Episode 58 - Prayerfully Discerning your Options

Last Episode we discussed creating options. Today we discuss how to prayerfully discern which option to choose.

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Paul, Welcome to Catholic money talk, where we talk about all things money and finance, and we try to do it through a lens of being Catholic, where our ultimate goal is to one day be in Heaven with the Lord. I am your host. Paul Scarfone, thank you for being here today. Last episode, we discussed how to create options. So today I want to talk about once we've created these options now what, how do we pick which one we should go with? But before we do that, let's say a prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen, Heavenly Father. We thank you for this day, we thank you for all the ways that you love and bless us. Lord, just fill us with great hope, with a longing for you. Lord, help us to have a great desire of your will in our lives. Allow us to yield to your Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit guide us to the Lord. We ask this all in Jesus name amen, in the name of the Father and of the Son, the Holy Spirit Amen. So last episode, we were creating options, and I just want to briefly recap we said there were two types of situations that you'd need to create options for. The first is for those things that we see coming from afar, right? We can see them at a distance away, things we can plan for and we have time to plan for, like retirement, a home purchase, or maybe even something smaller, like a vacation, the second, those are things that are going to feel more like an emergency, right? Because, just because they're honest, all of a sudden, they're just, all of a sudden, we're in the middle of it, right? Maybe it's a job loss, a car repair. It could be something more serious, like a medical emergency. So so these are the two types of situations that we create options for, and we talked about that last episode. And so this week, want to talk about, now that we've created some options, how do we decide which one we're going to go with? And before we get into it, I want to be very clear. If you're married, this is something that you and your spouse are going to do very closely. You create options together, you pray through them, and you discern which option you're going to pick together. If you're single, it's just you, however, it's always good to invite a friend, someone who you know loves you well enough to call you out of something sounds like crazy town, right? And for either married couples or a single person, you always have the ability to invite other people into these types of decisions, especially if they're big ones, right? It could be a mentor, a spiritual director, a trusted friend, and sometimes you might even need, like an expert, a professional right? Think of a lawyer or a realtor, accountant, right, someone who knows the specifics of the things that you're dealing with. So I just want to say that to set that as a stage for some of this, because the Lord puts people in our lives that can help us figure out some of these things. It's not just on us, right? So I want to be very clear with that. So let's say you have a decision in front of you, or you have your options in front of you. You need to pick one and make a decision. The first I'm going to rely on there's a priest, Father Larry Richards a Catholic priest. Most recently he was in a the diocese. He's in the, I think, Diocese of Erie, Pennsylvania. But he wrote a book called surrender, and it has some really good points and comments about making decisions. So I'm going to rely a little bit on that today. But the first thing he says to do, which I think is really, really important, is, if we're trying to pursue the Lord, we're trying to seek the will, you know, God's will for us in our lives, and pick that the first thing we have to do is, if we look at our options, remove any of them that may have sin in them. Whoa. What do I mean by that? Well, I mean, maybe we create an option that's not entirely honest. Maybe it's has an element that's not a Christian value. Maybe we're going to try to, you know, not. Show integrity or manipulate or something like that. That could very easily come into our thoughts as we're putting options together, but now, as we pray, we say, Lord, reveal to me if any of these options actually have sin involved in them. And that's a really, that's the place we need to start. I want to give a little example. Recently, I was speaking to a friend of mine, and for the last couple years, he's had a side hustle, a job outside of his nine to five, a little business he has that he engages in, and I know it's something that he's needed to kind of support the family. And I went up to him the other day, I said, Hey, how's your side hustle going? And he looked at me, and he said, Actually, Paul, I stopped doing it. I said, Really? What happened? He said, Well, I was thinking about it, and I really felt like it violates some of my code of conduct that I have agreed to at the company that I work for, and I feel like it was being dishonest by continuing it. I said, Wow, that's great that you stopped it. You see, the thing he was doing was there was nothing wrong with what he was doing. He was engaged in a very legal a very good service activity for people who need it. However, he knew that the company that he worked for actually doesn't allow their employees to do that right, and I don't know the specifics of it, if it was a conflict of interest. I know there's been moments in my life where I've been been tempted by, oh, I could do this side hustle. Oh, it's a conflict of interest with my company. And you can quickly think of, well, if I don't get caught, who knows? Right? So you dismiss those because it's being dishonest. So I was very, very impressed at his level of spiritual maturity, right? Because as we're making these