How God Builds Your Faith: Decision

James 1:6, 8
But when you ask Him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind . . . Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.

Today's Readings reminded me of an email I recently received. It was a simple devotional email released by Rick Warren and it started with the verse from James above. In today's first reading from Exodus 14:5-18 Our Lord God asked Moses to lift up his staff and with hand outstretched over the sea, split it in two.

What!?!?

Seriously Lord, the Egyptians are right there. I can see them. Can we stop jackin' around here and do some smiting or something. ;)

That's probably what I would have been thinking. And Moses may have had his reservations as well. We all do when we're asked to do those things that God knows will make us great - Things we haven't done before - Things outside our comfort zone. But, Moses' faith was in God alone.

The rest of this post comes directly from Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Connection.So check it out and subscribe.

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After God gives you a dream, the next step for building your faith is decision; God challenges you to do something about your dream.

Nothing is going to happen to that dream until you wake up and put it into action. You've got to make the decision: "I'm going to go for it!" For every ten dreamers in the world, there is only one decision maker. A lot of people have dreams but they never get to step two: making the decision to trust God and follow their dream.

James says, "But when you pray, you must believe and not doubt at all. Whoever doubts is like a wave in the sea that is driven and blown about by the wind. If you are like that, unable to make up your mind and undecided in all you do, you must not think that you will receive anything from the Lord" (James 1:6-7 TEV).

Faith is a verb. It's active and not passive. It's something you do. Decision making is a faith-building activity. You use your muscles of faith.

Faithful decision making requires two things:

1. You must decide to invest your time, money, reputation, and energy. You lay it on the line; you take the plunge. You say, "God, You've told me to do this and I'm going to be faithful to do it!"

2. You have to let go of security. You cannot move in faith and hold onto the past at the same time. You have to move forward. God told Abraham that He was going to make him the father of a great nation, and that meant Abraham had to leave his home for an unknown destination. Moses had to let go of his position in Pharaoh's kingdom in order to do God's will. Nehemiah gave up a secure job in order to go build a wall around Jerusalem. In other words, if you want to walk on water, you've got to get out of the boat.

A great illustration of God's plan is a trapeze artist. They swing out holding onto a trapeze bar, and then they let go in order to grab hold of another trapeze bar that swings them to the other side. But, at one point, they're not holding on to any bar. They're suspended in air for a split second.

Have you ever been there in a career, where you're leaving one job for another and nothing's in between? You're 180 feet above the ground with no net below and holding onto nothing.

But if you don't let go and grab onto the vision God wants you to have, you swing back. Only you don't swing all the way back; instead, you swing back lower and lower until you're finally stopped, hanging there in the air. And there's only one way out: down!

That's why God brings you to a point of decision, so your faith will build as you swing toward the dream God has given you.

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Further Reading:
- How to make better decisions
- Prayer and Influence
- Ranch Ethics Thursday

How to make better decisions.

It was SO hard to push the girls down the page, but people were beginning to wonder if the blog was still going. ;) Well, it is. You can still see the Triple Threat if you scroll down far enough.

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Now, on to the anticipated follow-up to our Ask the Readers Poll.

Are you familiar with driving under the influence?

You don't have to have been arrested for D.U.I. to be familiar with it. Your family may have been affected by someone else's D.U.I. You may have done it and never gotten caught. You may have just had a drink or two and driven home "just fine".

The point is that just about everyone understands what driving under the influence means. Technically, it is the act of operating a vehicle (including bicycle, boat, airplane or horse) after consuming alcohol or using drugs.

Now that you see that the law includes horses, do we have a few more affirmations on the first question? ;)

Basically, you are not you when you are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Therefore, you make driving decisions different from those that you would normally make

Enough about DUI. What does this have to do with people who visit www.SpiritualHorseman.com?

You are under the influence EVERY DAY.

It's a different kind of DUI. We are all Deciding Under the Influence.

Last week's Ask the Readers Poll posed the question "Where do you find inspiration?" This is the follow-up post.

As of Tuesday, June 9, 28 votes placed Nature on top with 10 votes followed by Other People with 8 votes. Well, everyday we make thousands of decisions. And you haven't made even one of them on your own.

Humans don't really make decisions. We make comparisons.

Let's say you went looking for a house/car/horse and the first one you found was perfect. What'd you do? . . . Go look at another one. Why? You had to in order to make a comparison. If you didn't have to go look at another one, you were subconciously comparing to some other baseline representation of what you were looking for - Something you had an experience with in the past.


Here is an image from the book Predictably Irrational that comes from the excerpt found here. It would really be worth a read, but here's the gist:

Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, gave these options to 100 MIT students. (MIT is a prestigious university in Massachusetts known for it's brilliant technical students)

The result:

• 16 students wanted Internet-only


• ZERO students wanted Print-only


• 84 students wanted Print-and-Internet

Then, Mr. Ariely gave 100 students these choices:

Do you think the results were the same? I mean, no one chose Print-only so everything should be the same, right?

Nope. Here are the results:

• 68 students chose Internet-only: Up from 16


• Only 32 chose Print-and-Internet: Down from 84

The mere presence of the decoy Print-only option gives us something else to compare. And we go for the better deal EVERY TIME.

Predictably Irrational really is a great book packed with interesting stuff like this. It's an easy read though, so if you want to know more about why we make irrational decisions over and over again, you'll have to buy it and read it for yourself. There's simply not enough room here to share all I gained from reading this book.

So why is this relevant to SpiritualHorseman.com readers?

How can we make better decisions?

Good question. It's obvious that we are all influenced by something. And since you read SpiritualHorseman.com, you are now more aware of this fact. Now you know that everything is a comparison to something else. If most of your day is filled with negativity, you'll tend to be more negative. Do you think most ranchers are conservative because they own land, pay property taxes, inherit estates? Nope.

Life-long ranchers are more conservative because the behavior they witness every day in cattle, horses, nature, etc. is a survival of the fittest type of behavior. If something is weak, it dies. A momma cow earns her keep by having calves or she goes to the packer. Everything has a purpose. And a natural, logical path delivers that purpose or changes will be made. And so ranchers are logical. They are usually conservative, and they are probably the ones voting for nature as their inspiration. Plenty of wealthy individuals obtain property and animals and don't have conservative values. That's because they are not continually exposed to those kinds of values. They don't have those to compare to. And they are probably not inspired by nature.

Of course there is a difference between inspiration and influence. Inspiration usually leaves you with a sense of awe. Influence usually leaves you with a sense of 'I'll take this rather than that'. Our sources of inspiration, however, shed a great deal of light on what influences us. If you chose Other People as a source of inspiration, you probably are blessed with at least one person you know you are influenced by and whom you model your decision making after. But, know this - You are also influenced by many other people in your life.

So now that we know that we aren't in control of our decision making, we can make better decisions. Just like the Print-only decoy that the Economist marketers presented, life includes decoys every day. Certain circumstances, weather, people, etc. Think about them independantly and then make choices. Find positive sources of influence.

Be the influencer.
Do you make choices as a money influenced person of a particular profession (teacher, rancher, banker, lawyer, doctor, etc.)?

Or do you make choices as a Christian influenced child of God?

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Further Reading:

• Ask Readers: Where do you find inspiration?


• Dan Ariely's blog about the hidden forces that shape our decisions.


• Get Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions