Sermon quotes on decision-making
Ed Cole
A father’s responsibility is not to make the child’s decisions, but to let the child watch him make his.
Stephen Covey
Francis Chan
Paulo Coelho
When you repeat a mistake, it is not a mistake anymore: it is a decision.
Malcolm Gladwell
Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.
John C. Maxwell
Once a decision is made, you should stop worrying and start working. It’s not always what we know that makes it a good decision. It is what we do to implement and execute it that makes it a good decision.
J.I. Packer
Wisdom is the power to see and the inclination to choose the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.
Eleanor Roosevelt
One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words. It is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.
Lee Strobel
If Jesus sets the divine standard for morality, I could now have an unwavering foundation for my choices and decisions, rather than basing them on the ever-shifting sands of expediency and self-centeredness.
Rick Warren
Eternal values, not temporal ones, should become the deciding factors for your decisions.
C.S. Lewis
All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.
The Great Divorce
George MacDonald
“The one secret of life and development, is not to devise and plan . . . but to do every moment’s duty aright . . . and let come—not what will, for there is no such thing—but what the eternal Thought wills for each of us, has intended in each of us from the first.”
Sir Gibbie: A Novel, J. B. Lippincott
Mencius
Before a man can do things there must be things he will not do.
Jen Wilkin
If we want our lives to align with God’s will, we will need to ask a better question than “What should I do?” . . . God is always more concerned with the decision-maker than he is with the decision itself.
In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character, Crossway.
Jen Wilkin
If we focus on our actions without addressing our hearts, we may end up merely as better behaved lovers of self.
In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character, Crossway.
John C. Maxwell
Decisions should always be made as close to the problem as possible.
Good Leaders Ask Great Questions, Center Street.
Abraham Lincoln
I desire to conduct the affairs of this administration in such a way that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall have at least one friend left and that friend shall be down inside of me.
Emily P. Freeman
It’s estimated that adults make over 35,000 decisions every day. A study at Cornell University revealed that Americans make over two hundred daily decisions on food alone.
Taken from The Next Right Thing, 2019, p. 14, Baker Publishing Group.
Simone Weil
One has only the choice between God and idolatry. There is no other possibility. For the faculty of worship is in us, and it is either directed somewhere into this world, or into another.
Joe Fox (Tom Hanks)
“The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat. So people who don’t know what they’re doing, or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self.”
You’ve Got Mail
Ruth Haley Barton
Discernment is an increasing capacity to recognize and respond to the presence and activity of God—both in the ordinary moments of our lives and in the decisions we face.
Taken from Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God by Ruth Haley Barton Copyright (c) 2018 by Ruth Haley Barton. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Amos Tversky
It’s hard to know how people select a course in life…the big choices we make are practically random. The big choices we make are practically random. The small choices probably tell us more about who we are. Which field we go into may depend on which high school teacher we happen to meet. Who we marry may depend on who happens to be around at the right time of life. On the other hand, the small decisions are very systematic. That I became a psychologist is probably not very revealing. What kind of psychologist I am may reflect deep traits.”
Quoted in Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
John Ortberg
Very often God’s will for you will be “I want you to decide,” because decision making is an indispensable part of character formation. God is primarily in the character-forming business, not the circumstance-shaping business.
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