How Can I Know When It’s Time To Make A Big Decision?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Yogi Berra, I know if you guys have ever heard of him, a great philosopher of our time, for sure. But I used to have a little quote a day Yogi Berra calendar, and one of my favorites was, When you come to a fork in the road, take it, and I did. But that's a great verse or a great quote what we're gonna be talking about today. In Proverbs, we're gonna be looking at something that's a little bit maybe questionable, maybe a little bit far off for a lot of you. But I really want to talk and start off really looking at, there is a particular type of tired that I know we have all experienced. And this isn't the tired that comes with a newborn baby. This isn't a tired that comes with staying up on the Xbox too late. This isn't a tired of too many late work days. This is a tired that maybe will creep up in the middle of the afternoon as the workday lulls. Or maybe this is one of those type of tires that hits you at 2 a.m. when you should be sleeping,

but instead you're just staring up at the ceiling. Putting decision, any particular decision, maybe it's one decision, maybe it's where to go to college, who to date, who to marry, who not to date, who not to marry. Maybe it's do I sell my house, do I not sell my house? Do I need to get rid of my business? Is it sucking up too much money? Do I need to take it? Do it by just a multitude of decisions. Or maybe it's just a hundred little ones. That low hum of just a hundred little decisions can seem almost as ominous as one giant decision. But whatever it is, it just it hits, right? And it just it just makes you so tired. And if you haven't felt that, then my suggestion is get out of the house and live a little. But for those that do live and who wake up, we have all experienced this somewhere along the way.

And really what it comes down to is those moments of fatigue, those moments of this tired that this is a stats associated with, is we are looking for something and generally it's it's going to be an answer. Right. How many people just want to get told the answer? Right. Raise your hand. You don't have to be shy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I know every college student I ever taught, they just wanted the answer. They never wanted to actually go through the process of studying and learning. They just wanted an answer. And that's really not how life works. That's not how God works. That's not how biblical truth works. And so really it's a searching for wisdom is what we kind of need to redirect our thinking when we when we're doing that. And that's where we kind of end up where we're our Bible verses is in Proverbs chapter three verses five and six. And like I said, this is a really, really quoted Bible verse.

I mean, my grandmother had this stitched on her pillow in her living room. I saw it on graduation cards to college students that I used to teach. We memorized this verse during UBS this week. I won't call on you to say it. But it is it is super quoted. But the problem is is that when we memorize a verse and we hear it so much and we have it just etched on our heart, it's not necessarily in our hearts. Does that make sense? Sometimes we just don't let it sink in anymore. So I'm going to do the break check. I'm tapping the brakes and we're going to really just stop. And I want us to look at what this verse is teaching us specifically. What is teaching us about discernment? And I just want to get this out of the way at the beginning. Discernment is not just a magical gift that is granted to a few select people. Discernment is something that we all need to exercise that we should be exercising if we are living a healthy,

godly, God centered life. Does that make sense? This is not it's not just some magic trick. It's not floating around. It's not some equation for the smartest Ph.D. at the seminary to figure out. It is something that we are all called to do. It is a way of living and it has to be genuine. And just to give you a little bit of context of where we are here in Proverbs, it opens up as with the tone as a father speaking to a son. Right. My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments. Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart. That's how chapter three sort of begins. And if you look at this, right, this is this is something that is that those are some intimate statements. Right. And we're and we're looking at God's wisdom here. Right. And there's two things I want to really pay attention to as we go through.

We look at God's wisdom. One, it is a covenant wisdom. Right. You guys know what covenant means? Yeah. It's like the promise of you actually going to do something when you say it. Right, John. That's what men do. Right. That's what people should do. If we say we're going to do something, we're going to do it. God has never, ever failed in that task. If he says something, he does it. We see it throughout the entire Old Testament. OK, so it's this. His wisdom is it is coming. It is promised. He gives it to us if we seek it. Does that make sense? The other aspect of God's wisdom is it is relational. This is not just some hey, how you doing kind of wisdom. This is a deep, intimate wisdom that should be soaked in and it should be lived not just daily, but every minute. OK, so this is a wisdom that is genuine. It is covenant. It is relational. And it is handed down inside of this relationship of grace and love.

