028: How to Know When to Say Yes: Making Wise Commitment Decisions with Joni Topper
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Show Notes
Are You Struggling to Decide Which Commitments to Take On?
In this episode of The Anchored Decisions Show, I’m joined by Joni Topper to talk about making wise decisions about commitments. Joni shares powerful stories about times when she faced tough decisions — like continuing to lead worship after a botched surgery and deciding whether to push forward with a children's choir when it seemed like everything was falling apart. We discuss how to assess your current commitments, recognize God’s guidance, and know when to say yes or when to let go. If you’ve ever struggled to figure out whether a commitment is truly from God, this episode is for you!
Links From This Episode:
✨ Find Joni’s book The Power of a Well-Placed Yes on Amazon
✨ Morning Glory Ministry: www.morningloryministry.com
✨ 40 Days of Decrease Devotional
✨ Do Hard Things Book
✨ Divine Discernment Workshop: How to Seek and Discover God’s Will for Your Decision www.anchoreddecisions.com/ddworkshop
✨ Show Notes & Links: https://anchoreddecisions.com/28
Key Points:
🔑 The powerful moment when Joni shared her testimony despite a hard week
🔑 Joni’s story of not backing out of the children’s performance — and how God showed up
🔑 How a handwritten note in purple ink confirmed God’s guidance
🔑 7 questions to ask yourself before taking on a commitment
🔑 How to know when a closed door is a sign to let go
🔑 Why peace at home matters when deciding whether to say yes or no
Your Action Step for the Week:
Take time this week to go through Joni’s assessment:
List your current commitments.
Pray about the decision.
Clarify if it’s short-term, long-term, or seasonal.
Evaluate how it aligns with your spiritual growth and gifts.
Ask if it will foster peace in your home or strain existing commitments.
Download my Decision Compass at anchoreddecisions.com/compass to help you clarify your next steps.
🔔 Don’t forget to subscribe for more faith-based decision-making tips!
Connect with Me:
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🌟 www.pinterest.com/anchoreddecisions
Check out my website and decision guide shop:
🌐 www.anchoreddecisions.com
🛍️ www.anchoreddecisions.com/shop
Transcript
Welcome to episode 28 of the Anchored Decision Show. I made a last minute decision to air this episode this week, since it felt so timely with the Lent Bible study my church is going through. We're reading a devotional called 40 Days of Decrease, and it's about cutting back on anything that isn't drawing us closer to God. So this episode is all about discerning which commitments to keep and which to cut back on, which is right in line with the decrease message. And man, God is so amazing and how he works, isn't he? I recorded this episode in November with my guest, Joni Topper, and I haven't listened to it since until I went to edit. It's now March and some of the things that Joni and I talked about were key points in the workshop I just hosted last week called Divine Discernment on hearing from God in your decisions and knowing how God speaks to you. So shameless plug, go listen to the replay if you didn't catch it live anchoreddecisions.com/ddworkshop. And then also I was just featured last week on the Women of Courage podcast, episode 39, talking about stepping into your calling, even when you don't feel qualified. And that is another thing that Joni and I talk about. So I'm excited for you to listen to this episode. I feel like God was definitely confirming some things in me as I was editing this this week. And so I hope that he speaks to you as well.
Intro: Welcome to the Anchored Decisions Show. I'm your host, Lauren Black, the world's biggest overthinker turned decision coach, all by the grace of God. Now I'm on a mission to help you make easier decisions, discover God's will and live with purpose. Tune in weekly to hear real life decision stories, expert insights, and faith based strategies to help you navigate your decisions with confidence. So ditch your pros and cons list and learn to make better decisions without asking your mom or losing another night of sleep. Let's go.
L: Hey everybody, so welcome back to the Anchored Decisions Show. I am excited for today's guest because we are talking about a very relatable topic.
I have Joni Topper coming on the show today to share about making decisions about commitments. And that is something that we have to go through all the time, especially as women, with anyone, with kids, and anyone with leadership roles. So we'll be talking about how to say yes, when to say no, and different situations that Joni has been through, and how she handled those commitments. So welcome Joni.
J: It's great to be here with you today, Lauren.
L: Thank you. So let me share a little bit of Joni's bio before we dive in. So Joni radiates the glory of God by sharing everyday moments in compelling storyteller fashion. Whether she's wearing her grandmother, author, musician, or speaker hat. Joni's favorite description of herself is one who desires to look like Jesus.
