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What’s Really Behind Decision-Making

This post is from February 2014. Every now and then I re-post an old article when my schedule is too busy.

The other day my wife, Lily, and I decided to look at living room furniture. We are on a little bit of a roll right now, just completing the final touches of our bathroom renovation that got downgraded to painting and changing a light fixture.  

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Still, being in that remodelling mood, we decided to look at a couch Lily has been eyeing for ten years or more. I think there’s a few reasons we ended up looking at the couch now.  

The first reason is that I saw a rowing machine in a flyer and Lil saw my eyes get big. I also kept the flyer around and made mention of how good the price was.  

When my wife sees that scenario happening it’s like a perfect storm to her. The pressure to purchase comes in waves that are unrelenting. And so to try to divert this storm, she stated that there will be no big purchases made until we get new living room furniture.

I say she’s just a wuss who can’t take a little stormy weather.  

But the other reason we decided to look at furniture is that I’ve made it public that our living room couch is 28 years old. In the last few months, I’ve blogged about it, referenced it in two sermons, and the ultimate, I’ve sat on it.

Our living room furniture has lasted, but all good things come to an end and I think we are at that point with our stuff.  

In no time, I found myself transported to a furniture store that Lily seemed to know quite well. In fact, she seemed to know it better than I expected her to.  

She headed straight to the living room section and, before I could peel myself away from the 70 inch TV that was turned to the Olympics, she was talking to a salesperson.

She had her eyes on a sofa and, even worse, she was sitting down on it. The salesperson was a nice senior lady who seemed very accommodating. She may have recognized a sucker as soon as we entered, or maybe she was just very experienced in her work.

She agreed with us on everything we said so it seemed she was on our side and not working for the store at all.  

We complained at how the love seat price was only one hundred dollars less than the sofa yet it was only two thirds the size – that means two thirds the wood, stuffing and material. What’s with that?

By the end of our visit I wanted to buy the sofa right there. I wasn’t sure whether it was because I liked it, or that I thought Lily liked it, or that I wanted to buy it from the nice lady who seemed like she really wanted to sell it to us.  

I knew, however, we weren’t going to buy that day. Lil would never buy anything without checking prices in two, three or more other stores. We may also have to revisit this store a few times before we make a decision. 

Then again, it may be another 10 years before we actually settle on getting new furniture.

Here’s the thing:  There are many influences on our decision-making. Today I read in my devotions that the heart is most deceitful and incurable (Jeremiah 17:9-10). It’s so easy for our hearts to be influenced away from what God wants. We need to be vigilant at constantly working with the Holy Spirit for control of our heart.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What influences you in making decisions? Leave your comment below.

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It Really Was 24 Hours

This morning I’m writing about 24 hours – not the TV show, “24 Hours”, that starred Kiefer Sutherland; I never watched that series. 

I’m writing about a 24 hour period of time. 

We get these every day, and spend some of that time working, relaxing, shopping, playing and, of course, sleeping. 

On Wednesday Lily and I left Madrid, Spain on an Air Canada flight to Toronto. We left just after 1 pm in the afternoon, Madrid time. 

We arrived in Toronto at about 3 pm in the afternoon, Toronto time. That sounds like it was a pretty short trip, but when you do the math and factor in the six hour time difference, it was an 8 hour flight. Three in the afternoon in Toronto is nine at night in Spain.

Our day had started at 6 am at a hotel by the Madrid airport. Lil and I exercised, had breakfast, packed and headed to the airport. 

By the time we landed in Toronto, got through customs and were picked up by my brother to go back to his house where we had left our vehicle, it was getting close to dinner time. 

We caught up with my brother and sister in-law and at about 7 pm left for home.

For Lily and I, it was really 12:30 am by then. 

We can normally make it home in about two and a half to three hours, but the roads were bad. It was snowing, the roads were greasy, and the traffic on the 401 was heavy.

It took us about four hours to get home, sometimes traveling as slow as 50 kms per hour. 

That meant that for Lily and I, we had been up for over 22 hours. By the time we unpacked and got ourselves into bed, we’d been up for almost 24 hours.

Lil actually cheated a little because she slept for part of the drive home, but that was the first all-nighter I’d pulled in years.

That’s not to say I’m unfamiliar with them, though. 

I remember being up all night with friends back in high school – usually we were up to no good.

In college I would regularly have to pull all-nighters to get a paper done on time. 

And when I was a youth pastor, we would have all night events. That’s right, on purpose we would have high school students stay up all night. We thought that was fun back then. Well, the students thought it was fun; the leaders, not so much. 

I had one leader who finally declared she was not doing the all night events any more. Lily later pulled the same trick and blamed it on the fact that she had two little kids at home who needed her.

Needless to say, it’s been a long while since I failed to sleep for a 24 hour period of time. 

The crazy thing about this time was that I never felt like I had hit the wall. I never had that jittery, crummy feeling that you get when you go without sleep.

Here’s the thing: I’ve had enough experience staying up all night to know what it feels like. I’ve also driven when I’m tired and know what that feels like to keep your eyes on the road. God gives us what we need, and I needed to stay awake until I got home despite being up for 24 hours. When my head hit the pillow, however, I think I was asleep in under a minute. … God graciously gives us what we need when we need it. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: When have you gotten just what you needed from God? Leave your comments below.