I want to tell you about the best decision I ever made.
My wife might tell you it was marrying her. We get along well, have two beautiful (I could even say miracle) children, and she certainly challenges me and stretches me. In many ways, I wouldn’t be who I am today without her. Marriage is a huge decision and walking into it, you never know where life will take you. Well, that was a good decision.
You could say the best decision I ever made was supporting Queensland in the State of Origin. (Yes, I know. I’m risking alienating some readers here but bear with me). Being a proud South Australian, rugby league isn’t really on our radar. With one parent born in either state, it could have gone either way. But Origin was the only league game on TV in Adelaide growing up and Dad was born in Queensland, so we watched the series each year and always barracked for the Maroons. The past few years have been great. I’ll leave it at that. Sorry NSW fans. So yes, that was a good decision, but not the best.
I know what you’re thinking. It was my decision to get baptised. Surely that’s the best decision I’ve ever made. Well, baptism is certainly important. Yet it doesn’t convey any special spiritual powers, doesn’t make you holier, doesn’t necessarily mean the devil attacks you more (I’ve heard that one a lot but we might address that in another article). I was glad to get baptised as a public declaration of a decision I’d made many years earlier, in front of family and friends in the church I’d grown up in. I was 19 and just about to head away to Avondale for study. I had a pastor in my life who I loved and respected, and I wanted him to baptise me. And so, I “took the plunge”. Great decision, not the best decision.
The best decision was one I made while I was still at high school. Before I knew what course my life would take or what I wanted to do. I told God that wherever He wanted me to go, whatever He wanted me to do, I’d do it. “God, take my life and use it. I don’t know what to do but I want to do it for You.”
It was the best decision I could have made. He has taken me to some unexpected places. Yet I’ve always had the assurance He was “in my boat”!
Luke 5 sets the scene. On the shores of the Sea of Galilee, Simon made a decision to go where Jesus asked and to follow Jesus’ calling on his life. Jesus, avoiding the large crowd He’d been teaching, steps into the boat and calls the fishermen to push off again and cast their nets. They were tired and had fished all night with no reward. They were cleaning and untangling their nets on the shore. But they follow Jesus’ instructions, with instant reward. The nets overflow and threaten to sink the boat.
When Simon Peter realised what had happened, he fell to his knees before Jesus and said, “Oh, Lord, please leave me—I’m such a sinful man” (NLT, v8).
Simon wasn’t perfect. He had no idea where the decision to let Jesus into his boat would lead. In fact, it led to amazing highs and painful, difficult lows but, by the end of his life, Simon Peter was transformed from an impetuous, hot-headed denier into a faithful, selfless servant.
I’ve got a long way to go but I’m still happy with the decision I made all those years ago. There have been times I questioned God’s leading or wondered if I was still on the right track. But He has never let me down.
