When John got caught by his young daughter late one night looking at Internet pornography, that ugly moment represented a long path of choices which could be rooted back in years of small compromises. If you were to have told the once young dreamer and idealist that he would one day be caught in such a scenario, he would have violently denied the very thought. This is what makes decisions so powerful, one will always lead to another, and it can like a landslide. They may be insignificant and harmless at the start, but will inevitably head us toward disaster. It’s called compromise, not just with God, but ourselves, goals and dreams. Decide enough times to submit to a fleshly desire and, like a tumor on the face, it will be integrated into the features of your character. Neglect godly wants and they will shrivel like an unused muscle, waning in their authority.

Decisions also have creative power. Decide to make small, even painful steps towards that mythical self you have always dreamed you can be, and in time dream will become reality. That is God’s will for you. He places dreams in us so we are forced to walk outside our comfort zone.

God has created us with the ability to make free chouses. Our Father in heaven does not power trip, He is not a control freak. He desires us to stand on our own two feet. He has given man great freedom. The question is what are you going to do with that freedom of decision?

Decision-making has creative power. Decisions have their own inertia that can build in momentum. One man’s decision to act on a dream resulted in IBM, one of the largest companies in the world. The world is full of dreamers, but dreaming is not enough. Without the power of decisiveness, dreams will fall to the ground and decay into oblivion.

Bad decisions have greater virtue than indecisiveness. There is no courage required in bobbing down a lukewarm river of life, making no attempt to determine the direction your life is taking. We learn from failure, investing and taking risks. Even bad decisions can lead to repentance and spiritual growth.

Take a moment and look at your life, your daily living. How much of what you do reflects decisiveness or simply playing out habits and unconscious behavioral patterns that have nothing to do with decision? For example, if you smoke, you do not exercise decision every time you light up a cigarette. Consider your options, the impact on health and whether it is a wise direction you are taking. The decision to smoke may have been made years ago, where with a great act of will, you forced your body, dragging it kicking and screaming into accepting the inhaling of toxic carbon into the lungs. Once the body conditioned its entire chemical homeostasis to the introduction of cigarettes, you could then place the act of smoking into the unconscious, like breathing and blinking.

So much of daily living has become devoid of decisions. That is fine if our living has been built on a history of wise choices. But if our lives are built on countless destructive decisions, then we must stop and dismantle any patterns that dictate unconscious behavior and recreate who we are by making healthy decisions in which the Holy Spirit may inhabit in all His fullness.

We have become puppets to a lifetime of past choices. The most powerful ingredient to luke-warmness is laziness, the unwillingness to rise up and take your life by the horns. But the blood of Christ, the infilling of the Holy Spirit, the possession of the Living Word and the gifts of the Spirit have placed the ball firmly in our court. Because we are so used to being carried along in a culture where so many decisions have been made for us, we have become apathetic and lazy. Stop crying out to God for a new, fresh anointing. You have been anointed to make decisions. Stop asking the Holy Spirit to fill you. Paul commands you to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Stop pleading with the Lord to make you Holy. Instead, work out your salvation in every action, thought and attitude. You have all you need. Now it is time to believe what you have received, and act.

The world has often said that Christianity is a crutch for the weak, and sadly they have been right. So many living from one spiritual high to another with vast blank spaces of unfruitfulness in-between. Moses, David, Elisha, Ruth, Paul, these were not weak people. They were decisive pillars, unshakable and consistent, not needing the ridiculous religious props of our modern version of church.. The Bible is full of men and women who changed the course of their lives and history because of the tuff decisions they were willing to make.

God is not a crutch, He does not carry us, as Footprints In The Sand would have us believe. Nor does He lay us on a carpet of dreamy ecstasy, carried by soft repetitious chanting, far away from the battle line. He gives us the strength to stand on our own two feet. Church, we have been called to be the most powerful force on earth. Stop romanticizing David and Goliath. David was a man just like us. You have the same Spirit of God and all the same resources David had as he stood before that ugly giant.

In the previous chapters, we have described who you are in Christ. All through the writings of the New Testament, especially in Paul’s writings, there is great emphasis on what the believer has become in Christ under the New Covenant, and therefore can become in their living. You are the Righteousness of God, but Paul does not stops there. In all his Epistles, he challenges you with the question, now what are you going to do about it?

Be not conformed to the patterns of this world, prepare your minds for action, be filled with the Holy Spirit, hate what is evil, cling to what is good, love one another deeply from the heart, offer your bodies as living sacrifices, do not be proud, be alert and always keep on praying, husbands love your wives, don’t let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, put off your old self, do not be deceived, work out your salvation with fear and trembling, rejoice in the Lord always, do not be anxious about anything, do not put out the Spirit’s fire, be holy as I am holy, be clear-minded and self-controlled so that you can pray, do not worry about tomorrow, resist the devil and he will flee from you, pursue righteousness, love and peace, live at peace, watch your life and doctrine closely, be reconciled to God, do everything without complaining or arguing, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God and do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies.

Christianity a crutch? I think not!

GET  HONEST
Before you can begin to make decisions, you have to get honest with yourself. God detests religious jargon. It’s a cover up, the propaganda of the heart, and we use it all the time. I’m struggling is about as misused as truth in the National Inquirer. If you are struggling, you’ll win. It would be refreshing to hear someone stand in church and proclaim I’m lazy. I’ve compromised. I’m blowing it. That is the kind of humble honesty where we can begin to move forward. The prophets in the Old Testament were honest to the point of crassness when exposing Israel’s sin. Repentance is the most powerful form of decision, but there can be no repentance unless first there is honesty.

