The Next Right Thing A Devotional By Emily P. FreemanSample

Day 1

Do the Next Right Thing

Luke 8:40-56

The mights and maybes of our lives keep us awake at night. Maybe I should accept the new position. Which schooling choice is best for my kids? What might happen if I choose wrong?

When it comes to making decisions, chances are you’ve heard this advice: Do the next right thing. It’s good advice, but it didn’t sink in for me fully until I started noticing it in the Gospels. So often, right after Jesus performed a miracle, he gave a simple next thing to do.

He told the leper to show himself to the priest.

He told the paralytic to pick up his stretcher and go home. 

He told Jairus and his wife, after raising their daughter from the dead, to give her something to eat.

Rather than a life plan, a clear vision, or a five-year list of goals, the leper, the paralytic, and the couple received instructions from Jesus about what to do next—and only next. 

What is your next right thing? We all have a different degree of control over various areas of our lives. Regardless of your own degree of personal choice, you have a God who walks and talks with you, who moves in and through you, who sings over you. The decision you need to make is rarely the point. The point is you becoming more fully yourself in the presence of God.

Unmade decisions have the power to either close us up in fear or open us up to love.

This is both the burden and the gift of our indecision. We get to choose which one we carry. What this week will do for you, I hope, is begin to create space within your soul and on your schedule for you to remember who you are, where you live, and why it matters. In turn, you’ll learn to name the unnamed things within you and discern with God what your next right thing could be.

O God, I am open. The decisions I’m facing have become too much. Ease my fatigue with your presence and my hesitation with your peace. Here is an issue that has me tied up in knots. Will you begin to untangle me? What do you want me to know today? O God, I am open.