OK, it is. And again, this is not some self-help seminar. We are talking about the sermon. If you have a hard time making decisions, I'm not going to be I can't help you today. That's a you problem. That's really not a God problem. OK, that's another whole sermon series probably Drew right. If you can't make decisions, you have a hard time decisions. One, kids, you can blame your parents. Parents, you can blame your kids. OK, I'm just kidding. You can't. It's really all up to you. At some point we have to it comes down to you have to move right. You have to move. I used to tell the college kids that would come in. I just don't want to do what I want to do with my life. I'm like, well, how about just sit right here and do nothing? Right. No, the only bad decision is the one you don't make. Sound good? All right. So now that we got that out of the way, as we as we walk through this this text of

verses five and six, I really want us to pay attention to four movements. OK, by the way, it's trust in the Lord with all your heart. Anybody want to finish it? Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. And in all your ways, acknowledge him and what will he do? He will make straight your paths. Nice. Perfect. There it is. We know it right. It's right there. If you don't know it is a great verse to memorize for this week. OK, but it really there's just four movements right for move and I'm going to and I want to call the movements one because this is not some linear timeline where it's a beginning and an end. It is a circular thing. This is a cycle that you should go through every single day. Every single day. Every single minute. Number two, it is a posturing. Now, what do I mean by posturing? We have this beautiful little baby boy that has stayed in our house for a few

days. Guy can't hold his head up for anything. I asked him to didn't very disobedient. Right. He's six weeks old, six weeks old. Right. Can he hold his head up? Why? He has no muscles, no muscle. Not only does he have any muscles, his bones are like cartilage. There's nothing to pull against. But over time, he's going to get stronger. Right. As he grows, as he grows, right. Growth is an important aspect of this.

But he will soon learn to do a posture. You guys have a particular posture, whether you're slouching or sitting like you're supposed to, you are in a posture. There are muscles being utilized in every aspect, whether you're laying down, sitting up, standing, walking, running, whatever. It's a posture. It is a constant thing and it is something that takes practice. OK, so it's a movement. This is a posturing that we have got to take. So there's really four movements and they build on each other. If you walk away from this sermon and you take away one point, don't take away any because you're going to do more damage to the kingdom than good if you only take away one of these points because they all build on each other and they're all integral for the aspect of discernment. OK, so those four movements that we're going to talk about.

Right. Is one we're going to trust. We're going to trust in the Lord completely. Right. Completely trust in the Lord. We will not lean the full weight of your life on your own understanding. We're going to release that. We're going to give that to somebody else. Sound good. So we're going to trust. We're going to release. We're going to acknowledge him in everything and not just our big decisions, but also in our, our little ones. Right. God's not going to trust you with the big until he can trust you with the small.

Right. And then lastly, we're going to end up right where we started with trust. Again, when I taught college, if you see a word appear twice on a slide, you're going to be tested on it. Right. So same thing, right? This is, this is something God tests us on every single second. OK. So trust, it is super important. We're going to trust that he's the one that's going to make your path straight. Not you sound good. So four movements, you're writing those down, Emma. All right. So trust. I love, I love the oysters. All right. So we're going to look at this first part, trust in the Lord, the Hebrew word, the Hebrew word trust here. It's not just some mental agreement. The way you would say, Hey, I'm going to trust this chair. This is not just the way my wife looks at the empty or the gas tank like on our car and say, I can make it another 50 miles. It's not that weird kind of trust.

This is something a little bit deeper and it's something that's throwing your entire weight into something. OK, it's a complete and utter trust. It's the same word that the Israelites were told to do when they were facing an army, a huge army in walls that were just mountainous and they were told to trust me, just march around it seven times. I got you. Right. It's that same level of trust here. OK. And I do want you to know, it says with all of your heart, all, all half, half, all, little bit, all of it, a little bit, half of it. No, how much of it? All, all, all, all. I want you guys to leave here today. And every time you hear their word all, I want you to think about the annoying guy on stage and I want you to remember what you're supposed to be doing. Sound good? All, all, Sean, all. Thanks. Good to see you're awake. All. All right. And it's not just your feelings.