decisions and looking at our options, right, Catholic money talk, how do we view these decisions in front of us through our Catholic lens? Right? So with our Catholic lens, we've got to be able to identify those things that aren't from the Lord, because they're sin or they're not, they don't have Christian value in them, right? So those are the key. So we look at our options, we find those, we quickly dismiss them, okay? And again, we can, as we pray about and look at the options, it becomes much more evident to us than if we're frantically just creating them, right? So that's why we created our options. And we don't just randomly pick one. We then look at them. We prayerfully discern, Lord, which one do you want me to do? So we take out the bad ones, the ones that may include any type of sin, and you might not have any that have that. So if you've done this, this isn't your first time doing this. You've learned how to do this. Well, all right, so now and again, this is kind of this is from the book surrender by Father Larry Richards. He recommends you just you write each decision or option. You write each option down on a piece of paper. Let's say you have five different options in front of you write five down on five different pieces of paper, and you take one a day to prayer. So let's say you're doing this on a Monday through Friday, right? You have five work days, five days of the week. You have five different options. So each day, you take another one to prayer, you have it written on your piece of paper, and you pray, you say, Lord, what's the number one thing that you want me to do? Or how does this option that I've created serve your will for my life? And write down the pros and cons for each one, right? So the first one, you take the first day, the first day, you take the first one, and you pray through it, and you write down the pros and the cons that the Lord reveals to you. And again, if you're if you're married, you could do this separately, and then get together to say, Hey, how did the Lord speak to you when you prayed about this option? And then day two, take the second option and pray through it, pros and cons and the third one, one of the things that you're particularly looking for is peace. The Lord isn't going to like the Lord's will for our life. When we enter into that, it yields peace. It doesn't yield anxiety or panic, right? And so we want to go through these, we want to say, Lord, would this bring me peace? And that's what we're really looking for. If it's not, if. We've got an option in front of us, and we're praying. We're like, oh, man, I can't think of anything good about this. This is just, there's no way I could do this. It's gonna make me nuts. Then dismiss it clearly. That's not the one from the Lord. So we're looking for peace. That's what we're trying to find. You know your prayer is Lord, you put us here. We're asking you to get involved in this. We know you have a perfect plan. What's that perfect plan? And this is, these are the words we can actually say to pray like which one of these? Lord Do you want me to do? That's a great prayer. So if you have peace through praying for one of those, just put it to the side. If you have a sense of anxiety or you worry about it, just dismiss it, right? And so you go through this, you go through the five different options, Monday through Friday. You go through them all. And let's say at the end you have two, right? There's two that you feel you have some peace about if you're still struggling to make the decision. One of the things the father Larry recommends is going to confession. You see, when we sin, it kind of gums up our perspective, and going to confession gives us some clarity. The same thing can be said for you know, when we're praying and when we're fasting, and this is something I learned, actually, from from Father Larry as well. When we pray, it's like we're using a magnifying glass to grab the rays of the sun and pinpoint it on a particular situation or intention, right? You've all seen that you could start a fire, right? Whether you have your magnifying glass to capture the rays of the sun, and it directs right very narrowly. It pinpoints where we want that sun to shine. That's what prayer is, right, getting all of this and focusing it and intensifying it in a particular spot. Well, when we fast, we are cleaning the magnifying glass. That's what fasting does. It intensifies our prayer. So when we're struggling with making a decision, or we can't hear the Lord speaking to us, there's probably some garbage, some stuff that's dirtying our magnifying glass, gumming up our perspective, however you want to look at it. And when we can go to confession and go to the sacraments and receive Lord's grace, we're drawn closer to him. And there is no better place to make decisions than being close to the Lord. So that's something we can do that will help us. And you may get an aha moment when trying to make some of these decisions. So a quick example on and I'm going to kind of just make this up, because it's, it's, I think it's a very clear one. Let's say Taryn and I, we needed to replace one of our vehicles. And, you know, we kind of look and we have $15,000 to replace a vehicle. And my wife, Taryn, says, Okay, well, here's the options we have for $15,000 vehicles. What do you think? And I say, I don't, unlike any of them. We should probably, maybe, maybe we take $10,000 out of emergency fund to purchase a$25,000 vehicle. Like, I feel good about that. And if she says, no, like, this is an emergency, this is what we plan for. Like, this isn't giving me peace. If we were to take$10,000 out of emergency fund to add it to our car fund to purchase a vehicle. And that's the beauty of having spouses and having someone to talk to. Right? Again, if you're a single person, get a trusted friend, someone you can speak with, because we both have to be in peace. We both have to be at