Sticking with your judgement call is not always easy. People will scrutinize your decision – even think a different call should have been made – and then use hindsight to evaluate your call.

It’s not always fun being the one who has to make that final decision, the one with “the buck stops here” responsibility.

Years ago when I was a youth pastor in Edmonton, one Friday afternoon we were experiencing heavy rain, even some flooding. We had a youth activity scheduled for that night, but I had gone home early because a lake was suddenly forming on the street in front of our church and cars were getting stuck.

I needed to make a judgement call on whether we would hold our youth event or cancel it. 

We never canceled meetings, but that day the weather reports were calling for extreme weather. By about 4 pm I made the decision: we would cancel that night’s activity. 

Phone calls went out and the feedback poured in … not much of it was positive.

Sometime after the decision to shut down our event, closer to the time we would have started, the sky changed.

I recall looking out the front window of my home and calling Lily to take a look. It was all calm, silent, even still. But the clouds in the distance were changing at a rapid pace, and were amazing colours of green, grey, almost black, and purple. 

It was mesmerizing; it looked ominous. 

Then, as the clouds came upon us, the wind picked up and was violent. It was loud and relentless. You could sense the tremendous power of the wind. 

But it didn’t last long. The weather calmed down, and it wasn’t bad outside.

I felt guilty for having canceled youth group that night, thinking maybe I had made the wrong call.

That was July 31,1987 – they called it Black Friday. A tornado had touched down and ripped a path through Edmonton’s east side from south to north. It left 27 people dead and 300 injured, in the wake of 417 km/h winds. 

You know, I didn’t get a lot of complaints about canceling that activity after the fact.

This past week we had our church picnic. Our plan was to hold the service and picnic on the lawn at the back of our church.

Early in the morning, the skies were all grey and it looked like it could rain at any moment. The weatherman was forecasting rain.  

Somebody had to make the call. We decided at about 7 am that we would have the service and picnic inside the church. 

We brought in a bunch of decorations to try and give an atmosphere of a picnic indoors. We even created space for people to sit on the carpet for the service, as if it were the lawn outside. 

In the end, the clouds lied. There was no rain in them; it just looked like there was. 

In hindsight we could have held the whole thing outside and kept dry. 

It was a judgement call.

Here’s the thing: When you have to make a decision, the pressure is on to make the right one. Often the pressure comes from inside, from you; sometimes it comes from others as well. It’s easy to question, second guess, even back down from your call. But God has given us the Holy Spirit to live in us and guide us. Seek His wisdom in your decisions, find strength in the direction He gives you, and stand firm on your judgement call. 

That’s Life! 

Paul

Question: What judgment call do you need to seek God’s wisdom for? Leave your comments below.