One of the things about being intentional is that you need to make decisions. One of the things about making decisions is that you need information and discernment and the ability to hear what the Lord is saying so that the decisions that you make are wise and in the will of the Lord.
To get the information I need to make a quality decision means I need to research some things. That may mean talking to people who know a whole lot more then I do and being humble enough to show them my ignorance.. It may mean reading something that isn’t all that exciting to me or learning something that I do not know that much about. To be intentional about something is to move forward in a decision and to move forward, wisdom demands that it be a wise decision. Otherwise my intentional move forward will require me to back track. And when I have to back tract too often, people will begin to lose trust in my ability to lead.
Discernment is the second key to moving forward in wise decisions. Eph 5:17-18 says, Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. NLT. Joshua didn’t ask for the Lord’s counsel on the Gibeonites and Israel paid a price for that mistake for 100’s of years. We need discernment so that as we make decisions and move forward we are doing so in the will of the Lord. Discernment gives you that check in your spirit if you are going the wrong way. Discernment also gives you peace in your heart when you are on track.
Finally, you need to hear the voice of the Lord. To do that I need to be spending quality time with Him so that I can learn to know his voice more clearly. When I learn to hear His voice more clearly in the quiet, I am more able to hear it in the noise. You know, the noise of life. We all lead busy lives and sometimes we can get so involved in doing all that we are doing that we fail to feel the checks in our spirits, or the little promptings in our hearts as we roll through our day. But when we have trained our hearts to hear His voice, we can hear it out of the business of life. Kind of like a mother who is so in tune with her child that in a room full of noisy people, she can hear her child’s cry.
So, go ahead, be intentional in all you do. But do it with wisdom, that has the information needed, the discernment intact, and the affirmation of the Lord at your back. That way you will be building trust in those around you because as you are being intentional about what you are doing, it is filled with wisdom and the will of the Lord.
Be intentional about being intentional!!!