Episode 18: From Confusion to CLARITY: A 4-Part Framework For Discerning God's Will ("Good" vs. "Should")
Just because it's a good thing... doesn't mean you should do it.
Every single day, we're faced with a number of decisions.
For some of us, it can feel daunting just to choose a restaurant to go to, or pick items off a menu, or what outfit to wear to an event...
Let alone higher-stake decisions, like who to date or marry, whether to change jobs, whether to move (especially in a seemingly never-ending sea of information, opinions, and options).
For others of us, our issue is more about overcommitting to things that ALL seem like good opportunities to pursue... leaving little time and energy for our actual values.
Whether big or small, decision-making can sometimes feel like an overwhelming puzzle.
And both of us have faced (and continue to face!) our fair share of difficult decisions and the unnecessary stress that can often accompany them.
But through our own journeys, we've learned some super valuable lessons and tips that we want to share to help you discern God's will - and how he is leading you.
In this episode, we dive into some factors that make decision-making so hard... and walk you through 4 categories of important questions that have helped us a lot in discerning between what's a "good" vs. a "should."
We hope this conversation and framework helps you break free from analysis paralysis... and instead, find God's divine wisdom and guidance from amidst all the noise, in order to step forward with clarity, purpose, and confident faith.
TOPICS:
0:00 - Intro
3:07 - What makes discernment so hard?
6:00 - Alex's personal journey & struggles with decision-making
10:55 - Grace's personal journey & struggles with decision-making
15:10 - Example of Grace discerning between multiple "good" options
19:51 - Principle / Category #1
27:24 - Principle / Category #2
31:43 - Principle / Category #3
35:18 - Principle / Category #4
42:05 - Recap, Last Notes & Encouragements
42:51 - Action Step
GET MORE HELPFUL RESOURCES IN THE EPISODE REFLECT & APPLY GUIDE
Transcript
For so many of us, myself included and Alex, it takes forever just to choose a restaurant to go to or what many items we want to pick.
And the poor server is like waiting forever for us to decide, let alone figure out decisions like where to date or marry, or where to live, or what job to take, or what opportunities to pursue and commit to—the list goes on.
And so today, we're gonna be talking about what is it that makes it so hard for us to make decisions, as well as what can we ask ourselves, what can help us actually make these decisions that are aligned with God and His heart for us, as well as His broader kingdom.
Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we have an exciting episode that we think will really resonate with viewers and listeners. And that is how to make decisions when there are so many options today, such as what job do I take? Where do I live? Where do I move? Do I date? What do I eat? What plans are out there and so on and so forth?
We just live in a world with so many decisions to make—small ones like what to eat and big ones like what job to take, what company to work for—and we often get caught in this decision paralysis.
And I know I definitely do, and it's paralysis analysis, paralysis decision paralysis. And with that, there just comes a lot of unnecessary anxiety, stress, feeling overwhelmed, burnt out. But I think the enemy really distracts us from who we are supposed to be and what we're supposed to do.
Yes. And if you can't tell, we both have definitely experienced this. As only children, we struggle with this the most because we have so many decisions that we struggle with, and it's only through our own journeys that we've been able to really experience and learn and just have God really help us to grow in this area.
And we just want to share some of the stuff that we've learned ourselves. This is not to say we are perfect and can make decisions perfectly, but we've kind of learned over the years, you know, some things that have been helpful for us to consider when we look back and see, "Oh, I'm so glad that I considered that. I didn't do this, and I didn't rush into things."
I think that's the most dangerous part, especially at the higher the stakes that decisions are, like, if you just rush into things without really considering it from different angles, you can lead to, you know, regret or like, "Oh, I didn't really think about it, and I didn't want to. I didn't mean to end up here."
It is actually really hard. I think for a lot of people to know, like, how do I systematically make decisions?
And I'm not saying there's a formula. But again, we'll just share some of the frameworks and questions that have been helpful to us.