I love that. I feel like that should be all of our descriptions of ourselves.
And she ha has a husband who's a pastor. She's the worship leader, and so her passion for being the church just permeates everything she does. She also wrote a book and has been a contributing author in five other books and her music is on most platforms.
So, Joni, dive into a little bit more about you, your family life, and what your music is about.
J: Well, my music is inspired by things that happen in my life. I've got a song about, uh, being called by the name of Christ, but that our name in him is more important than even the name our mom and dad gave us, and it has great meaning. I sing from years and years of experience of walking with the Lord.
I've been a Christian since I was seven. I'm now 67, so I have a little track record with him and he's proved himself faithful to me over and over and over. I write down scriptures often and say, think about this and write a song about it. So music is core to everything I do. Uh, speaking of making decisions, a few years ago I had a botched carpal tunnel surgery on my hand and I couldn't feel two of my fingers, literally could not tell I was touching them. For several years, but when it first started, the doctors would say, well, it'll, it'll probably come back, but we don't know for sure and it'll take a while. And I couldn't get them to put a time on what a while meant. Well, it meant five or six years, but they wouldn't say that to me. And so I had this immediate decision, am I gonna keep playing the piano because I play for worship? In addition to leading the vocals and it was like, okay, are you gonna continue to be Joni? Because if you are, you will be at that piano. But oddly, it doesn't, you don't think about it, it makes a lot of difference if you can't feel what you're touching in terms of playing the keyboard. So, since we're talking about decisions today, I hadn't even thought about that, but that was a very pivotal, pivotal decision in my life. Are you gonna keep playing when this is inconvenient and unfamiliar and feels foreign to you? And I did continue playing, and I'm really thankful that I did because it lasted a long time.
L: Wow, that's incredible. And that just goes to show sometimes too, we put our identity in who we are and what we do for Christ instead of who we are just as a daughter of God.
J: True.
L: So, all right. Well that was great story that, I'm so glad that you've got the feeling back eventually, even though it took so long and that you pushed through.
Joni’s Decision to NOT Back Out of a Testimony
L: So let's go into a little bit more of today's topic of commitment decisions. So you had mentioned when we had chatted earlier, that you had an opportunity to give a testimony and you almost backed out. And so let's hear about that commitment and what was going on there. What happened, that made you want to back out? And then, why you stuck with it and how it turned out.
J: Okay. It was back during Covid, and of course everything in the whole world felt shaky and unfamiliar during that time. None of us knew exactly how to navigate. And it was one of those weeks where every time the phone rang, someone in my life had a crisis. A friend's 40-year-old husband had died. Another friend's mother had passed. Another friend who was my, I call him, my musical brother, was in the hospital in critical condition with Covid. I was getting daily updates from his wife. We weren't sure he would make it.
I do the order of worship every week for church. So when I made the order of worship that week, I had written down that I was gonna give a testimony at one point because I, I don't do it the same way every time. I try to keep it interesting. So anyway, I was gonna do a testimony, but anytime I give a testimony, I make some notes for myself to honor the time to keep myself on target, whatever, and I never had done that as the week had progressed because I had found myself at the coffee shop visiting with a bereaved wife, and on the phone with hospital, all these things kept happening, and when Sunday morning got there, I thought, nobody knows I'm gonna give a testimony. I don't have to do this. And you're not prepared, Joni, and you always prepare.
But something in my spirit, when it was time to give that testimony, I stood up and I just said, it's been a hard week. And I named a few of the circumstances that had happened. And as I'm looking at the congregation, I can see in their eyes it hasn't just been a hard week for me. It's been a hard week for everyone. And some of their eyes filled up with tears and I said, I don't have any words today, but I do know this — when we're hurting, we come to the Lord. And I said, I can't think of a better way to come to him today except on our knees and with praise. And so let's sing King of my heart and let's sing, I don't remember what the other songs were, we had planned that day, but when I said that, like I say, tears started flowing from various people and one of the ladies in the congregation literally got up and came and put her arms around me. And it was just a sweet moment as we started singing and there were only about 25 people in our church service that day. It sounded like there were 150. It was unbelievable, the sound.
