Luke 14:25-34

If you’ve ever tried to renovate a house, you know it’s nothing like HGTV. It takes months (even years) to do a large renovation, but with the magic of TV editing, HGTV can reduce a 3-month project to 30 minutes.

The reality is that building anything of substance takes time. Whether that’s a home, your wealth, your character, or your relationships. And because it takes time, there is plenty of opportunity for things to go wrong. How do you mitigate the stress of things not going to plan? You pre-decide.

To pre-decide is to make a decision in advance. This means that you decide how you will respond before a situation occurs.

Sticking with the building theme, listen to what Jesus says: For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? (Luke 14:28)

Jesus says this in relation to building your life on Him as Lord and Messiah. And building your life on Jesus takes time. There will be plenty of things along the way that don’t go as you would hoped (just like any building project). But to pre-decide (or count the cost) means that if something doesn’t go your way, you’ve already decided that you’re still going to follow Him. That if you’re prayer isn’t answered the way you want, you’re still going to worship Jesus. That if difficulties come your way, you’re not going to stop pursuing God with your whole heart, mind, strength, and soul.

Make a pre-decision today. Whatever the day brings in your life, you’ll still honour Jesus with your words, actions, and attitude.