Tom Kopp – Glendale Campus Pastor

Last week we began looking at some of the challenges associated with having too many choices.  We also talked about how you filter through all the choices to arrive at the best decision possible.  Today I want to look at the benefit of making the big decisions first and how some decisions we make help us to make other decisions more easily.

Dr. Iyengar’s speech got me thinking about the choices you and I make spiritually.  I wonder if at times we are giving ourselves too many choices.  I wonder if at times we are forcing ourselves to make some of the same decisions over and over.  I wonder if the plethora of choices we are making is causing us to: delay making choices, be less satisfied with the choices we make, and to make decisions that are not as good for us.

I would encourage each of us to make some one-time decisions that you can be sure of and take some of the choice pressure off of your plate.  Here are some that I have made that help me.

• I will be in worship every single week.
• I start my day every day reading God’s word.
• I have a budget that my wife and I have set, that determines each month how we spend our money.
• I do not miss my Life Group if I am in town.
• I have determined the percentage of my income that I bring back to God every week.
• I never go to lunch alone with a woman.
• I pray with my kids every morning and my wife every night.  If out of town I call both in the morning and at night.

Each one of the choices I have already made make it easy for me to say, “No” to a lot of other choices that would be less satisfying and less purposeful in my life.  They also ensure that I am doing the things with my life that I have determined are the best use of my life.  Why don’t you sit down sometime today (decide to do it today, so it doesn’t get away from you) and make the one-time choices for your life that will make many of your other choices easier.