Have you ever made bad decisions? See, I cannot help you if you believe that you have not made bad decisions.

Second question… Do you know or recognize what your bad decisions were? Believe it or not, many people aren’t aware which decisions they made are bad. They have been making bad decisions for so long, that making bad decisions is natural for them.  They would know how to make a good decisions because they simply don’t know what a good decision is.

Ok. So lets do this. I want you to get a piece of paper.  I want you to write down what your bad decisions were. Yes. I want you to take the time to identify those decisions you think were bad decisions.

Now, I know some of you are asking, Dr. Usher, How to I even know if a decision I made was bad or good.  Well That’s a good question. Because there are some decisions that you could have made that you thought were bad, but maybe in reality they were good.  See some of you may consider a decision BAD because they may have had some bad consequences.  But your cant judge a decisions as good or bad solely by the consequences.

So the best way to know which decisions you made were good or bad is to judge your decisions by the Word of God. See, without the word of God, none of us have a standard to judge what’s right or wrong. In short, without God, we have no knowledge of right and wrong.

Therefor some of the wrong decisions that you thought  you made could have been GOOD decisions. For example, good decisions that may appear to be bad are:

• Leaving an abusive relationship.

• Ending a job because it was a hostile work environment.

• Leaving a church because it was teaching bad doctrine.

• Moving to another city to escape crime and pollution. 

See in all of these decision are good Biblical  decisions, BUT they have some horrible consequences.  I mean think about when you left your job. You had to go without money for a while. Or maybe when you left a church, everyone started avoiding you and talking bad about you. Or even moving to another city and starting over from zero. See all of these good decisions could be construed as BAD if you base it solely off the consequences. But if you base it upon the word of God,  you will see that these were actually good decisions.

Now lets focus on truly bad decisions you  made. You know what they were. It could have been drugs, fornication, adultery, bad relationships, crime or anything that the Bible said was wrong.  The question you have to ask yourself is this… Why do I keep making bad decisions? 

See as a Doctor, You need to know that some of you are stuck in a pattern of making bad decisions. Its like an addiction. So t help treat the addition, you have to find out what triggers your bad decision making.

For some of you , your triggers are loneliness. Lowe self esteem. A traumatic event. A certain time of year and etc and etc. I could go through a list. But the key is for you to recognize what precedes you making a bad decision? Is it stress? Is it an untreated psychiatric condition like depression, OCD, or anxiety? 

The biggest challenge that you need to do is take time to think through When you made bad decisions, and then write down what triggered each bad decision. Were you getting back at your parents, or was it the influence of friends? Whatever the case might be, you need to identify the triggers.

Once the triggers have been identified, you need to build up your spirit man through the reading of the Word of God. See, according to Bible, there is a battle raging inside you. Its called the war between your flesh and spirit. 

Let read what the Bible says about this in Galatains 5:16-17

 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. 17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. 

If you build up your spirit by feeding it the Word of God, the less likely you will make bad decisions.