When the Hebrews talk about heart, he's, they're not talking about you. It's only our little pathetic world generation over here that we think feelings matter. No, no, we're not. The Hebrews are talking about everything. They're talking about your mind, your will, and the emotional and affectional aspects. That is what we mean with your heart. All of you, all of it. Sound good? So all, all. We're going to trust with all. I love it. And here's why it matters for discernment because scripture never asks, what should I do? It asks, who should you lean on and who are you doing it for?

Right. So the first act of discernment is there. Discernment is fundamentally a trust question before it is a technique question. You, you can have the sharpest, most analytical mind. You can have the highest GPA at seminary and none of that matters. You can still make spiritually foolish decisions because the real issue was never a lack of information. It was a lack of trust. Okay.

I love the scripture in Jeremiah chapter 17. I'm not going to throw up there. I'm just going to let you in fact, check me later. But Jeremiah chapter 17 verses five and eight, I'm going to paraphrase it because Drew only said I have 35 minutes. So cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert and shall not see any good come. But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream and does not fear when heat comes for its leaves will remain green. And it is not anxious in the year of drought for it does not cease to bear fruit. I love this verse and I don't love the verse because it is all just packed full of truth. I love the verse because this, this is, and this is what the promise is not.

Let's do it over there. I'm not going to tell you what the promise is. What is it not? The promise is not that the tree is going to wither and die. It's not promising that you're never going to face trials. It's never right. It's not promising. There's never going to be heat. It's not going to promise you there's going to be summers of drought. It is saying this will happen. And the blessing isn't in the absence of a hard season. The blessing comes in the roots are deep enough to reach the everlasting source. Do you have that level of trust? Where are you? Where are you rooted? Where are you? It matters ultimately in this discussion of discernment. Okay. And I, and I do want to be clear, trusting the Lord, your decisions will not get easier or clearer. Sound good. I'm not going to Joel Osteen it for you. It's, it's, it's, there's some hard stuff that comes with this, with becoming a

Christian, with following the Lord. Things don't get easier at all. But a deeper root system for whatever the decision brings. Ah, that's what trusting the Lord gets you a deeper, more ample supply to the water of life, to water that will never leave you. That will always sustain you through any season of life. Okay. So before you go out, actually, I want to give you this, this picture analogy real quick with the ladder. I don't know where we are in the slides. I didn't make these. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The wizard ladder. You did not put the ladder. I can't tell if you're joking. This hurts my heart.

And this is why we, this is why the ladder is why we don't trust. Okay. I had a picture of a guy in a ladder in a stairwell painting and his buddy was holding the ladder. Have you seen that? Yeah. There's not a person on this planet that I'd love or trust enough to do that for me. Yeah. Yeah. I'm that guy. Yeah. No, no, no. I don't care. Right. And so it's like a ladder and a ladder's cause, its purpose is to bear your full weight when, when it's leaned up and it's supported by something solid, man will never be solid. The wisdom of this world will never be solid. It is not something I should be able to do. I suggest you lean your ladder on. All right. So number one, we're going to do it with half all number two, where are your roots? Are you growing your roots? Three, where is your ladder? Where is it standing? Whose foundation is it standing on?

Okay. If all of those questions aren't a hundred percent him, then I really need to, you kind of seeing where there's a problem, right? Yeah. And again, it's not God. Sound good. All right. So like I said, before you go out and you build a gigantic awesome pro and con list this week, before you run one more scenario in your brain about our decision, or before you check chat GTP on what you should do, right? I want you to ask a more basic question. Where are your roots? Is the anxiety that you're carrying about a decision actually from that lack of information or is it, is it, if you're being honest about a lack of trust, that God is good enough and sovereign enough to be trusted with the outcome?

