All of us at some point in our lives are going to have to make a very important life-changing decision.  It may involve our relationships, our family, our finances, our career.  Assuming that you've already been praying about it, I want to share with you four simple steps that you can take to help you make better decisions.

The first is to consult the Word of God. 

The Bible says that God's Word is a lamp unto our feet and it is a light into our pathway (Psalm 119:105), which basically means that God has given us His Word as a precious gift to help shed light on our situation and guide us into making the right decisions.  The great thing is that in many of the decisions that we need to make, there is either a scripture passage or there is a principle that we can find in the scriptures that will shed light on our situation.  This underscores the importance of why we need to know the Word of God so well.  The more we know the Word of God, the more we will know God's perfect will for our lives.

The second step is to seek wise counsel. 

Proverbs 15:22 says plans fail with no counsel, but with many counselors they succeed.  One of the common mistakes that we can make is assuming that we know enough by ourselves to make good decisions.  No matter how wise we think we are, there's always someone else around that can provide a different perspective and help us to consider some things that we may not consider on our own.  But let's face it, there may not always be a Bible verse that you can point to for every single decision that you need to make in life which leads me to my third point.

Third - when you're making decisions it's important to pay attention to your desires. 

Sometimes we as Christians can be guilty of over-spiritualizing everything, not moving forward, and paralyzing ourselves until God opens up the heavens and writes the answer in the clouds.  Let's say it's lunchtime and you're trying to figure out what to eat.  I believe that sometimes the decision comes down to simply, “what is it that you want to do?”  You see, God has given us these desires and it's important before we make life-changing decisions to simply pay attention to the desires that He's given us and ask ourselves a very simple but honest question: What is it that I want to do?  Let's say you've sought the Word of God for direction.  You've talked to other people.  You've got other people's opinions.  You sought wise counsel.  You've asked yourself the very honest question: “What is it that I really want to do?”

The fourth piece of advice is to ask God for confirmation.

The important thing to understand here is that you may not have a clear, perfect answer from God for every single decision that you need to make in life.  So my advice to you is to simply use the wisdom that you have in front of you to make the best decision that you can and simply pray and ask God to confirm the decision you are making in a variety of ways.  Or if you're going down the wrong path just simply ask Him to stop you in your tracks and redirect you so that you can make the best decision possible.  

I'm not sure what decisions that you may be facing today but my encouragement to you and my prayer for you is that you would apply these four steps and God would help you make the right decision for your life.

If this has blessed you in any way, I encourage you to share it with someone.  Maybe you know somebody who is going through a difficult time and they need wisdom.  They need to figure out what it is that God wants them to do.  Please share these four steps with them.

Used with permission by Global Media Outreach from Allen Parr. This article was first published as a video on The Beat:  How Christians Should Make Wise Decisions