Decisions and Beliefs

I have been challenged recently in two areas of my life. I would like to comment on both of them briefly. I am interested in thoughts, but understand the fear of the comment post.

First, Decisions. I was listening to a podcast the other day while I was riding my bike. It talked about how the power of a decision has been lost in our present day. If you think about it, a decision is a very powerful thing. The power to say, I decide this, and I am going to stick to that answer. The power of yes or no, very blunt choices. An example was someone who says, "I am going to quit, etc." (Smoking, Swearing, Spending, whatever you want to plug in there) The decision here is, I am going to quit. I am deciding from this moment on, I will not do x anymore. When a decision is made, the thought of doing x should not even be an option anymore, that is a powerful thing. I think about how many times, I sway from making a direct decision. For years I have said to numerous things, I am not going to do that again, but fail over and over. The decision is lost. The decision is fake. But if you think about the power of a true decision, it is crazy. The ability to say, I am going to do this, or not do this is a huge deal that comes with huge rewards. I do not want this to seam that I am speaking only to quitting things, but this can be applied to your everyday life.

Second, Beliefs. I was looking around the google world today, looking up some prominent christian people of today. (Rob Bell, Andy Stanley, etc.) I do not know a great deal about many of these people past a scrap of the surface. I have recently been curious to seek out some info on these guys to find out what the are about. I began to look around at their different church sites and blogs etc. and started to read. I quickly found a great division amongst many believers who were posting to these blogs and sites about these faith leaders. I was very amazed by the division amongst believers and why they were divided. Some people brought great points to the table and some people brought anger, frustration, pure speculation and many other varying ideas and points. I felt like people disagreed about everything, at least in some way shape or form. It made me think about how I approach things like this. I am so quick sometimes to give my thoughts on different ideas, people, stances etc. I am quick to share what I think, but I confess, rarely do I go look to see why I think the way I do, past the basic truths. I feel like sometime I take these basic truths I know and assume my opinions from them. This really has hit me hard. We as people are always engaged in conversations that contain big topics and ideas. I, sadly engage in these without looking at things first to make sure that I am not sharing the theology of Brad, but yet seeking out the theology of Jesus.