In the Church we place a strong emphasis on the receiving guidance from the Holy Ghost and listening to the Spirit to try to understand the correct decisions we need to make in this life to become who our Heavenly Father wants us to become in this life. The problem is that because of this emphasis, we sometimes over apply that principle into thinking that we need guidance every single time a decision is laid before us. We often face numerous decisions as we go about our daily activities however not all of them are hard decisions. God does expect us to grow and learn and just as a parent would expect a 24 year to make more independent decisions on their own compared to when they were 3, God expects us to be able to handle certain decisions on our own, especially if they are common sense decisions.
We don’t need inspiration or the Holy Ghost to help us choose between the A and the F decisions. It’s not like we wake up in the morning and think to ourselves “I could either go to work or I could choose to rob a bank?” or “Should I go to church today or should I go murder someone?” These decisions should be obvious enough for us to make those decisions on our own. We don’t need to even bother praying about the decision because it should be fairly self evident on what we should do.
The difference between the A and the F decisions should be fairly self evident to almost everyone but the ambiguity
increases as we start to creep closer and closer to choosing between the A and the A+ decision. This is the area where we need the most amount of help and the most amount of inspiration. This is a situation where both decisions are equally as good as the other but one is better for us for reasons we may not fully understand right now. Here I’m not talking about a decision that looks equally as good at the beginning and latter on turns out to be the wrong decision, I’m talking about equally good decisions that lead to equally good outcomes.
An example of this would be if we have five people to home teach but can only visit two of them now, which two do you choose? Home teaching any two of the five is a good decision but there may be a family that needs you to visit them that very day. Deciding between two colleges, though either one would do well for you, could very well bring about different careers, networks and experiences that will drastically alter you life later on. Neither one of them necessarily being bad but just different.
There are numerous times in our lives where we face decisions that are not necessarily bad vs evil but better vs best. Our lives are filled with decisions such as these and we need inspiration precisely for these type of decisions to help us make the best decision for us and for our families. These are also the decisions that help shape the rest of our lives and so we need God’s help in order to know which direction He would like us to go.