I think also another thing that makes this hard is, at least from my experience, like, when it comes to decisions, it's very easy to be influenced by other people's opinions—like other people saying, "Oh, it's so good that you're doing that," and like all this “good” things out there, like all these options that you could do—and it's increasing these days with more and more options we have.
Yeah. Yeah. I feel like because you can get input and wisdom from so many people, and wisdom is not bad. God wants us to be wise in our decisions and our moves. But there's just so much information out there too on the internet and if you go through YouTube, the algorithm, yeah, is really good at just biasing your decision-making. It can take like hours to find a restaurant that many people want to go to, let alone like which job do you take? Who do you marry? A date? You know, all that stuff.
So going back to what I was saying about the good stuff, there's so many increasing options nowadays, right? For things that we can do, that we can choose from, and a lot of it does look good from the outside. And I think it gets muddy and messy when so many other people outside of just us are saying, like, "That's really good, like you should do that, you should do that."
But what we want to really clarify and talk about here today is not everything that is good should...not everything that looks helpful or beneficial or is wise by human standards is actually what you should do, according to what God is leading you to do.
And, you know, personally for me, I think people-pleasing, especially if anyone who's listening or watching, like, that is something that so many of us have a hard time recognizing in ourselves.
Like if you do have people-pleasing tendencies, but I think the more I've worked on myself, the more I've realized how deeply rooted that has been for myself. Like, oh, these decisions that I've been making or the way I feel pulled to do something, is that actually me, or is it really actually just to please other people so that I feel safe around those people, if that makes sense.
So, there’s a verse in Galatians 1:10, that I feel really, really speaks to: “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
And I feel like that's just really convicting because it's like, yeah, are you trying to please people or God? Because you can't do both or, you know, you can't serve two masters. So you really have to put God as your north star, as your pointer, and have a way to filter out, like, is this me? Is this other people? Is this God? And so that's kind of what we're gonna be talking about today.
I can speak for myself that making decisions is really hard. I've learned things the hard way, the painful way. But as only children, we, at least I have the pressure to do what is the right thing and fulfill high expectations from parents. And so that was always ingrained in me growing up.
Like you have to pick the right college, the right job, and it was almost like, it's fortunately and unfortunately, I grew up in a very safe bubble locationally and also, my parents created a bubble where it was. They didn't really put me in an environment where I was able to take as much risk or try new things or be experimental. It was pretty much a linear path.
Yeah, I think subconsciously, too, as not just only children but anybody, I'm thinking especially I think oldest children. Like, if you're the oldest sibling in your family, you feel this extra pressure and responsibility because you feel like you're the one paving the way, and if you're the only child, you're like, "My parents literally have no other kids to fall back on. I am their Plan B."
So if I mess up, and you, you know, culturally speaking, if you have pressure to do things to please your parents and make them happy, then you feel this added subconscious pressure of like, "I gotta get it right, otherwise, I'll fail my family, I'll disgrace my family in that way."
So yeah, that's especially prevalent for Asian cultures, where honor is such a huge deal, and you unfortunately have a lot of pressure and a lot of weight to carry on the family name.
For me, I had, I would say, from childhood to around the middle of college, I grew with a sense of longing for my parents' love and approval, and I knew that they loved me, but they didn't exactly quite show the love that I wanted them to, which was words of affirmation, like, "I love you. I'm proud of you."
And for those of you who do have Asian parents, you probably know that it's pretty rare to hear that. I probably have heard that, I don't know, like five times in my life, and those times have been very impactful, but I didn't hear it a lot.
So growing up, I subconsciously wanted to prove to my parents that I was something, that I can amount to something. I was also compared a lot to my peers and my cousins, which made me feel insecure and looked down upon and insignificant, honestly. But I would usually do things to please my parents, to earn their approval.
or example, in college, I went down the med school route, tried that a little bit, and then I found I didn't really like biology. And I tried engineering, and then I found out that I don't really love math that much, even though I'm pretty good at it, I'm not geeking over it. I also didn't like physics that much, so why would I go into engineering? Which is obviously like being a doctor or an engineer is something my parents wanted me to.
