Life is an experiment

Life is an experiment. Or, if you wish, life is a series of experiments. I have come to that conclusion because if I hadn't arrived at that conclusion I would have had no choice but to lose my mind. As a person who is living my life in an imperfect world, many of the decisions I make will have imperfect outcomes. Some make decisions with no thought to God's will for their lives, and some struggle to make decisions because they are waiting to hear a specific direction from God for every decision. Those who disregard God's will eventually find themselves in a fix of their own making, because God will allow us to go our own way as long as we are satisfied with our own plan. And it is easy to point to them and dismiss their difficulty with a simple "You made your bed, now lie on it."

But many Christians who want to live lives that are pleasing to God really get tied up in knots over the specifics of the decisions they must make. They feel that a decision must be 100% perfect because God doesn't make mistakes. Then when the outcome they get is less than what they expected, they have to figure out what went wrong. They either blame themselves because "they must have missed God", or someone involved in the decision must have blown their opportunity. The example of King Saul is brought up frequently in these discussions. But before we begin to expose the Sauls in our situations, we must look inside ourselves to see if we are truly a Samuel.

In reality there are few decisions which are truly "one chance to get it right the first time" lifelong decisions. Most of the decisions we make are transitional decisions. They are made today and are adjusted later. Cars we buy can be traded. Appointments we make can be changed. The outcome we get can be just what God wanted to bring us to the place we have been asking Him to bring us to. He doesn't guarantee that each decision we make will turn out as we wanted it to just because we have placed it in His hands. He has promised that He will honor our humble and obedient spirit.

So if you've made a decision, a judgment call, or started on a new direction in life and it isn't turning out the way you hoped it would, don't get all tied up in knots. If you didn't seek God's input before making the decision, ask His forgiveness and ask His guidance to get you through the situation. If you feel that you did seek God's counsel, then continue to walk in faith even though the decision might seem disastrous. He does things we can't understand, but we can understand that He loves us and will see us through. Don't beat yourself up and don't point fingers. Just trust Him. He loves you. Really.He does. Look at life as a series of experiments. Some will turn out the way you expected. But experiments have uncertain outcomes or else they wouldn't be experiments. They would be habits.