That was my problem. Cause I can see outcomes. Yeah. Right. So can you trust God with the outcome? And in case you didn't realize that's there's a word called faith. That's what that is. Okay. That's what that is. Real discernment again, does not start with the spreadsheet or chat GTP discernment starts on your knees. It starts with a posturing. Where are you postured? The next part of this chapter or verse five there in chapter three is lean not on your own understanding. And here the Hebrew, again, the Hebrew word, it's similar to what we saw before, right? To the word trust. It's literally, it's, it's, it's talking about what are you leaning on? What is, what is, is, is it safe? Can it support weight? It's like a cane, right? It's almost talking like a cane type structure. That's sort of what that word lean is talking about. And I want you to look at the next phrase, your own understanding, because

this is the phrase like almost this entire topic this morning is going to hang on the Hebrew word translated like that understanding. It's kind of remarkable. It's used so many other places in the Old Testament. I'm not a language guy, but I actually decided to support Drew and I did a little research. I'm not going to bother you with the pronunciations because I'm from Tennessee and I will get them wrong. There's not enough vowels in those words. I don't know. So many constants. I was like, where's the vowel? I don't know. It's so many constants. I was like, where's the vowel? But I'm going to tell you, but the word understanding here is the same one we see like in Proverbs chapter two. Solomon says, Hey, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, it's the word to describe Daniel's God given gift of interpreting and understanding dreams.

It's that same word. It's that same thing. Okay. And so I was just, I was kind of remarked. I was like, Oh my gosh, that's amazing. It's the same word all throughout. It literally means and can be talked about as discernment. Okay. As discernment. So again, I want to look at what the verse is not saying. So many times we look at what it is saying. I'm going to let you know what it's not saying, and hopefully that's going to direct you in the direction we should be going. Okay. What are we not saying? It is not saying that we should just necessarily turn off our brain. It's not commanding you to be simple uninformed. It's not telling you to be suspicious of knowledge.

Right. Two chapters later, it literally, Psalm says, get wisdom, get insight. I mean, he wrote like three books on wisdom and it right. That's that's, that's not what he's saying here. He's not saying that at all. And he's not warning us about discernment itself. What I think he's warning us about is autonomous discernment. Autonomous. What is autonomous discernment?

It is scary and it's dangerous because that's an insight that has cut itself loose from the source. Okay. And now that that discernment, it only answers to itself. Right. So we become our own authorities. I know I've met a lot of you. That's scary. That is scary. Right. So again, it is when it becomes self-generated, it is granted, it is received. It is not self-generated. The danger isn't having understanding. The danger is leaning the full weight of your life on your understanding that originates in you, that is validated by you and it reports to no one, but you. How can we be wrong?

Does it make sense? And then we feel ultimately comfortable in that space. And it's really hard to get out. It's really hard to get out. Now, how does this show up in a real decision? Right. To me, it's when I've prayed about it, quietly becomes code for it. I've asked God to bless what I've already decided with my own reasoning and my own thoughts. Right. That's what that sort of looks like in, in right. It's when your gut, your data, your intuition, chat, GTP, your five-year plan, your 10-year plan, your college degree plan. It's when all of that becomes the final courts of appeal for your wisdom and for your discernment, instead of the tools that we should be holding loosely in our hand, we hold them on tight.

Right. Those are tools that we, I mean, God's not saying don't use them. God's just saying, Hey, I get the vinyl word. I get the veto power. Does that make sense? That's why we take stuff to him. He didn't give us brains just to sit here and be dumb. He right. I mean, so, but our problem is, man, with our own power, we hold on to these tools that the world's given us that we think are absolute and we just go ahead and bypass the veto power. And we just go straight on to saying it's good. We self validate our own discernment and then we get mad at God when it doesn't work out.

So we get in this, this, this horrible just circle. Proverbs again, in another part of proverbs, it says in an abundance of counselors, there is safety. We need to use our mind. We need to ask wise people. We need to weigh the facts, but we hold our conclusions loosely enough that God's word, his voice can again, have that veto power, even the smartest, most defensible, most reasonable conclusions.

We will not stand up to his infinite wisdom. How tight are you holding on to the tools that God's given you? Again, let me show you what this looks like in scripture. I'm not going to leave scripture today. There's no fun stories. We're going to stay completely in scripture. This is a fun story. Genesis chapter 15, right? We're going to go all the way to the beginning in case you guys didn't know where Genesis was, go to Psalms, turn left all the way Genesis chapter 15. God made a promise to a guy named Abraham. You guys remember what his promise was?