But then later, after post-college and into adulthood, I slowly, but surely, found more freedom in Jesus, and I was able to heal some of those wounds that I had from my parents. I was able to really forgive them and have the talk with them to confess how I felt what they did to make me feel hurt and insignificant.
And honestly, it surprised me. I said that they love me regardless and they just wanted me to be okay. If you want to hear the full story, you can. I think it's episode. So, I want to say like nine, maybe it's about our complicated relationship with our dad and Alex. Here's how he healed that relationship with his dad. Yeah, check it out. Yeah.
Well, that unpacks a lot of things but after being able to forgive my parents right now, I've been able to make decisions more freely that are aligned with the Bible and also my values and many other things as well. So I get to choose my career. I get to choose who I marry. I get to choose where I live, etc. So I feel a lot more free from kind of the invisible cage that my parents put me in or that you experience from your parents. That even intentionally put you in.
Yeah, I feel like for me it's different. I definitely felt this invisible cage but in a different way. So I think for me a lot of it, I mean we were talking about this this morning, how in my quiet time with God, he was revealing to me so many things about my childhood that I had totally forgotten about. I had, like, buried these memories, and anyway, we were processing it out loud, and I realized, "Oh my gosh, so much of my fear of what other people think of me is based on these repressed memories I had as a kid when certain things happened."
I won't go into the details, but like, it just made me realize even more so that so many of my decisions, my natural tendency, is to try to make these decisions based on what other people would think of me, depending on what I chose, right?
So like, even as a kid, I, like, when you're a kid, you have no idea. You have no awareness of all any of this stuff. So I was reflecting on how in middle school and high school and up until even in college, a lot of my default modes and ways of being was actually me trying to maintain this identity that had been basically crafted around what would get me the most praise from other people.
And, you know, at the time, yeah, I had no idea. Yeah, I was like, to me, that was who I was because I was just so used to overachieving, over-functioning, over, you know, and always going above and beyond. And these are all such positive traits that people talk about, like being super proactive, being over, you know, really responsible, caring for other people, pouring yourself out for people. And so all of these different things.
But, you know, for those of you who might be more familiar with emotional health, a lot of that stuff can actually be codependency disguised as good things, you know? So, you know, in college, I finally learned, I do have limits because I was just so tired, trying to do, like, 10 clubs at a time because in high school, you know, every club you joined, it's, like, very low commitment and you can put all these things on your resume and makes you feel and look good on your resume. And I was like, "This is just what I have to do to get into college."
But then in college, especially freshman and sophomore year, I remember, junior year, I told myself, "I'm just gonna focus on these few. It's better to do fewer things, well and deeper and enjoy my life and have more margin than to try to do everything because that's just not sustainable and not really not worth it because there's draining my energy."
But then I think out of college and when I was entering the work environment, that really caught up to me, in terms of still that lingering drive and really deep need to do everything, you know, like even though I would hold it down and narrow it, it would still creep into my other parts of my life where I felt like I needed to take care of everybody's problems.
If people were upset, I felt so bad. I felt like the weight was on me. And I also felt like, you know, whatever my boss said, I worked or didn't need it, I worked. I had to go above and beyond on every single thing. I was like, this, like taking that strength of being helpful and responsible and thorough and it was like over-indexing on it to a point where it was just not sustainable.
So with all that said, I feel like it just was a beginning stage of me realizing I need to learn to say no and saying no is actually okay. But I really felt equipped on how to say no because part of that reason was because it was hard for me to really discern, like, what should I say no to? Like, this stuff is helpful. Like everybody—everyone's going for all these opportunities. Like, I need to get those too.
So the struggle I felt was almost like a forcing mechanism to teach me that. I think God really used to teach me how to be more thoughtful around saying no to things and not to good things, and to release the outcome of being like, it's okay if I don't do everything that I feel this internal pressure to do because I'm a human being. It's just unrealistic to do everything and be everything to everyone.