Well, a few people had come in that were guests that morning and they had walked in with their Bibles. They were clearly comfortable being in church. It was a normal thing for them to be in worship, but I didn't know them. When the service was over, I went to teach a, a student that had come in unexpectedly that morning, and so I took her to do Sunday school and another person from our congregation came and opened the classroom door and she said, I think we had angels among us today. And I said, well, I kinda had the same feeling when I finished Sunday school.
I went to back to the piano bitch to shut off all the electronics and make sure I had everything, you know, closed down for the day, and there was a note laying there from the guests, I assume, because it wasn't signed by anyone. But here's the funny thing about it. It was in purple ink. I had started writing in purple ink about six months before. Every time I picked up a pen, I grabbed a purple one. I didn't have any rhyme or reason. There was no big event that sent me to purple. I just liked that, that pen I was using and the letter was in purple ink. And I started laughing when I saw that purple, I thought, okay, God's the only one that knows I'm using purple ink these days. And the notes was a note of encouragement with some scripture and it said, "God sees you. He knows what you're going through. The best thing you can give him is your praise when you're hurting. Keep on. He sees you. It's important what you're doing." And it felt like literally a postcard from God that day. And I was so glad because I nearly backed out and didn't say anything.
L: Wow. I got chills hearing that story, and I think what I want the audience to get from this is a few things. One, you were in connection with God. It wasn't like you went about your whole week without him. And then show up on Sunday morning. You can tell that because you were connected with God throughout the week and throughout your season, throughout your life, that you could feel that spirit moving in you. And then, also just knowing how God speaks to you and that using the purple pen, that that was something that as you said, oh my God would know that you had been using that. And so that was just one of those God winks. And so I think when we look out for those things and are in tune with the spirit, it is easier to know what to do in those situations and lean into how he's leading us.
J: I think key to making decisions is learning to watch what God is doing and pay attention to where he's working in your life and join him there. Because so often we want to decide what we're gonna do for God and then, you know, call him up with our prayer time and say, Hey God, I'm gonna do this for you. Why don't you bless me. And what he says for us to do is watch where I'm working and understand I'm inviting you to join me there. And joining him where he is and not thinking so much about what I'm equipped to do or what I'm good at, but knowing that when God invites me into his presence to work with him or to share in his glory by sharing his story, he's also gonna equip you for that moment.
L: Right. Yes. Yes. That's so good. Now, I think you had one other story of a commitment that you were considering backing down from something with leading a children's choir.
J: I actually have lots of these stories, but these are the two that I told you about. I decided that we had not done a children's musical at our church for a while, and my own grandchildren were the perfect age and we had a good group of kids at that time and I thought, let's do a children's musical. And real honestly, in my humanness, part of the reason I wanted to do it at that time was because I knew my own grandkids were gonna age out and they would not be interested if I didn't grab 'em at this time. So we got it all organized. I got all the music lined up, I got all my workers and helpers, and the night we were gonna start rehearsals, I got a, message from my daughter-in-law. About 30 minutes before we started and she said, I don't know what's going on, Joni. She said, the kids don't wanna come. And what I wanted to say was, why do they get a choice? But I couldn't say that. And she said, I, I don't get it. I, I don't know. But, but they won't be there tonight. And I just wanted to let you know.
And I literally stood in the hall at the church because we were already there. We were having dinner, there were kids everywhere. All these people are ready to start this little choir rehearsal. And I stood there and tears just rolled off my face. And I said, okay, God. If this was my idea, forgive me. If this was your idea, if you planted this, this in me, I'll do it, but I'm too tired. I was working full time, I was doing the music ministry, I was doing women's ministry. Taking on a children's choir is a big job, and it doesn't last for a week or two. It lasts for several months before you prepare and present the music.
As soon as I committed, talked to God about it, I knew I needed to move forward with it. I didn't need to ditch it, just 'cause my own kids weren't gonna be there. And so I caught my breath and wiped my tears and put my smile back on and went back in. And about one minute before we were gonna start, my grandkids walked through the door. And my daughter-in-law walked in behind him and she shrugged and she said, I don't know, they changed their mind.