God promised Abraham a son. Nice. Right. And there was a lot of other cool stuff came to that, but it ultimately he was promised a son, but a few years had passed and guess what? His wife, Sarah, no, they didn't have a kid. So Sarah, who seems reasonably smart comes up with this idea. This was a legal idea. This was a completely valid culturally in this time is a similar situation where if you couldn't have kids, but God promised you a son, you couldn't have kids and you were tired of waiting and he went to adopt. It's a similar kind of situation here. So Sarah suggests, you know what? Use my servant, Hagar, to have our sons and let them fulfill God's promise. Right. I mean, was that really sidestepping the plan?

No, the plan was intact. What wasn't was the timing. What wasn't was the timing. And so instead of waiting on the Lord's timing and for his promise to come through on his terms, we still see the fruits of that decision played out in conflicts, thousands and thousands of years later, because God did fulfill his promise, not just to one son, but to the sons. So we literally still have warring parties all as a result of somebody who did not wait for God's timing.

Okay. So again, that's, that's a real life play out. Sometimes the decisions that do the most damage in our lives are not the obviously foolish ones, right? We, those are landmines we can see. But we send it tend to focus on those and we lose track of the reasonable ones because we never actually consult and pray and seek God's guidance for those. Okay. So here's a question for the decisions that you're thinking of right now, because I know this brought up some decision in your life.

Have you actually brought it to God or have you already decided just using your own logic, your own thinking, and you're just waiting on him to sign off on it, getting that rubber stamp. Are there decisions like that for you today? And I do want to say one more thing. This is a pet peeve. I thought about not saying it, but I'm going to go ahead and say it Drew, because you can't fire me. I don't work here.

I don't want to leave you with the, with the, with the wrong picture, right? Leaning not on your own understanding does not mean waiting around for like a lightning bolt or a burning bush or a mountain to glow with the glory of God and give you some amazing answer. If you're waiting for that, I am so sorry that someone misled you that far. You're going to be waiting forever. That is not what we're talking about here. Some of us have swung so far away from self-reliance that we have made passivicity a God. We have made it a virtue.

Refusing to make a decision at all, we can get some, until we get some unmistakable sign or answer that this is the way we should go. And then we're going to go ahead and call that faith. Not only that, but we're going to share that story with other people and they're going to get the idea of that's what faith is. If you, if asking, um, it's you thinking clearly, gathering counsel, weighing the facts, holding every decision and every conclusion loosely enough that God gets the final word over your own certainty. Discernment is not the absence of thinking. It's the thinking that knows who it ultimately answers to.

Are we clear? So when you come to the fork in the road, you take it. Does that make sense? All right. Very good. That's sorry. I'm glad it wasn't that bad. See, in the next part of, of, of, of our verse, we'll go to verse six. Right. And then we're going to that third word, the acknowledge, we're going to acknowledge him, right? The sermon, if discernment isn't really a feeling and it's not just our own good sense, then where does it actually happen? The word acknowledge, right? Is, is, is not just some casual nod across the room. It's not just some fist bump. It is a intimate thing. It is the language is that of like the intimacy of knowing between a husband and a wife, the same word is used. God uses that to describe how he knows his own people. It is a deep, deep, deep, intimate thing. And I want you to notice one more thing. If you haven't noticed it already, it's a fun little word in some of your ways.

All, all Emma, all John, tell Sean how much all, all, all, all, all of your way. All, all not half. All, all your ways. Yeah. Not just on Sunday morning, not just in the cool little prayer time you say, every time you have a meal, not on Wednesdays, not at youth group, not at your home groups, not at your life groups, all in your ordinary Tuesday afternoons. In your Wednesday mornings, when you talk to your wife, when you talk to your husband, how you talk to your kids, kids, how you talk to your parents,

whether we choose to obey all of your ways and who are we acknowledging? And not you. I'm so sorry. This book was not written about you. Okay. And I think it's a very misread discernment is pretty misread. We treat it like it's a decision day event, something that we bring out on big occasions, right? Something like God gave us a vending machine and when we have to make a big decision, we got some special gold coin that we can just shove in there and get an answer. That's not discernment.