peace. It's not like, well, you know what you're you know how much money we have. You figure it out. No no no, no, no, no. We work together on these things. So that's just a quick example, right? If, if I think one option is going to result in less, or if I think an option gives me peace and it doesn't give my wife peace. Guess what? It doesn't gives us give us peace. So we need to pray about it. So the other thing, if we're still struggling to try to make a decision, and Father Larry talks about this in his book, when he's making when he talks about making bigger decisions, he says, Get a spiritual director, someone who is guiding you. And he quotes st Philip Neri and says is what St Philip Neri says, Those who have themselves for a spiritual director have a fool for a spiritual director. Wow. He also quotes st Teresa of Avila and says, to obey your director is to. Obey God. Wow. So these two saints, Philip Neary and Theresa vavila, talking about the importance of a spiritual director. It's good to have a spiritual director. I have a spiritual director. Everyone should have a spiritual director. And if you don't, right, that's the Philip Neri quote. Then those who have themselves as a spiritual director, have a fool as a spiritual director. So you and your wife, if you're married, you and your spouse, you should both have a spiritual director. And again, this isn't someone that you're asking permission from what you're telling them what's in front of you, and they are helping you to seek the Lord's will for your lives in these particular situations. And it's funny my spiritual director, there have been times when I'll say, there's this option, this option, and he goes, that that's the one, praise the Lord. I mean, there's no greater clarity than that, you know. And usually it's a moment of right after confession, because my spiritual director is a priest, and so I can go to confession to confession to him as well, and we usually start with confession. So it's really, really good, right? So a lot of these decisions, if you're especially going to open up other people, friends, spiritual directors, maybe a professional like I said, these options are probably related to a decision that we have some time for, right? Something that we can see coming and we're preparing for, but let's just talk real quickly about emergencies, right, things that can feel like a crisis, that we need to quickly create options for, and then we need to quickly select one, right? There's a couple things I want us to do when we're faced in that situation, the first thing is to invite the Lord in. The second thing is to cast the evil one out, and then the third is to ask the Holy Spirit for guidance. So how do we do that? The first thing I say is just say a prayer. Lord help us figure out the situation right now, to cast the evil one out a great prayer is the St Michael prayer, and then we can right after that, say in our father, right if we think of the prayer of St Michael, we're at work. We're asking St Michael to send His angels to guard us and protect us, and could get the evil one out of here. And then when we say the Our Father, we're asking the Lord, you know, we're saying, Lord, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, right? We're seeking his way, give us our daily bread, give us what we need and forgive us our trespasses, right? So we're doing all these things we talked about, going to confession, right? So just saying, Lord, forgive me for those things I've done wrong. Keep the evil one far from me. I know you provide for me every single day. Please let what I do on earth echo the will that you have for me in heaven, Lord, in this moment, keep the evil one far from us. St Michael, protect us, and then invite the Holy Spirit in. And that's one of the easiest prayers. Come Holy Spirit. I've been praying that my opening prayer for a while now, Come Holy Spirit. Because when we invite the Holy Spirit in, he comes. So those are just a couple little keys for prayerfully, praying through decisions that might be in crisis mode again. If we feel like we're in emergency mode, in crisis mode, we might not be. We might be able to come up with some ideas that give us some more time, right? We talked about that last episode as well. I gave the example of, if you quickly lost a job, don't don't freak out in that sense, but go find some side hustle. Go get a part time job, do some night work while you look to land a new, you know, nine to five or a new main gig. And I give the example too, with my mother with her car when it died, we got a rental car for three weeks to buy us some time to figure out good solutions, good options for a vehicle purchase. So, you know, quickly in an emergency, let's see, is this something that needs to be resolved right now, or can we buy some time in some way, and if it needs to be resolved right now? Lord come right now. St Michael, protect us. Come Holy Spirit. Lord, help us to see what you have for us in this moment, so we can make good decisions, so that this is very, you know, 20 brief minutes on how to pray through some your some decisions that you might have in front of you, if there are questions, or if you've got some things really weighing on you and you're not sure how to conquer them, or how to discern through, I am happy. To talk to you. There is a link in the podcast episode description to contact me. Go for it. I'm happy to chat with you if you do have some questions, or if you have some topics for future podcast episodes. I'm open to ideas. So that's all I have for today. Some basic ways to help you start praying through different decisions you have to make. I hope this was helpful. Thank you for joining me today. God bless. Thank you for listening to Catholic money talk. I hope you join us again next time, please click Subscribe on your podcast app to get notified of new episodes. God bless you and have a great day. Foreign.