Good Decisions Rely on Faith

All of us want to live a good life. In fact, I want to have a good summer. I remember years ago, I was working in the dining hall on the Bill Rice Ranch and we had several hundred campers where I was serving tables. I had a tray full of plastic glasses when my foot caught the floor and I tipped that tray. Probably ten or more cups went clattering across the floor. I was very embarrassed. I remember several hundred campers looking up, seeing me in my clumsiness, and applauding me in kind of a cheer. It was embarrassing, a bad day. We want a good life and I want a good summer, but if your good life and good summer are based on just good circumstances every day, that is a hard way to live. Sometimes you wake up and don’t feel well, so if a good life is based on good circumstances, you are in trouble.

Thankfully, a good life is based not on your circumstance, but on your decisions, the way you respond. A good life is based on good decisions. Now that is a good life, not to say pleasant or easy all the time. Aristotle, among others, philosophized on what the good life was and what happiness is, but a good life is the result of good decisions.

For instance, think about smoking when you are sixteen years of age. Circumstance may say that nothing will happen today and it will be cool with your friends. Smoking at sixteen and living with smoking at sixty-six are two different things. So, a good life is based on good decisions and good decisions are not situational ethics. Situational ethics say that whether a decision is good or bad is based purely on the circumstance of the moment. That is fine, except it doesn’t work long term.

In I Samuel 26, Saul was again pursuing David to kill him. David got the drop on King Saul and could have killed him. One of David’s men said to him, “Hey, this is the opportunity God has given you. Kill King Saul while you can.” Verse 8 says, “Then said Abishai to David, God hath delivered thine enemy into thine hand this day: now therefore let me smite him,” and he kind of invokes God, that God had given this opportunity.

Sometimes we think that because there is an open door, it is the right thing. We are basing our decisions on easy circumstances, a situational ethic, not on something we know to be right or wrong according to God’s standard. Someone might say, “Look, I wouldn’t murder if I didn’t need to,” “I wouldn’t lie if I didn’t need to,” or “I wouldn’t be lazy if I didn’t need to.” Of course not. You are not virtuous because you do something that is easy. You are virtuous when you live in obedience to the God who is the law maker. He made this world and everything in it.

So, since God had delivered Saul into David’s hand, did that mean it was God’s will for David to kill Saul? Indeed, the reason Saul was pursing David in the first place was because there were others who said to Saul, “Here is where David is. Here is your chance. Take it.” Later people said to David, “Here is the open door for you, David. Go take it.” No, good decisions rely on faith not circumstance. It is faith in what we know to be right because of what God has said, not what seems easy because it is right ahead of me, that makes a good decision.

Sometimes the easiest decisions to make are the hardest with which to live. I want to be cool when I am sixteen, so I smoke. I want to eat ice cream every day in excess when I am forty, so I do it. That is an easy decision to make, but it is not too easy to live with. Sometimes the hardest decisions to make are the easiest to live with. So, a good life is not an easy life. A good life is not always a pleasant life, but a good life is a life in which I am responding to what God has said, not placing my confidence in what I see. In David’s case, three times he said, “Saul is God’s anointed. He is a clod and a rebel, but it is not my place to take him out.”

Let me add this. Sometimes believers do not want to call sin on the carpet if the person committing the sin is God’s anointed. No, I’m sorry. This was a king. I don’t have a king in my life, but there are people in my life that God has ordained, so I don’t murder them and take justice into my own hands. That doesn’t mean I excuse what is wrong. Now, the way to respond to rebellion is not to rebel. Saul’s whole problem was that he was rebelling against God and David was tempted to take the chance in front of him, but God is never going to lead contrary to His stated will.

In verse 23, David says, “The LORD render to every man his righteousness and his faithfulness: for the LORD delivered thee into mine hand to day, but I would not stretch forth my hand against the LORD’s anointed.” David had an open door, but it wasn’t in accordance with what he knew to be right. David trusted God and God gave David life, a good life. Psalm 54, a psalm written about this very incident, says, “Save me, O God, by thy name, and judge me by thy strength. Hear my prayer…Behold, God is mine helper…He shall reward evil unto mine enemies.” Verse 7 says, “For he hath delivered me out of all trouble: and mine eye hath seen his desire upon mine enemies.”

God delivered Saul into David’s hand, but it was a test, not an excuse to go through a door that was wrong. God delivered and protected David. When you face decisions today, the question is not what is easy or pleasant. The question is what God would want you to do. An open door may be a test as surely as it is God’s leading in your life. God’s leading will never contradict God’s ethic and governing principles. So, trust God in the decisions you make and you will live a life that may be pleasant, but will certainly be right and pleasing to God because good decisions rely on faith, not circumstance.