I had lunch with a friend the other day who recently decided to move from Philadelphia to the other side of the state. What struck me in our conversation was the process she used to make up her mind. When it came time to make the decision, she told me she drew up a table that listed her name, as well as her husband’s and kids’ names—next to a list of her family’s main qualities of life, such as money, friends, etc. Then she rated how each aspect of each family member’s quality of life would change if they were to move. What an organized mind! Personally, I get a thrill just thinking about using a process like that, but the thrill quickly descends into despair as I can’t even figure out how to set up my table.
So what’s your decision making process? To be honest, I never learned one growing up, and regrettably, I never quite developed my own. Sometimes I feel that my friends and family who have a naturally logical, systematic and organized mind have an advantage in making decisions. But from my own experiences, and from what I’ve read in Scripture, there’s something about life and about how the Spirit moves that defies logic; that has its own, spiritual logic.
In the fifteen months that I’ve taken steps to intentionally rebuild my understanding of decision making, a few specific words of advice have stood out among the rest. The first is this vague recollection of Rod saying that God should always be at the center when you’re making important life decisions. The second is from Joshua, who many of us have probably heard mention that whenever we’re working through life’s big decisions—like moving, career changes, making big changes with your marriage—we should process it with people who know us, who we can trust, and most importantly, who we know are connected to God and His body. Sounds a lot like a cell, doesn’t it?
In the year and a half that I’ve been a cell leader, the topic of decision-making and how we’re to make decisions has been a reoccurring theme. Looking back over our time together, our cell has slowly grown to the point that we’re now trusting our decisions making process with each other, and at the same time trusting that we’ll point one another to listen to God for how He’s calling us to make sense of it all.
Of course, every now and then someone in cell will share a particularly juicy situation they’re in, and when that happens, even the person who’s been the most quiet that night won’t hesitate to join the rest of us in trying to convince the person to take whatever ill conceived advice we pick from off of the top of our heads. But even then, I’ve noticed in our cell a growing tendency to hold back, and instead pause and prayerfully think through if there is something God has for us to share at that particular moment, and how we can be truly present in the moment.
Week after week, no matter what we discuss during the evening, the time when we bring our discussion to a close, settle down and begin to lift up to God the things we’ve asked the cell to pray for—this for me has become the hallmark of our time together. I carry those prayers and the feeling of everyone praying for each other with me through the week, and in doing so, I also bring the wisdom, courage, hope and faith of everyone in my cell.