I was asked to go out drinking with friends.
That is the It wasn’t a complicated invitation. Friends were going out. They asked me to join them. Normally, that sounds like the beginning of a decision.
For me, it wasn’t.
Years earlier, I had decided I wasn’t going to drink alcohol.
That decision had already been made.
I didn’t need to stand there and weigh the benefits. I didn’t need to decide whether one drink mattered. I didn’t need to consider whether this particular occasion should be an exception. I didn’t need to wonder what my friends might think.
Well, I suppose I could have wondered.
I seem to have an amazing ability to reopen decisions I’ve already made when reopening them becomes convenient.
But I had made this decision years ago.
No alcohol.
So I didn’t go.
I’ve been thinking about how much easier that moment was because an earlier version of Wayne had already done some of the work.
He had made the decision when there wasn’t an invitation standing in front of him.
No pressure. No friends waiting for an answer. No opportunity to create a really good exception.
That earlier decision gave me something I could use later.
Borrowed courage.
Maybe courage isn’t always created in the moment we need it. Sometimes it is created long before the moment arrives.
What have I already decided about the kind of person I want to be?
What have I already decided I will not do?
And how often do I get myself into trouble because I keep renegotiating with decisions that were perfectly clear before temptation showed up?
I didn’t need more willpower that night.
I needed to remember the decision I had already made.
Shift/Insight
Some choices are easier when I make them before I’m standing inside the temptation.
Today’s Nudge
Think about one situation where you regularly struggle. Decide today what you will do before the situation happens again.
Faith Connection
Obedience is often decided before it is tested.
Daniel “resolved that he would not defile himself” before he knew how everything would turn out.
Maybe one way God prepares me for tomorrow is by nudging me to decide something today.