Is there a specific example of a time when you were discerning between two or more good things. And how did you discern?
Yeah, so many. I think one of them that comes up is one example is when I was applying. So, I was in a rotational program, like, when I first was working at Google, they had this, like, APMM, like a recent grad—Associate Product Marketing Manager program. It’s a mouthful, but it's basically like a recent new college graduate program that's a two-year rotational program and part of it is you get to apply to a rotation after the first 18 months, and so those are really a big deal because so many people were giving me opinions or, you know, we're having those, like, hallway talks in the cohort.
Like, "Like, everyone is like asking each other where you applying to, what are you thinking, what are you interested in?" Because everyone's kind of, like, I need each other in college almost. Yeah, "Are you gonna go to Stanford, right?" Like, kind of competitive, but—and also they're also trying to figure out where—what's—where would they have the highest likelihood of getting into depending on what everyone else is applying to?
And so, I heard a lot of people talking about how they're applying to places like Singapore or like New York, or just, like, these very more, like, fast-paced environments because that was, like, what they felt was wise and they were like, "Well, if you want to climb the—or if you want to, like, grow in your career, like, you want to go where the products are growing and, like, where do you see the most growth in terms of the market and the products?" Like, a lot of it was, like, products that were being built in, like, Singapore and also in New York and other areas like that.
But for me, like, I just had a really hard time with that because I was like, I personally don't want to climb the ladder and then I started asking myself, like, "Should I want to climb the ladder?" And I was like, "I just honestly, I just want to go wherever God wants me to go and I don't really care about, like, the fast-paced growth stuff like that. Honestly, sounds like it's gonna stress me and I don't know if I want that kind of stress," you know? So, I—I just had all this, like, back and forth, like, doubting myself.
But what really helped was when multiple people I talked to, who I had already rotated or were, like, you know, ahead in terms of their career, were like, "Grace, just apply where you think you want to apply because your life is different from everyone else's. So don't feel pressure that you need to want what other people want you to say true to what you want."
But then that was scary because I was like, "What do I want?" Because I'm not used to thinking about what I actually want or I just, again, going back to because of your parents and bringing.
Yeah, yeah, like, easily doubting myself. I think to add on to the parent thing, like, my parents. You know, they love me very much. But they were almost like, two, many times like helicopter parents. You know, they would, like, try to do everything for me. Well, protective. Yeah. So, you know, for example, when I would say, "Oh, I want to do this," it didn't my dad would automatically be like shooting it down. Like, "No, no, that's bad. Like, do this instead," you know?
So, I think both of us had that experience growing up. So, as you grow older, you kind of have this ability, like, "Well, I can't trust myself. Like, I don't know how to make decisions because my parents always validating or invalidating."
And for me, this rotational program was, especially hard in regards to that because my dad really did not want me to rotate somewhere far. Like, he wanted me just to stay in the Bay Area basically, but I ended up in Australia. Probably the farthest you can get from—yeah. And that's how we met, so it's been another time.
Yeah, yeah.
There are a lot of good things that we can pursue and choose. For example, a good job opportunity comes up. What do you do? Do you take it? Or there are so many good companies to work for. Which one do you go to? Or there are so many good people to date. So we're just—we just have a lot of options, fortunately, but again, that leads us very anxious and paralyzed by the decision.
People might be thinking, "There is no one—anybody today. So I've got to just pick whoever comes by too." So, "Who are the good fish, right?"
Yeah. Why don't you kick us off?
What we have is this framework of how do you make decisions with godly wisdom. So we have four pillars.
Yes. What's the first one?
Yeah. So part of this framework is really four categories of questions, and we will list all of these in the reflect and apply guide that's with every episode that's—it's in the description. But number one is your reason.
So this—we talk about this a lot actually on this podcast, is like, not really so much about what you're doing, but much more about why you're doing it. Like God cares about your heart. And so, doing the right thing with the wrong reasons, still makes it the wrong thing.
