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"Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'"

I refuse to gain the world and lose my soul. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, and your soul." 

Making Decisions

 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

For men have their ways, but God plans a man's steps. In one instance, Paul planned to invade a region with the gospel but the spirit of God prevented him. Paul planned but was sensitive to the Lord altering his plans. Whatever happens, it is HIS WILL, because He can do anything, and if he wills, he will. Trust in that and cast your cares and worries to Him being BOLD trusting His ways are better than our ways. 

When making decisions, God tells us to honour God with our our intellect. We can be confident because we make decisions based on a heart that knows 1) He is the all powerful, all loving 2) we want others to see His glory each and every day. Looking upward and outward! 

Here is another blog:

Years ago I had a friend who made no plans, set no goals, aimed at nothing. His reason? He wanted always to be open to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Before he decided anything, he prayed. He asked the Lord whether he should go to work that day, brush his teeth, use deodorant. (I wish he had asked me!) Needless to say, he didn't keep a job very long.

My friend made three faulty assumptions in determining God's will:

(1) He thought that his feelings were an infallible guide for sensing the leading of the Spirit. But even Jesus did not take this attitude, for when he prayed in the garden, "If it is possible, let this cup pass from me" (Matt 26:39), he was clearly indicating (among other things) that emotionally he would prefer not to face the cross.

(2) My friend believed that the Holy Spirit leads people only in a spontaneous way. That is, he does not move them to make plans. But Paul made plans (see, for example, Acts 15:36; Rom 1:13), the apostles made plans (Acts 6:1-3), and even Jesus himself made plans (Matt 10:5-15; 16:21; 26:17-19). Surely we cannot claim that these men were not Spirit-led in their planning.

(3) My friend subconsciously rejected the idea that he could hear the Spirit's voice through the Scriptures. But by abandoning the Word of God as his normative guide, he was assuming that the Holy Spirit usually circumvents the Word when he speaks to men. This is hardly the view of the Spirit-led men of the past (see, for example, Ps 119:9-16; Matt 4:4; 5:17; 2 Tim 3:15-17).

On the other hand, some Christian businessmen are so rigid in their schedules that any little 'crisis' ruins their day. Sometimes they stick to their plans even when the only reason for doing so is to save face. But the apostle Paul did not share this rigidity. On more than one occasion in his missionary travels, Paul planned to invade a region with the gospel but the Spirit of God prevented him (Acts 16:6-7). Herein is balance: although Paul planned, he was sensitive to the Lord altering his plans.

Such people approach goal-setting from opposite ends of the spectrum: the first fellow, though humble, does not really use his God-given intellect to make decisions. He does not love God with his mind (Matt 22:37). The second fellow, however, though using his mind, neglects his heart. In his rigid long-range planning, he assumes omniscience. But he does not really know everything. Even when his plans go awry, he arrogantly clings to his objectives. Often his anxiety about the future underlies his desire to control all aspects of his life (but see Matt 6:34).

Two passages especially address these extremes. In Proverbs 6, the author rebukes the man who prepares for nothing, calling him a "sluggard." He implores the sluggard to observe the ant which "prepares her food in the summer, and gathers her provision in the harvest" (v. 8). According to the Scriptures, the wise person in business will establish objectives and prepare for the future.

But that is not all. The wise businessman will recognize his finiteness and subject his plans to the Lord. In James 4, the author specifically addresses the one who sets his goals in concrete: "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away" (vv. 13-14).

James calls such rigidity arrogance ( v. 16). But he does not say that we should not set goals. Rather, we should make plans, but submit them to the Lord: "Instead, you ought to to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that'" (v. 15).

In reality, James 4:15 balances out both extremes. We should use our mindsand set goals, but we must do so in humility, recognizing that God alone controls our destiny.

What is the goal of your life? That's what I wanted to ask because I sometimes get clouded in the way I make decisions. Here is a blog I read today:

At one point, when I was in college, I made a table of the characteristics of love mentioned in 1 Corinthians 13. At the end of every day I would rate myself on how I was doing. I’d use a 100-point scale. The irony is that the very passage that was intended to help me focus on others became a means for me to focus on myself. Christ-likeness meets legalism!

But the more I studied scripture, the more I came to realize that I had gotten the focus of the Christian life totally out of whack. If my goal is for me to become Christ-like, then my goal is inevitably and necessarily self-centered. How well am I doing at this goal? What do I look like as a Christian? My goal had become my role, and the focus had become too inward.There is time for introspection in the Christian life. It should, however, be a time of repentance toward the Lord and gratitude for his love and mercy. But there is also the need for robust concentration on the Lord and on others. Paul tells the Philippians, “Instead of being motivated by selfish ambition or vanity, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat one another as more important than yourself” (Phil 2.3 [NET] "make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. 3Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others" I used to argue with this verse: “Yes, but if all of us did this, then no one would be more important than anyone else!” Missing Paul’s point is putting things charitably. The Lord was the first to rub Deuteronomy 6.5 Leviticus 19.18 together, calling them “the greatest commandment” and one “like it”: Love God and love your neighbor (Matt 22.34–40). The focus in these passages is not on one’s role and therefore not on one’s self-image, needs, or ego. The focus is on the glory of God and the needs of others.

There it was, in black and white, and I missed it all these years! If the goal of the Christian life is primarily to glorify God, then the focus is certainly not on myself. It’s the combination of attitude and actions that work together to magnify the Lord. And the second goal of the Christian life is to focus on the needs of others. “Love your neighbor as yourself” does notmean to love your neighbor as you should love yourself. No, self-love is assumed, not commanded. Loving one’s neighbor is not.
One of the implications of this new revelation (to me) about the goal of the Christian life was that by focusing on what I should become I was missing the proper outward and upward view of life. And it became harder and harder for me to admit my wrong to others. But the believer who seeks God’s glory and thinks hard about the welfare of their fellow-saints is not arrogant, does not hold grudges, is not self-absorbed. All of us, for as long as we live in this world, will need to ask forgiveness from someone. The mature person recognizes his own sins and readily admits them to others whom he has offended. The one who focuses on his own Christ-likeness is focusing on a tertiary goal and can end up being blinded by his own ambition.
For many, this blog is a simple lesson, one that you’ve come to recognize for a long, long time. For others, it may be startling, unsettling. But the self-absorption of American Christianity has a lot to learn. I pray that each of us can make the main thing the main thing, shed ourselves of our insecurities, and begin each day by asking, “How can I magnify you today, Lord?”