Decision Making: How Do I Stop Being A Sleazy Charismatic? Know When To Close An Open Door

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Bible, sissies, sodomites, men with man -buns, those who approve of men with man -buns, man -bun enablers, white knights for men with man -buns, homemakers who have finished

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The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of Almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear His words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed, and they will perish.

God wrapped Himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the

Father, where He sits now to make intercession for us. Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear

His words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come, in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

Listen and enjoy this installment of Iron Sharpening Iron as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions.

Here's Pastor Tim. On this episode of Bible Bash, we will continue our discussion, how do I stop being a sleazy charismatic when it comes to making decisions?

As we've said, these episodes are designed for individuals who want to stop being false prophets but just can't seem to quit. This week, we'll be discussing step two in this process, how do

I know when to close an open door? It's been popular, as it relates to the discussion of decision -making, to think about one way of finding this secret will of God that's unrevealed, this key to finding out

God's pleasure that's not going to be found in the Bible. One of the popular ways of trying to discern or find this secret will of God is to look for open doors or closed doors, or to pray for open doors or closed doors.

So you can imagine the kind of scenario, and many of us have engaged in just this sort of thing, where you have two jobs that you're looking at, and then you'll pray,

Lord, whatever job is your will, please open that door, or if this job that I'm looking at taking is not your will, please close this door.

Or if you have a scenario where you're dating someone and you want to know, is this woman the will God has for my life?

Or if you're a woman looking to date a man, and is this the man I'm supposed to marry? Then you would pray in some sort of simple way,

Lord, if this is not your will, then break the relationship up, and I'll submit to whatever happens. Now, in a certain sense, that does reflect a humble kind of posture in that the individual wants to know what

God's will is and wants to submit their emotions and their affections to God's will, and does have a genuine desire to be well -pleasing in the sight of the

Lord. The problem with it, though, is fairly obvious. This is not the way that God's instructed us to actually make decisions.

In doing something like this, one of the things that we're doing is we're refusing to actually engage in the process of taking responsibility for the decisions that we actually have to make.

So instead of owning the fact that we are responsible before God to make a wise choice among various options which may be permissible, we're essentially punting and asking

God to make the decision for us through appeal to his meticulous providence.

Now, part of the problem is that we're rejecting the process of decision -making and basically appealing to God for some sort of direct revelation about his will in a particular situation instead of consulting the scriptures that we view as sufficient, a sufficient guide to help us to know

God's parameters about the decision that we're going to make and recognize that there's freedom to make certain choices and we're responsible to pick the best one.

So part of the problem is that we're rejecting the idea of making a decision by doing this kind of thing.

But another part of the problem is that God's providence can't simply be read in that kind of way, meaning there are obviously doors that can be open or shut in our life that we shouldn't take no matter if they're open or not.

So you can't just look at an open door and determine in some simplistic way that that's God wanting you to walk through it.

A good example of this would be Proverbs 7 where a young man is seen walking near the door of a prostitute and the prostitute invites him into her home and basically seduces him with much speech and presents to him an open opportunity that he shouldn't take.

One of the things that that tells us is that there are plenty of doors that will happen in our life that are essentially temptations towards evil.

And the only way you know whether a door is something that you can in good conscience walk through or shouldn't walk through is by appealing to God's revealed will to determine how to view your circumstances.

And so you never view circumstances in themselves as some sort of authoritative mechanism of knowing

God's will. Any circumstance that can happen in your life can either be there as a test for you or it can be there as a blessing to you.

So it can be a test or it can be a blessing. You have no way of knowing without looking at God's actual revealed will and determining how to view the open doors or the closed doors.

There could be plenty of situations where a door actually does close that God still wants you to find a way to open.

So in a past generation, there have been many a man who has asked a woman on a date to be rejected only to persist in asking her multiple times.

I know that you're not really allowed to do this anymore because this would be considered abuse. But then there was a past generation who, many of whom, found spouses by keeping on being persistent and keeping on knocking at that closed door only to see that after some persistence and good humor, the door finally opens.

And so one of the things to realize is that the presence of an open door or presence of the closed door in of itself doesn't actually mean anything.

The only sure way to determine what God's will is, again, is to look at God's revealed will in the Scripture and then to devote yourself to those kind of things that are actually found there.

And in doing so, one of the things that you'll realize is that finding God's will is not meant to be mysterious or overly complicated.

So we need to quit looking for these open doors and closed doors as authoritative means of determining

God's pleasure in any given situation. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed.

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Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.