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When it comes to making decisions, chances are you’ve probably heard the advice this book is built upon before. The phrase isn’t new or even particularly creative. Personally, it’s advice I’ve taken, forgotten, and remembered again. But it’s held me up through young motherhood, grief, indecision, frustration, vocational boredom, and spiritual confusion. A version of this advice has been famously quoted by Mother Teresa, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Theodore Roosevelt, and Anne Lamott. It’s become a common catchphrase for coaches and athletes, in boardrooms and corporate motivational
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Maybe you are addicted to clarity and certitude, wanting to be absolutely sure of all the details before moving forward.
value approval
wanting to seek everyone else’s perspective before understanding your own, accounting for a lack of confidence a...
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aversion to making decisions so you either delegate them, avoid them, or make them too quickly just to get them settled.
addicted to activity, to hustle, to the fast pace of a well-connected life, and so when a decision needs to be made that could change the course of your future, you don’t have the space to consider what might be best, much less what you might actually want to do. It’s estimated that adults make over 35,000 decisions every day. A study at Cornell University revealed that Americans make over two hundred daily decisions on food alone.2 So many of those decisions are mindless; we aren’t actually aware of our choices. Right now chances are high that you have a decision to make.
Every day we have choices to make, priorities to set, goals to meet, and desires to consider.
Doing the next right thing is good advice, but it didn’t sink in for me fully until I started noticing it in the Gospels. So often, right after Jesus performed a miracle, he gave a simple next thing to do.
To Jairus and his wife, after raising their daughter from the dead, when he had their full and complete attention,
Jesus told them in the face of their rapt attention was to go make lunch. At first
glance, that seems like a waste of a captive audience.
Rather than a life plan, a clear vision, or a five-year list of goals, the leper, the paralytic, and Jairus and his wife were given clear instructions by Jesus about what to do next—and only next. Perhaps he knew something about our addiction to clarity. He knew if we could somehow wr...
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After Jesus performed miracles, he made the next right thing unmistakably clear. But what about for us? Let’s take our cues from Jesus and the recovering alcoholics by considering what it means for us to do the next right thing now. Not the next big thing. Not the next impressive thing...
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This is a book about making decisions.
What a privilege it is to have a choice to make at all. We live in a world where many people don’t have the luxury of choice in certain areas, and this book presupposes you are in a
position in life where choices are yours to make. We all have a different degree of control over various areas of our lives, depending on our age, our season, our family life, and our degree of privilege because o...
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Be willing to hold your choices with an open hand and see them from a different perspective.
Regardless of your own degree of personal choice, you have a
God who walks and talks with you, who moves in and through you,...
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you are one in whom Christ delights and dwells, and you live in the strong and unshakable kingdom of God. The decision is rarely the point. The point is you becoming more fully yourself in the presence of God.
Become a Soul Minimalist
Minimalism is not that you should own nothing. But that nothing should own you. Joshua Becker, The More of Less
of an answer but for the sake of love. I cannot promise your decision
Author and pastor A. J. Swoboda points out that in the last ten years, we’ve gone from having a TV in our living rooms to having a TV in our pockets.
We know all the ways our phone seems intent on ruining our best efforts at silent stillness. I won’t go too far down the road of all the ways our phones have rewired our brains, and I won’t make arguments for the pros and cons of technology, but here’s what I will say: if you are carrying an unmade decision, you have to find a way to push back the distraction of your phone and allow some nothing space to fill the in-between moments. For me, that looked like turning off all notifications. Maybe you did this years ago, and if so, you’re already ahead of the game. You already know it’s a small
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We’re letting everyone else’s agenda live for free in the sacred space of our creative mind, and it’s time for an eviction. This space is necessary for ideas to form, for questions to rise up, for hope to weave her way into our vision for the future, and for the dots of decision to begin to connect in the quiet places of our mind and heart. Good decisions require creativity, and creativity requires space. This space is necessary for you to speak out against the injustices you see in the world, the problems you know you can help solve, and the beauty you long to deliver. Of course our life is
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happens. But there is a whole category of distraction we have control over, and that’s the stuff that comes from our phones.
Name the Narrative We get into trouble whenever we do not name things properly.
what we believe about God informs every aspect of our lives, including our decisions.
Elisabeth Elliot that helped me pass the time. The program was called Gateway to
book published in 1897 called Ye Nexte Thynge by Eleanor Amerman Sutphen. In the first pages of her book, she quotes this poem in its entirety, giving credit to its author, Mrs. George A. Paull. Here we are, 122 years later, still hanging on to this wise advice. As you continue to carry
Mrs. Paull’s poem as your prayer.
From an old English parsonage down by the sea There came in the twilight a message to me; Its quaint Saxon legend, deeply engraven, Hath, it seems to me, teaching from heaven; And through the hours the quiet words ring Like a low inspiration: “Do the next thing.” Many a questioning, many a fear, Many a doubt, hath its quieting here. Moment by moment, let down from heaven, Time, opportunity, and guidance are given. Fear not tomorrows, child of the King; Trust them with Jesus: Do the next thing.
Oh! He would have thee daily more free, Knowing the might of thy royal degree, Ever in waiting, glad for His call, Tranquil in chastening, trusting through all. Comings and goings no turmoil need bring; His, all the future: do the next thing. Do it immediately, do it with prayer; Do it reliantly, casting all care; Do it with reverence, tracing His hand Who hath placed it before thee with earnest command. Stayed on Omnipotence, safe ’neath His wing, Leave all results, do the next thing. Looking to Jesus, ever serener, Working or suffering, be thy demeanor! In the shade of His presence, the rest
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five Look for Arrows Sometimes the circumstances at hand force us to be braver than we actually are, and so we knock on doors and ask for assistance. Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined. Ann Patchett, What Now?
We accept that in order to become good at something, practice is required.
Why, then, when it comes to decision-making, do we think we ought to just know?
Dallas Willard, in his book The Divine Conspiracy, says “the most important thing about you is not the things
you achieve but the person you become.”2
❍ A PRACTICE: MOVE ON WITH YOUR DAY AS NORMAL In his book Hearing God, Dallas Willard shares that when he asks something of God—for direction
or clarity in some way—he states it simply in prayer and then devotes the next hour or so to “housework, gardening, driving about on errands or paying bills,” things that keep his hands busy but his mind open.3
Dallas Willard: I’ve learned not to worry about whether or not this is going to work. I know it does not have to work, but I am sure that it will work if God has something he really wants me to know or do. This is ultimately because I am sure of how great and good he is.4 As you simply do the next right thing in front of you—wash the dishes, write the email, read the chapter, have the conversation—pay attention not only to what’s happening on the outside but to what is moving on the inside. Look for arrows, not just answers. If God has something to tell you, and you continue to place yourself
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all we can do to prepare rightly for tomorrow is to do the right thing today. Wendell Berry, Our Only World
Remember Jesus is not only your King and your Friend, your Savior and your Shepherd. He is also the smartest man who ever lived. You may not know how to navigate this new beginning, but he does. With him by your side, you have everything you need.
Embrace this unique time of being a beginner.
Let him teach you what is right, what to say, a...
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seven Ask This Question before Every Hard Decision
A PRACTICE: ASK THE QUESTION If you are facing down a big decision in your life, perhaps your next right thing is to ask yourself the question, In this decision, am I being pushed by fear or led by love?
eight Know What You Want More
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
