The Striking Hour
When you hear profound stuff, you want to share it with others. I often quote my friend John Richie in these posts, but when he shared his decision-making paradigm with me, I said “This is too good. Did you really come up with this?” He confessed he did. So I asked him to share it with you. John chairs Venture here in Atlanta, GA.
I love to find principles out of the events and lessons of life. Principles keep me from repeating similar mistakes. A principle extends the lessons of experience and makes them even more valuable. Someone has said “a smart man makes a mistake, learns from it and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether.”
Three recent events in my life have shown me some principles about making timely decisions. The facts of these three events are personal but the decision-making principles they exposed are universal.
Decision-making progresses in three stages. I will describe these as separate stages, but we know they are just points on a continuum.
The first stage is an inkling. An inkling means that you have an idea of the right decision, but it’s really more of a hunch or an impression. Some of us would pull the trigger on our hunches and impressions and have found that such quick actions work sometimes and sometimes fail.
The second stage is clarity. When we have clarity, we are clear about what needs to be done, but we are not yet positive. Clarity is a key moment. Often God speaks to us in clarity. We are clear, but not positive. Faith is still required to act. Acting when you have clarity may feel risky and leave you feeling exposed. If you wait a little, maybe more facts will come and you can be surer of the decision. But when you are clear, it’s time to act. Waiting on certainty before acting is a prescription for being irrelevant. One of my favorite biographies talks about leaders “who at the striking hour, took full and effective action.” That is what clarity looks like in practice.
The final stage is certainty. Certainty takes a long time. The problem with certainty is the delay between clarity and certainty. What makes us wait? Usually, fear. We fear being embarrassed or criticized or not being good enough. I find that God calls me to obey in clarity and not wait for certainty. In fact, the desire to play it safe may itself be an act of disobedience.
The striking hour passes and with it passes the opportunity to act . . . never to return.
The recent lessons in my life all came from observing leaders who were clear on what to do, but who waited for certainty and, as a result, missed the opportunity. The result was bitter in all three cases because they missed their moment. And now action is irrelevant. Obedience delayed was disobedience. As the old hymn says, the “choice went by forever twixt the darkness and the light”
When the angel came to Joseph and warned him that Herod was going to try to kill Jesus, Joseph “arose and left for Egypt.” Jesus’ earthly dad did not wait for certainty. He acted in faith and took full and effective action at the striking hour.
Question: Are you ready to lay aside the false safety of waiting for certainty in order to act decisively in faith? Where do you have clarity, but are waiting for something more and maybe missing the moment?
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