As it turns out, one of my grandsons that was in this musical was a kid who cried every time the kid stood up to sing in front of the church. He wouldn't pitch a fit. He wasn't loud or angry, he just would get real emotional and his eyes would fill up with tears and they'd just roll down his cheeks and, and he would say, Grandma, I'm, I don't know, I just don't know if I can sing in front of people. And I told him one day, I said, "you know, this time you got through two sentences of the song before you had tears." And I said, "last time you only got through one sentence" and I said, "I think you're gonna get this someday." Well, he was there for that children's musical and when it came time for me to assign the parts for like the solo things, he raised his hand that he wanted to be the main character that had a lot of solos.And I said, Rowdy, you know you're gonna have to sing by yourself. He said, I know Gran. And he did, and he did a great job. So not only did they show up. He participated in a way I would've never expected.
And there was also a little girl in our choir who was going through brain cancer at the time. I did not realize that her last chemo treatment was the day of our performance. I knew she was having chemo. I knew she was going through this, but I didn't realize that it fell on the day of the performance, and she was so insistent that she was going to be in this performance. Her mother, her mom brought her from Dell Children's Hospital, which is about an hour and a half away, where she'd had her last treatment, and they rushed in at the last minute and she's putting her little angel wings and her little halo on her little bald head. And when she stepped into that choir, 'cause we had already started the program, when she got there, she was running that late, she stepped into her place and everyone in that congregation was so moved by her participation that day. And, just to tell you more of the story, she did get through that she is still living and thriving and doing well. But we did not know for a while if that would happen. So it was just a beautiful time that we shared, me as a grandmother, but also our church family as we were walking through this cancer with this little girl.
L: Wow. I bet there was not a dry eye in the place, and I'm holding back the tears right now because I need to record. Wow. So what was it that made you feel early on when you were standing there in tears about to throw in the towel? What was it that you felt or heard from God that said, no, you need to push through.
J: I don't know. I just know my spirit knew it wasn't about me. It was about more than me. It wasn't about me being tired. It wasn't about me being competent. It wasn't about me at all. It was about giving these children an opportunity. The name of the children's musical that we were doing is called The First Leon and it's about a little boy who figured out that Leon is Noel spelled backwards, and he decided it was his job to teach people the true meaning of Christmas because he was named Leon.
L: Oh cute.
J: Yeah.
AD: Hey friends, are you feeling stuck on a big decision, wondering if you're truly hearing from God? Do you find yourself praying for clarity but still second guessing your choices? I have been there, and that's why I'm inviting you to my free workshop, Divine Discernment: How to Seek and Discover God's Direction for Your Decision.
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So access the workshop at anchoreddecisions.com/ddworkshop. That stands for divine discernment workshop. So that's once again, anchoreddecisions.com/ddworkshop. I can't wait to see you there.
L: These were great stories just showing people what happens when you lean into God's nudges and follow through with commitments that you feel God is laying on your heart. So what do you think are some steps that people can take when they're faced with a major commitment decision?
Steps You Can Take to Evaluate Whether to Accept a Commitment
J: Well, one of the things I encourage people to do is write down all the, the commitments you already have so you can take an honest assessment of them. Obviously, you wanna pray about those commitments that you're considering adding and ask God for direction and then just be honest also, is this a short-term commitment? Is it a long-term commitment? Is it seasonal? Because that's going to make your decision pivot one way or the other. Sometimes.
Does it promote the goals of your own spiritual development? Do you have a plan for how you're gonna walk with God? And does this, is this gonna grow that plan? Does it line up with your spiritual gifts? If it doesn't, that doesn't mean it's not yours to do. Maybe it's gonna provide you an opportunity to experiment with a spiritual gift you haven't tried before because I think we're supposed to be not only doing what we know we're good at, but also stepping out in faith in some other areas. Sometimes you're gonna try something and go, that's, that's not my strong point. But you don't know that until you try it because God develops things in us at different times in our lives for different needs in the body of Christ.
Is it gonna stifle your ability to honor the commitment you've already made? Because sometimes something is a great idea, but it's gonna knock you out of the park for being able to do something you're already committed to. Sometimes that means that older commitment needs to step aside and sometimes you can manage both of them.
Does the new commitment offer an opportunity to grow relationships with others? Because relationships are what Christ is all about. He wants us to interact with and grow with and love each other, and we don't do that by sitting on the pew. We do that by interacting with people. If it's clear that you can't take on a commitment, maybe you know someone else that it would be a great fit for. Maybe the reason that it's coming on your plate is for you to help mentor someone else to do it.
