Anxious About Decisions

Anxious about Decisions: Finding Freedom in the Peace of God, Michael Gembola (New Growth Press, 2022)

Do you find yourself overwhelmed by decisions? Find it hard to make them, or feel anxious about the implications, that “what ifs?” Do you overthink, gather lots of advice, feel self-doubt, feel unable to trust others, or delay in decision making so long that you lose opportunities? If this is you, you are likely to find some helpful guidance here. Michael Gembola’s general message is:

“God uses your decision-making to help you grow up and mature as a Christian. Decision-making is an arena for spiritual formation.” 

As such, decisions are not usually about discovering God’s will in the specifics, rather God uses times of decision making to make us more peaceful and to make us better stewards.

“My own conviction is that God is more interested in growing us up as Christians and helping us learn how to make wise decisions, rather than making decisions for us via impressions or authority figures.”

Part 1 explores decision anxiety - how it works (by trying to eliminate risk), and how we make it worse (by overthinking, overconsulting, overchecking, and avoidance). He notes that God tells us his moral will, but not the answers to nonmoral questions. There are helpful warnings about relying on feeling and testing God for his guidance:

“It’s hard to live with the reality that we don’t know all we’d like to know before we make decisions, and that in most nonmoral decisions, we won’t ultimately know with perfect assurance we’re making the right decision, or the decision that will lead to the outcomes we desire.”

Part 2 explores where decision anxiety comes from - notably the cultural challenges of young adulthood, and family background.

Growing into spiritual maturity is the key:

“But what a beautiful thing it is to be deeply at peace, to be spiritually steady, to be loving and serving others even when you feel stuck, to be able to take small, constructive steps even when you feel confused or anxious.”

Part 3 explores three main areas: marriage, vocation, and the smaller things.

With marriage - the key advice is that you need to know God and know yourself to have wisdom to make this major life decision.

“As you have a better sense of your goals and dreams in life, you have a better sense of who would be a good fit to pursue those with you—and whose goals and dreams you’d like to sign on to as well.”

He encourages the prayerful consideration of a partner’s compatibility, character and your connection with them. I thought these were wise considerations for anyone in the discernment stage of a relationship. And he does advice listening to your anxiety in this area - it may be telling you something you haven’t yet managed to put into words. 

With vocation he encourages working toward faithful stewardship and peace, and we steward in community.

“We must learn to be faithful stewards of the little corner of creation that God has invited us to cultivate. Knowing what job is a good fit for us requires us to go a step further than interests and talents. So vocation—calling—is not primarily something found inside us. It suggests that someone is doing the calling—there is a voice; there are words for us from outside of us”

The final chapter explores smaller decisions that cause anxiety and also touches on the traits that tend toward obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD): “I want you to consider decisions about the small stuff as small steps of faith and trust.” He advises that decision making is a learned skill, so take the risk, accept our imperfections and mistakes, and see incremental progress.

“One final piece of ancient advice from believers long ago who were quite familiar with the overscrupulous conscience is this: whatever anxiety tells you to do, do the opposite. If it tells you not to risk going out, go out. If it tells you to pray longer, don’t. Consider anxiety an unreliable guide.”

Gembola explicitly does not provide a protocol for making good decisions, but does provide resources at the end for those who would like that. It does also seem aimed slightly more at young adults, who are working thought some of the major decisions he discusses, however I think it has applicability for many.  decisions. He finishes with the encouragement of our goal:

“we aim to follow Christ with a humble confidence that leads to neither a deficit nor an excess of decisiveness. If we are rooted and grounded, we’ll be able to say no when we need to, and our yes will be meaningful and not only conflict avoidance. We’ll step out to love and serve neighbors. We’ll follow God’s calling and God’s will in our lives. And with these roots, we’ll be steady.”

This is a useful contribution to the Ask the Christian Counselor series. It’s a somewhat specific topic, but will be very helpful for those to whom it applies.

I was given an ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review.