That's not what he created. In Psalms 32, we're doing a lot of Psalms today. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. God's guidance again, isn't a vending machine. And, and that's, that's God's side of the relationship. God's side of the relationship is I see you all the time. I have seen you since the day before you were conceived. I knew he knows every hair on your head. He knows you then. He knows you now. He knows you way way. He knows all of you. That's God's side of the relationship. Sound good? What is your side of the relationship? Paul says it best. Praise ceaselessly.

I have to do this a lot because people are hard. Are they not? Hmm? God, give me patience. God, don't hit this person. With my car. Yeah, yeah, they cross the road slowly. I'm like, uh oh. No, I'm not scared. Right? Maybe it's, ooh, those little prayers of God, give me, just give me the words to glorify you today. God, in this meeting, I want my actions to glorify your kingdom, not my bank account. Lord, today, when I talk to my wife, I want to glorify her as a spouse, as a partner, as a gift, as a blessing. Give me those words today. These aren't things you just say in the morning and hope to goodness they last the entire day. These are things that you pray for every single time you get that free moment and guess what? Those free moments should come way more and more often. The more that you lean a ladder against that solid foundation, guess what? That's the foundation you're going to start looking for more and more.

It's pretty, I mean, people think it's hard to communicate with God all the time. Try it. The peace that you are going to gain is going to be something that you will seek the minute that you wake up. There is no question why those devout followers in the Bible saw him all the time because they were, they experienced him throughout every moment of their day. We have that same freedom to do it, but we don't. We are just delusioned by so many different ways of this world. So discernment can be clouded by where we seek our wisdom. Where are you getting it? Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, chat GTP.

But again, that's what acknowledging him in all your ways looks like in practice. It's that daily habit of getting into the scripture. You can't buy, you cannot be influenced by what you don't know. It's that every minute prayer you cannot communicate. It's sort of like those pilot. Pilots. We got to love pilots. The pilot who checks in with the, with what's it called? The traffic tower thingy. Yeah, the tower is called the tower. I don't know. It checks in with a tower right before takeoff. Doesn't talk to him again till we land. Or do you want the pilot that checks in as soon as before takeoff, after takeoff, and it's in constant communication with the tower because that tower can see things on their radar that that pilot can't see from the cockpit where they're going to get gate change information. They're going to get hazard information, constant communication until the

second that they land and they arrive at the gate and then they sign off. Which pilot do you want? The second one or the one that doesn't communicate? I know those of you that married, your wife wants to, God wants to. Are you the, are you the Christian that's going to pray in the morning and hope that that's going to make it all the way through? Are you the person that's going to show up on Sundays and hope that today it's going to, you're going to be filled enough to be Godly, to seek his guidance, to follow his commandments, to grow his kingdom every minute of your life by getting filled up in the 35 minutes serving on Sundays. Wow.

Right. And none of this guarantees a particular outcome. What it does is build kind of a life that is actually postured to hear from God when those big decisions arrive, because you've already built the habit. If we build a habit with the smaller decisions, guess what? Those larger ones. They're not so bad. I used to tell the kids in college, man, if you have a hard time deciding what classes you're going to take, make a decision.

One class. Let's let you decide one class. Next time we're going to register for classes. Ooh, now you got three classes. We're just going to get them used to doing it. We're just going to get them used to doing it. Are you in the habit of seeking God with every single one of your decisions? Some of them, some of your decisions. All, all, all, all, all of your decisions, all of it.

The next part, I know we're going to be running late. I haven't even kept time. There's no cowboy game. We're fine. He will make straight your paths. Okay. The Hebrew word here, this, this word straight is like, is level. It's, it's, it's smooth. All right. This is the promise again, that everyone loves the quote, right? But I just want to give just a little bit of a warning because this is exactly where people can get hurt by this verse. If we just curiously just throw it out, right? Straight does not mean easy or comfortable, right? We're going to say it again. It does not mean easy or comfortable. And it's not necessarily a painless one either. Consider Joseph in the Bible. If we know Joseph, that guy was treated kind of poorly, but God had a path for him. And he ended up right where he needed to be.