For example, in First Samuel 16:7, when it's talking about, you know, how the Lord chose and appointed David, who's the youngest of all his brothers, who was the one who was overlooked. He's just a shepherd boy. The Lord actually anointed him or chose him to be king despite, you know, everything it says, but the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things, people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."
And so, yeah, God really, at the end of the day, God is looking at your heart and he wants your heart to be in a right place with him. It's not so much—you can do all the right things, like all the religious activities or behaviors, ex—on your exterior.
But internally, if you are not pursuing God and having—you know, in the Bible, it says, "Create in me a pure heart," and it's all about having that heart that's aligned with God.
So that whatever you do is just an outflow of that. Not you trying to perform to be a 'good' or 'perfect' Christian on the outside. The reason why God does this is because He loves you, cares for you, and wants to work for your good, His glory, and His Kingdom purposes.
His purposes are much bigger than just your personal happiness or soul. He doesn't want you to make good decisions based on wrong motives that can be damaging to you and your soul. For instance, selfish desires or seeking only pleasure and ease. Sometimes He calls us to do harder things to build resilience, character, faith, and strength, even if it means going against other people's expectations. He wants us to ultimately fear Him, not fear man.
In Galatians 5:1, it says, 'It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourself be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.' So often, we are set free in Christ, but we act as if we're still enslaved to worldly pressures without even realizing it.
Here are some questions to consider when evaluating your motives:
Firstly, when you're super honest with yourself, what's your true and honest motive for wanting to do this?
Secondly, does responding out of this motive perpetuate insecurity and self-reliance, or does it strengthen your character and intimacy with God?
Are there any fears or anxieties driving you towards one option or the other? Bring those to God in prayer. Remember, it's not about getting an immediate answer, but about the process of reflecting and dialoguing with God, evaluating your heart, and trusting in His timing and guidance.
A good way to discern God's will is to ask if it aligns with His Kingdom and values. It's not always a clear-cut right or wrong answer; sometimes it's about feeling God's grace and a sense of conviction when making decisions.
This self-reflection is crucial because on the outside, nobody else can truly understand what's going on in your heart besides you and God. He knows you better than you know yourself, as we are often blinded by our own emotions and self-justifications.
But I think what we're also trying to say is that you don't need a perfect heart to make decisions because nobody has a perfect heart. We all have some impurities and mixed motives, and it's really hard.
Personally, I've dealt with a lot of being paralyzed by overthinking and self-criticism. I used to distrust myself so much that I wouldn't do anything at all. But now I've come to realize that I need to step out in faith, knowing that God is with me. I've done the self-reflection and brought my thoughts and feelings to Him.
At the end of the day, I can't expect myself to be perfect because that's not realistic. It's also essential to consider what's driving you when making decisions.
For example, changing cities or jobs may not necessarily be the solution to your problems. If you're anxious about finances, getting a better job might not cure that internal anxiety because there will always be higher-paying jobs and more opportunities. Pursuing things based on fear or insecurity can lead to the wrong decisions.
It's crucial to develop a deeper relationship with God to gain His discernment. Ultimately, He wants us to be connected with Him so that we can understand His will. Another important filter is considering the season of life you're in. Doing the right thing at the wrong time can make it the wrong thing.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 highlights the importance of timing in our lives. To make the right decisions, you need to consider your current life stage, whether it's being single, married, having kids, going through grief, or experiencing a transition. Your priorities will vary based on your life stage, and it's not always easy to define them.
To better understand your priorities, it's essential to engage in self-reflection and ask God for guidance. We should approach God and ask Him what He wants us to prioritize in this season of life. It's common to default to prioritizing work and other things based on societal expectations, but it's crucial to question why we prioritize certain things and dig deeper into our motives.
Just like we would check with our boss about our list of priorities at work, we should do the same with God. Ask Him if our priorities align with His goals and plans for us. Bringing our priorities before God allows us to seek His wisdom and ensure that we're living according to His will.