{"id":881,"date":"2010-09-06T20:06:42","date_gmt":"2010-09-07T01:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"The following guest post was contributed by Cornerstone teacher and assistant professor of English, Dr. Bill Carroll.<\/span><\/em>\r\n\r\nWhen I reflect on the challenges I have faced in my own decision-making process, I confes"},"modified":"2010-09-06T20:24:18","modified_gmt":"2010-09-07T01:24:18","slug":"waiting-for-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/2010\/09\/06\/waiting-for-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting for Answers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following guest post was contributed by Cornerstone teacher and assistant professor of English, Dr. Bill Carroll.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

When I reflect on the challenges I have faced in my own decision-making process, I confess that I have always been jealous of those whose faith gives them great confidence as they make important decisions, particularly during challenges or heartaches. This morning the glimpses of her life that Dr. Reese shared with us both inspired and intimidated me. The strength of her commitment to her choice to let her faith direct her life, especially in the heartbreak of personal loss, encourages and shames my oft-timid faith.<\/p>\n

In any context, making decisions is a complex task. Incorporating a desire to find God\u2019s will for your decisions makes some even more complex. In the reading from Jerry Sittser that Dr. Reese recommended to us, he asserts \u201cGod does have one will for our lives\u2014that we seek his kingdom first. But God allows us to follow many possible pathways to live that one will out\u201d (39). What I find comforting in Sittser\u2019s pattern of discerning God\u2019s will is that God can use me in a variety of paths of my choosing. God uses chemists, teachers, stay-at-home parents, and market analysts as effectively as trained preachers to enact His will. What is not comforting in Sittser\u2019s pattern is that I still have to make that choice, and I still am prone to seek my will and label it God\u2019s. This is not something Sittser ignores. He points out in Chapter Three that our focus on the future rather than the present and both our increased opportunity of choices and busyness, which are consequences of poor choices, lead us to further poor decision-making while our lack of true community means that we don\u2019t lean on people from whom we could get sound advice. Thus, as we make decisions, we have over-complicated the simple task of seeking God\u2019s kingdom first.<\/p>\n

What this means for me is that I have to constantly return to conversation with God. I am not embarrassed to admit that I am selfish, because it would be the height of foolishness for me to try to hide that from you and, especially, God. My self-interest trumps kingdom-interest when I don\u2019t get time to reflect on my motives. Prayer is central to my decision-making because I have a hard time hiding my self-interest in honest conversation with God. When I am committed to maintaining my relationship with God, I have to bare my motivations and interests in prayer. And if it is a genuine conversation, I have to listen. In this quiet time of listening, I am drawn back to God\u2019s nature, God\u2019s interests, and God\u2019s kingdom. God always returns to the themes of love and the kingdom, which reveal my mislabeling of my will as God\u2019s will. While I don\u2019t hear a direct voice, I do hear God\u2019s will, and, after these honest talks, I make better decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following guest post was contributed by Cornerstone teacher and assistant professor of English, Dr. Bill Carroll. When I reflect on the challenges I have faced in my own decision-making process, I confess that I have always been jealous of those whose faith gives them great confidence as they make important decisions, particularly during challenges […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3599,"featured_media":887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1934,1815],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-post","category-featured"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/files\/2010\/09\/Bill-Carroll.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3T2tB-ed","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":886,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions\/886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.acu.edu\/cornerstonef13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}