Exactly where he needed to be. What about the Israelites in the wilderness? We literally spent how much time in Exodus? Oh, those Israelites, they didn't spend 40 years in the desert because their GPS broke. They spent 40 years because it took 40 years to God to refine those people to well enough to establish his kingdom on this earth. Like that's, it took 40 years. So it had a purpose. It wasn't a straight path to them, but to God, it was the straightest path. What about Jesus himself? Oh, let's not, let's not forget him. He's the only person who ever really trusted God, the father perfectly with his entire heart, who never once leaned on his own understanding apart from the father's will, who acknowledged the father in all of his race, wait right up into the garden, right? My, not my will, but yours be done. The path of the father, it was straight for him.

And where did it one run straight to the cross. So the path, even though it may not appear straight, it was straight. It's not your discernment. That's the cause. It's his. It may, and if it's scary, I hope it's scary because the scarier, the scarier it is, the more you lean man. When things get super scary, I have a habit these days as I'm getting older. I run to one thing and that's my God. His arms are the only ones soft enough, graceful enough, lovingly enough, wise enough to handle everything that I have.

So when your path doesn't seem straight again, it's not your discernment we're leaning on. Some of you are waiting for this decision again to feel obvious before you trust it. But the promise again of proverbs six or three six was never, you'll know exactly what to do next and it will, and it's going to be clear and easy. It's if you trust me, set your own understandings down off the throne. You acknowledge me. I will be the one directing this. Even to the parts that don't make sense. Biblical discernment is not the absence of uncertainty. It's the confidence in the character of the one directing you through.

And I want to be clear Drew mentioned confidence a few weeks ago. Confidence is not arrogance. The difference between confidence and arrogance is confidence is built in the comfortability of a failure. I'm not confident because I've won so much. I'm confident because I failed way more times than I have succeeded. I'm also confident because of the humility. When I do fail, it's not a failure because God can use me just as much in my failures as he can in my successes.

So will we see failure? He still sees a straight path. So trust him completely. That's what the sermon is. We're not going to lean the full weight of our lives on our own understanding. Even the best, even the smartest. We're going to acknowledge him. And I want to say this because Proverbs, he keep, they keep pointing to it, but they never actually say the name in the book at the end of the day. Again, this is, it's not a self-help manual. This is not going to help you get from A to B. It's pointing us to a person though.

It's pointing us to a person. Paul writes that Christ Jesus became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption in Corinthians and that in him, all are hidden. All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge in Colossians. The discernment, this text is telling us is not manufactured on our own. It actually has a home. It has an origination spot and it's a person in his name is Jesus.

If you want real discernment for decisions that are seen right in front of you, the first move isn't a better pro and con list. It's Christ. I want you to do something concrete before you leave today, right now, maybe write down that decision that has been floating in your head this entire sermon and then run through the four movements. Tomorrow, pick another decision, run through the four motion, the four movements. I want you to do that every single day this week. Next week we're going to start and we're going to do it with two decisions.

Pretty soon it becomes a habit of every time you need to do something. We are seeking the one who wisdom comes from. We are seeking the one where our roots should grow towards. It's going to happen naturally. Pray with me real quick. God, we just come before you, Lord. I just want to be still. I just want to quiet this week. Lord, I just want to seek truth. I want us to find you. I want us to leave here this morning, knowing that we were not actually meant to carry the full weight of our own discernment, that that weight was never ours to bear alone, that it belongs on you.

Lord, it belongs on you because of your character, because of your wisdom, because of your promises. Lord, I want us to lay down those moments of anxiety that are separating us from seeking you, from those emotions that can just put wedges in the relationship that we have with you. Lord, I admit to you that I am not, we are not strong enough to hold our own weight.

Lord, I just ask that you seek us as we make our path straight with your wisdom, with your guidance. God, I am so thankful for your sovereignty. I am so thankful for the peace that we have, knowing that we are taken care of. Lord, I thank you for your grace. I thank you for your love. I thank you for this church. In the junior name we pray. Amen.