A hard call

I watched the news off and on for the last several days and struggled to determine if we should cancel church services Sunday. The property Bethel is located on is prone to flooding. We have several inches of rain standing in the parking lot typically after a hard down pour. They are calling for 10 inches of rain...I shudder to think what that may have the potential to do to the church. Also there is the high probability that we will be without power at the church and in the surrounding communities after the storm.

Yet I remember a storm about fourteen or fifteen years ago that was hyped every bit as much as Irene, and we braced for the impact. At the last minute the storm took a sharp right hand turn and missed us for the most part. We hardly got any rain at all. The greatest winds we saw were only 20 mph. So with that memory running in the back of my mind I thought, "I would hate for us to cancel services and have nothing happen."

Then I remembered Isabel. She packed a serious punch. Crippled this area for several days. I thought, "If this is like Isabel, I don't want people out in this stuff trying to get to church. It will be dangerous."  After hours of praying, thinking, and wrestling before the Lord with this decision, the Lord spoke to my heart and said, "It is time to get some counsel from the members of the Church Board." So I did. When I spoke to the members of the Board, Bill Kidd, Tim Bean, Frank Elkins, Lee Simmons, and Darryl Orell something funny happened. God was speaking to their hearts the same way he was speaking to mine.  They too had all been prayerfully wrestling with the issue, and God knit our hearts together with the decision. Now I have peace about it no matter how it turns out.

Decisions, decisions, life is full of decisions. It dawned on me that this situation provided a pretty good pattern to follow for difficult decisions. Some good things to do when you need to make a decision: 1) Prayerfully reason it out. Pray and ask God to guide your thoughts. Ask for wisdom. It is not a sin to use the noodle God put up between your ears. Some times it becomes abundantly clear to you in your spirit what the Lord wants you to do just as you think it through prayerfully. 2) Seek Godly wisdom from people you know love Jesus and have your best interest at heart.

Proverbs 16:16 How much better it is to get wisdom than gold! And to get understanding is to be chosen above silver.


Pray through your decisions, seek advice from mature Christians and the Lord will reveal His wisdom to you. When you have the wisdom of the Lord, you have something money can't buy!