It’s astonishing to consider how many decisions we’re asked to make in a lifetime. Decisions about majors and jobs and moves and relationships and churches. Decisions about significant investments of time and energy and money and emotion. Decisions with potential to impact the whole course of our lives.
Sometimes when you’re making one of these big decisions, you pray, and God’s direction feels clear and specific. These are the easy cases. But what about when you pray and don’t hear anything? How do you decide which road to take?
Reflecting on the most defining decisions of my life, the ones I look back on with gratitude and no regrets, there are four questions I find have served as especially trustworthy guides:
Question #1: Who will I become if I go down this road?
When we’re weighing big decisions, sometimes we make a pros-and-cons list. We consider what we stand to gain by taking some course and what taking it will cost us. These are sensible considerations. The problem is, our list often includes only external costs and benefits. In other words, how this decision will affect our career prospects, our lifestyle, our comfort, our advancement toward our dreams. We forget to factor in internal costs and benefits. In our others, the impact the course is likely to have on our character.
Every life choice—especially the big ones—set us on a path that will shape not just our circumstances but our being. The places we put ourselves, and the people we set ourselves among, will reinforce some of our instincts and habits and prune others back. Some desires will be fanned and others dampened. Some character traits will be rewarded; others will not. Each road does not just take us somewhere—it molds us into someone.
When you’re considering a decision, project yourself forward. Ask not just what you will experience if you take this road but how that experience is likely to shape you. I’ve looked down roads that seemed alluring and realized they would very probably make me more competitive and egocentric, or more out of touch with people, or angrier and more resentful, or less courageous going forward. I don’t want to start down any road that is highly likely to counter-form me to the person that in Jesus I’m seeking to be.
Question 2: How do I want my story to be told?
I first heard this question from Andy Stanley, and it’s stuck with me. If you enjoy a great movie or novel, think for a moment about the stories that you love most. Now, imagine yourself as an author, writing your life as a story with a main character you’d root for, who’s making the choices you’d want them to make in this moment.
This question can be tricky, because many factors can affect your story’s flow that aren’t under your control. But for me, the biggest insight sometimes comes from asking the question in the negative—what do I NOT want my story to be?
I can’t control every outcome. But I know for sure that I don’t want to get to the end of my life and hear about the great story that God would have written if I’d just been willing to trust a bit more. I want my story to be that Meghan took Jesus at his word, that she acted in faith that left openings God could step through. I can’t control everything. But I can at least make sure that the story doesn’t say, “God showed up, but Meghan didn’t notice, because she was home hiding under the bed.”
Question 3: Which road follows the downward path of the cross?
Jesus says, “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me” (Lk 9:23). I want to be a disciple of Jesus, and according to him, there’s only one way to do it. There’s only one direction that following him ever leads—the direction of self-denial, of self-emptying love. The direction of the cross.
If we’re following Jesus, this daily journey of descent can’t help but be a key part of any decision-making process. This question is arguably what makes discernment Christian.
Everything in the world lobbies against taking this third question seriously. Every piece of advice you’ve ever heard on a podcast or TikTok video has been telling you how to move in the opposite direction—how to determine which road is moving upward, how to climb the ladder, how to ascend the mountain. But Jesus says, counterintuitively, that the quickest way upward is down. The path to greatness lies downward, in sacrifice and service. The leader is the one kneeling at others’ feet, lifting them from beneath. Those who desire honor should take the lowest chair. Believe him or not, but that’s what he says.
I wrestled for nearly a year with what would turn out to be one of the most defining decisions of my life—two options, and no obvious way to choose between them. I remember where I was sitting the moment it suddenly occurred to me that there was one major difference between the two roads: one ascended toward wealth, status, and power, the other descended toward unsung sacrifice. Which direction would Jesus go? I knew my answer.
Question 4: What is worth failing for?
All of you natural risk-takers can stop at three questions. But the rest of us might just require one more.
Some of us hate big risks. Our first instinct in decision-making is to calculate the odds of success, the chances of a payoff. We’re high-yield savings accounts kind of people. We’re not out there looking for huge wins. We mainly just don’t want to lose what we’ve got. We’re not inclined to take a road unless we can predict the outcome to the level of near guarantee.
But there are no guarantees—especially in discipleship. Sometimes the best path, the Jesus-following path, involves the greater difficulty and the greater risk. Jesus teaches that the things most worth having can only be gained by going all in. He also says that some things are worth losing everything for.
There will be moments you’ll do the math and find there are no high-odds wins on the table. There will be moments you’ll glimpse Jesus down a path that seems full of various dangers. In these moments, it can be helpful to remind yourself that there are no guarantees against loss in discipleship. The real question is whether the goal is so good and noble and true that it’s worth pursuing at any risk. The most precious offering you ever place on God’s altar might be a beautiful failure.