And, and then also I think we also need to consider is it gonna foster peace in your home? Because our homes and our spouses and our children are, they're all way up there on that list of importance.
L: Right. Yes. These were amazing steps — checks and balances. I am going to include all of these in the show notes, so if anyone wants to refer back to them, you can find that list written out for you in the show notes wherever you're listening. So thank you for those.
Now I know that my mom once, she was offered an opportunity to be a mentor mom for our mothers of preschooler group at our church. And well, she had been a mentor mom, but she was coming up on whether or not she would continue for the next year. And it is a September to May type commitment and. She told me, she goes, "well, because it's a God thing, it must be something I should do". And because it's through the church and she's helping mentor young moms. And I said, well, not necessarily, because she did have other things going on in her life and felt a little stretched thin with her commitments. And I said, just because it's a ministry that you're being invited into doesn't mean that that has to be your role.
What would you say with that?
J: I think you have to pray about it and you have to maybe even ask the people who have presented it to you, what made you come to me? What made you think of me? Sometimes they're hard decisions.
L: Yeah.
J: Always hard decisions, let's be honest. They're always hard decisions. I have a thing that I keep on my goal board in front of my desk that says, be an intentional leader of myself.
Leaders do challenging things in inconvenient places at inconvenient times, and that is very true, but it still doesn't mean that every single thing that comes to you is yours to do.
L: Right. Yes. I, I love that. And that just ties in with what you were saying before, that sometimes they might be presenting this to you and God might be using you to connect the right person for that position.
J: Yeah, I I think that we don't always, as Christians consider ourselves leaders, we just consider ourself the mom or the teacher, or the parent, or the but we are all leaders. We are leaders in way more ways than we consider, and we need to act like Christ-like leaders because the world doesn't have enough of them.
L: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I once led a group of student leaders. It was called SOLID. It was Student Outreach, Leadership and Intensive Discipleship. And I had created the program for our youth group that I was volunteering in, and I just felt like I wanted to help some of the students step up. And on the first day I told them, “You're here to learn about leadership, but you all, in some way or another, are already a leader. And it's your choice to decide if you are going to be a good leader or a bad leader.”
And one of the pastor's kids, just the look on her face at that point when she realized, wait, yes, because I'm the pastor's kid and I'm in this role whether I like it or not, I have that choice. And she had been making some choices that were questionable. She was being a little unkind to certain people in the youth group and there was drama over boys and different things. And so throughout that process she developed her leadership and I think it just started with that moment that “you are already a leader.” And she needed to realize that.
J: Jesus didn't say, some of you will be my disciples and are to lead other peoples. He commissioned all of us, which means he thought we all had purpose and we all have meaning in his kingdom. And if anything in this world is important right now, people don't think they're, they don't feel validated in their lives in so many ways.
And, social media has a lot to do with that. But the fact is, our first commitment is our relationship with Christ, and he tells us we have great value.
L: Yes. And then I think though a lot of times, especially as women, we tend to be people pleasers, and so instead of turning first to Christ and making sure that our relationship and our time with him is cherished, first and foremost, we look at these commitments or these leadership positions or when we're being asked to help with something and we, we want to please the person who asks us or we want to have pride almost of, feeling like, oh, look at what I'm doing. Sometimes, not always.
Sometimes we, we accept it and we're terrified and like, I'm totally under-qualified for this, but we accept it anyway, out of that people pleasing instead of turning to God first and praying over it, asking if it is his will, asking for the best person to be in that position.
J: Yeah, I had a pivotal decision making time in my life about seven years ago when I retired. I had been at the post office for 30 years and my mom had lived 300 miles from me, and I worked six days a week at the post office. I'm a pastor's wife. We had commitments all day on Sunday. It was hard to spend time with my parents through those years, and so I was gonna spend some major time with mom when I retired and I also had been working with music with the same guy that I told you had covid that was so sick. For 20 years we did all kinds of music events and we were gonna get in the recording studio and record a whole lot more music. Well, five months before I retired, my mother got sick and died in 12 days. And the same month, my musical brother decided to go do country music instead of Christian music. And he never came back to do music with me. And it was like, excuse me! I've worked 30 years to get to this place where I could have this freedom of my time and now all my purposes have gone out the window.
