Decision Making
This is an excerpt from a recent study on decision making.
The human faculty for decision making is the will. In the words of Jonathan Edwards, the will is “that by which the mind chooses any thing.” The will is the mind deciding. When a decision is to be made the will is determined “by that motive, which, as it stands in view of the mind, is the strongest”. Thus, according to Edwards, decisions are made on the basis of the strongest influence.
It follows that the goal of a man who wants to make good decisions should be to acquire, as it were, the right store of strongest influences. Another way to put this is that such a man should seek wisdom and experience which will guide him properly in his decisions.
This helps us to better understand why Romans 12:2 says that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds.
It also becomes clearer how God, through His sovereign control over all things, arranges the experience of those He loves so that the strongest influences in us are shaped in a way that will direct future decisions according to His will. In this way He directs our paths, causing various acts of our will to be irresistible, whether they relate to matters of salvation or otherwise.
The ways of God are intriguing.
Read On: Decision Making
See also: Decision Making and the Thinking Christian
November 28th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
[...] the yabber (young adults bible somethingorother) group from church last week. I took the girls and Alan took the guys. These are the introductory scriptures we looked [...]