If someone were to ask a compulsive eater if he desired to eat two chocolate bars a day for the rest of their life, the answer would be of course not. Those who wrestle with compulsive eating, in their heart of hearts, would be abhorred at the thought of such an indulgence. Yet, if someone were to ask a compulsive eater if they wanted to be free from food addiction, filled with the Spirit, content and joyful, they would receive an emphatic, yes, it is my heart’s desire. It is a desire that lives constantly inside, even during those painful times of indulgence.

But to say that the compulsive eater does not want the chocolate bar would be untrue.

Compulsive eaters do not continuously hunger for junk food. The temptation for the compulsive eater comes like a powerful tornado in the soul, an intense microcosm of flurry, whipping up emotions and inspiring an imagination of pleasure. These storms have triggers. A bad day at the office, a hurtful word from your spouse, depression, loneliness, fear, insecurity, melancholy, a feeling of being out of control. They create an environment where Satan is able to move in with His seductive promises of fulfillment, trying to force you to make a decision which will empower him to control a part of your character, expressed through behavior. They leave as quickly as they come, leaving an aftermath of guilt and despair where we are left with picking up the broken pieces, trying again to rise, bringing some semblance of order to a life torn by chaos.

I want more control over my diet. I want to lose weight. I want to quit drinking coffee. I want to watch less television. Or on a grander scale, I want to be more like Jesus. There is a place in every authentic Christian’s heart that earnestly desires to be free from sin. But it is not enough, because there is a war being waged in your members and an equally powerful desire to eat, watch TV, drink coffee and indulge in this world. And so, you do the things you do not want to do and the things you want to do you do not do. A compromise between the two desires of the heart is not the answer. So how can I be successful in making a decision and seeing it through?

First you must ask the question, why you want to go on a diet? If for simply losing weight or purging your soul of guilt, it will have no staying power. Desiring to be thin and attractive is a form of vanity. Vanity has no ability to tap into the eternal resource of authority God has given us. Decisions that have no eternal value become shallow to a heart that truly wants to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

Gaining control over what you eat is important. God cares about your health. Your body is His temple. Bingeing is rooted in something far deeper than simply craving. Sit down and take the time to delve inside, finding the roots of why you binge in the first place. Is it rooted in fear, insecurity, a low self-esteem, a lack of control in your life? Whatever it may be, there are important decisions to make first before you begin to make changes in your diet. Few invest the time and energy to seriously get down to business when it comes to addiction and compulsive behavior. All of us experience certain levels of compulsive behavior, but it is worth going deep and rooting out the reasons why we are manifesting unhealthy behavior in our daily living.

It can be an expensive investment, even painful to explore the roots of destructive behavior. We need to be courageous. God will go with us. But we cannot make wise decisions unless we are fully informed. A decision can be like a scalpel, precise in its ability to cut away destructive roots that have woven their way into our character. Again we emphasize that decisions are creative in nature, being able to reconstruct our hearts in the way that God has originally intended us to be.

The decision that you make today will affect you for years to come. But any decision that moves us closer to God will pay dividends throughout eternity. To deal with compulsive eating or any craving and addiction will force you to face painful things inside your heart and they will rise up in power if they are disturbed through decision.

One of the keys to success is to tackle decision-making like building a house. You must lay the foundation before you can build walls or roof. And although it is exciting to hang wallpaper, paint and add the finishing touch of trim, they can be completed only after the house is finished. We would all love the blessings of freedom from bad habits and irritating compulsions, but first, we must lay the foundation, a solid prayer life and continuous ingestion of the Word. These disciplines will become the foundation of all the decisions we will make.

Anthony Robins will sell you motivational tapes, videos and books to build faith in yourself. With his high octane teaching you will make power-decisions, placing you firmly on the fast tract to personal prosperity and wealth. Surprisingly, they work. Many people have found success in developing a strong faith in themselves. But there is a better way. God and you, standing together making a decision. You can chuck your Anthony Robins tapes in the garbage because, to really believe in yourself is to see the reflection of your face smiling back in the eye of God. To see you as He sees you.

We’ve got some great news. God believes in you. He has invested everything, even His Son, so that you can be free. It makes no difference to God how many times you have failed. God knows how to forget the past and refresh each morning with the hope of a new beginning.

Rationalization has been responsible for sabotaging millions of decisions all over the world. It’s really not that bad. I’ll start tomorrow. It won’t hurt this one more time. I wasn’t thinking straight when I made that decision. I’m not sure it’s God’s will. I shouldn’t oppress myself. I’ve worked really hard, I deserve it. Just a taste. The devil made me do it.

When you are being tempted, fight rationalization with rationalization. And here’s how you do it. Prepare some arguments ahead of time when doubt rears his ugly head. First of all, get it in context. A craving lends itself to tunnel vision, it becomes the only thing important in your world at that moment. Step back and count your blessings

An important component of stick-to-itiveness is leaving room for failure. Failures are the building blocks of success. Most people don’t have the courage to risk failure. When you fail, don’t be discouraged. God isn’t. He’s faithful when you are faithless and He knows you are trying. Confess your failure to God and He will provide you with the forgiveness and the spiritual detergent to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. In other words, a new beginning. The failure will be forgotten by God, so don’t you go and remind Him—that’s bad manners. Learn from your failure. Examine why you failed. And if you have any aspiration to enter full time ministry, remember, people can relate to someone who knows the bitter taste of failure much more than the lofty highs of perfection.

While your house is in the quietness of slumber, this is your time with the Father.