we per­mit­ted to not con­sider the prin­ci­ples of God’s Word? Hopefully you are read­ing this and con­clud­ing: None!

What also needs to be pointed out is that you can even make seem­ingly good deci­sions with­out a bib­li­cal basis. (Remember the illus­tra­tion of the child learn­ing to behave a cer­tain way with­out hav­ing the right rea­son for doing so.) Going back to the exam­ple of day­care, per­haps you do not believe in putting your child in day­care. Isn’t it pos­si­ble (and cer­tainly often the case) that the basis behind this deci­sion is its prac­ti­cal­ity, as much as the rea­sons given by those who do put their chil­dren in day­care? Perhaps you rea­son “This is what would be best for my child” or “I just want to spend as much time with my kid as pos­si­ble.” Again, bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples might not be in the pic­ture at all.

One might rea­son, “But isn’t it enough that I am com­ing to the right kinds of deci­sions?” My response, this time, is a resound­ing NO! Why? Because while you might get one deci­sion cor­rect, if prac­ti­cal­ity is the sole basis for your deci­sion, you might be start­ing to set a pat­tern for your­self for unwise deci­sion mak­ing in the future. Sure, you got one deci­sion right. Who’s to say you’ll get the next one right? So, the goal is not only to come to the right deci­sion. The process of com­ing to that deci­sion is just as (if not more because of prece­dence) important.

Again, the issue of day­care aside (regard­less of whether you think it is per­mis­si­ble or not), what is the basis behind the deci­sions you make? In the end, what is the rea­son for pur­su­ing your choices with as much com­mit­ment as you do? Here you need to be hon­est. You might fool those around you, but you can’t fool God. Could it be that there are sim­ply some things we want in life so badly that we don’t even want God to get in the way of our get­ting them? We might mask our desires with exter­nal shows of holi­ness. We might rea­son, “But I prayed about it,” or “God has given me peace in this deci­sion.” But if we really are not look­ing to His Word for the right prin­ci­ples to guide our deci­sion mak­ing, how can we con­clude that God is more pleased with our deci­sions or line of thinking?

Please under­stand that the pur­pose of this arti­cle is not to con­demn day­care or to say that those who put their kids in day­care are evil. It is sim­ply a chal­lenge to con­sider why we make the choices we do. What dri­ves us? What are our hearts’ desires? Do we have cer­tain things in our lives that we want so badly that we are will­ing to make choices that might not be the best before God’s eyes? These are impor­tant ques­tions to con­sider because you need to know that God cares not only about the deci­sions we make, but also about how we come to make those decisions.

Probably Related Posts

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• Peacemaking for Families (Grace Life)
• Truth Is What Matters
• Look at the World Through God’s Eyes

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 1:00 am and is filed under Pastor's Corner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.