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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Franklin Cobos

Valley of Decision

My topic this morning is decision-making.

This is the verse I chose to look at you with briefly to begin the topic.

It says simply, multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision.

For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision." I'll begin this morning with a question, I'll close with 1 too.

How many, you've actually made many decisions today, how many have, how many of you have actually carefully considered the decisions that you made today?

I make a living by making good decisions.

I make decisions, sometimes with very limited information and very limited time.

I've had to study how to make a good decision in a very quick period of time with nobody giving you really any answers to work with on how to do that.

How long does it take to make a good decision?

More important the outcome, or the more serious the consequences of your actions, We instinctively spend more time in the decision-making process itself.

We expend time and energy, a very conscious effort, to make a decision in order to make the best possible outcome for ourselves after having committed to that decision.

You recognize that process that has happened perhaps when you made a decision to come to medical school, or dental school, nursing school, whatever career choice maybe that you've made.

If I told you that you had a critical decision to make right now, how would you go about to start to make that decision?

I'll give you another answer, but any other answers?

We're going to come to that in a little bit.

You need good information, you need accurate information.

I'll propose to you that the very first step you need to make in the decision making process is simply coming to the decision to decide.

Do you understand the implications of that?

Some of you who are slow to raise your hand, That's you.

The decision to decide is the critical and most important step of the decision-making process.

If you do not decide to decide, you have decided not to decide.

We will continue by covering 3 important aspects that I have picked out of the decision-making process.

And after doing that, we need to apply it, or during that process, we apply it to the Christian life.

Actually, the decision-making process itself, after you pass that initial commitment to a choice, which I think is probably the hardest step in the whole process.

Most formally probably in today's world, the decision making process is studied by business majors.

My shirt and tie, he looks like a business major to me.

Have you finished or are you studying right now?

Perhaps you can guess what I'm thinking of.

The formal education to decide how to decide and then the decision making process was given a term I was told by people in the world of business, 2 words, both begin with D.

You've heard of due diligence probably because you work in conservancy lands?

The field of business with its multi-billion dollar mergers and acquisitions is accustomed to very high risk, high stakes decisions.

You cannot afford to buy Enron and then lose several billion dollars after having signed the papers.

You can't make those kind of bad decisions.

So they formally will train business people to do diligence.

The purpose of due diligence is to minimize the risk of committing to do something that you will later be very, very sorry that you did.

You want to maximize the chances that you're going to enjoy a very favorable outcome as a direct result of your choice.

There's hundreds of pages of things you can do.

They do this because the ramifications of the decisions can be far-reaching and vast.

And I propose to you this morning that the ramifications of your own decisions are just as far-reaching and vast, though perhaps not involving billions of dollars.

The consequences of deciding where you go to school, what you study, where the path of your career will go, who you're going to marry, the religion that you practice, your eternal destiny, Those don't have dollar values, they actually are priceless.

And I think they demand the same due diligence that people who go to Harvard Business School practice in their daily lives.

These type of decisions demand no cursory evaluation.

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Valley of Decision

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