And a friend called me and she said, “Joni, you need to come to a Speakers and Writer's conference.” And I said, “Well, I'm a speaker, but I'm not a writer.” She said, “Joni, you write music.” I said, “No, no, no. That's not the same thing.” She said, “Oh, yes it is.” So in preparation for that little conference, I thought, I can go hang up with some Christian women. How can that go wrong? But I had to prepare something to speak about, and I read this book by two brothers who were launching into adulthood, and their dad said, you're not gonna just launch off from high school with no purpose. I want you to become adults from day one. And you do that by doing hard things.
So they created this phenomenon. It became actually called Do Hard Things, and they wrote a book about it. Are you familiar?
L: I am. Yes, I've read that book.
J: Yes. So I decided I could take those principles and apply them to my retirement years because you can take any phase of your life and go into it with a mindset of it's okay to try something new.
And I kind of adopted this philosophy for myself of, it's not hard, it's unfamiliar, get familiar with it. It won't seem hard anymore. And so when I stepped into the writing world, it was totally not something I ever planned on doing. And God has blessed it beyond my wildest imagination. I still laugh when I call myself an author, and yet, in fact, I got an acceptance letter this morning that I'm gonna have a story in another book and it just blows my mind.
God has good things, exciting things for us to do if we just let him lead us. And pay attention to when he is trying to lead us.
L: Right. Yes. And I think God qualifies the called.
So often we think we have to already be qualified in order to do his work, but instead that will just give you all the more testimony and give God the more glory when it's something that's not just natural for you or you didn't feel like that was part of who you were when God called you to that, and it just helps our relationship with God strengthen to see him at work in ways we never expected. And when we feel that, okay, this wasn't of me, at all.
J: Right. That's part of the beauty of it. I know it's not of me, and that's even better. That's, that's the best part of all. In fact.
L: Right, and you even look at those kids that wrote that book that inspired you to get into writing and to go to that conference and whatnot, and God was using them, being young. They had probably never written anything before that, and there's a first time for everything.
One thing I remember from that book was they talked about three Cs, or there might have been four, but I just remember three of how to handle tasks and how to do the hard things. And it was competence, character, and collaboration. And now I read that back in, I was still in college, so back in like 2009 I think it was. And I still remember those three things. So those stood out all these years.
J: There's another important thing to remember by that. Those boys, when they wrote that book, did not know how many lives they were going to impact. And the same is true with ministries that God gives us opportunity to do. We think it's a one-time, one and done it. Sometimes it affects generations of people.
L: Right.
Now we've been sharing a lot about stepping into and saying yes to commitments. Are there any that you have said no to?
J: I have one that I said no to this week. It has to do with someone in a foreign country that I was helping and I've been helping them in small ways for about three years and in the last six months, every time I try to help, the door closes and the door closes and the door closes, and I've tried to persevere through and I've pushed through and I've tried to learn technical changes to make it work. It's just not working. And yesterday I just realized you've spent a lot of time trying to do one tiny little thing that is not gonna make a huge difference in their life or yours. Set it down. Just set it down.
L: Yeah, I had an opportunity when I was on the Mothers of Preschoolers leadership team for a few years. I was in MOPS for I think at least six years, and in on leadership for at least four of those, maybe five. And so people were asking if I would step up and be the leader, the like the top coordinator and I was looking at that position and most of the moms who were in that position didn't work. They were stay at home moms. And I was looking at how much of a time commitment it was and that they were staying up late organizing papers and prepping the lessons and finding speakers and organizing all the kids activities and crafts.
And they had a leadership team to help, but still, I'm like, this is like a full-time job. And I had a part-time job. And so looking at how it would affect my home life of I was already stretched thin as it was and trying to be there for my husband and my kids, and then my business. And I realized I cannot step into this because first of all, I looked at my track record too. And when I've been in leadership positions, I do have a hard time delegating. And so I'm like, I know I'll take on so much of this myself, which is something that you can always overcome. You can say, okay, if I know that I have a hard time delegating, then I need to make a point at being better at delegating.
But it was still such a big commitment that I knew that, and I had prayed over it, that this was not something that I would be able to handle for the relational side of it with my husband, for the emotional side of it, of being able to just have so much on my plate and like physically the time for it. I was already staying up late, a lot of nights, working on my business or catching up on housework and things. So it just wasn't something I was able to say yes to at the time.
J: Yeah. Sometimes my husband looks at me and says, are you gonna be gone again? And when he does that I try to listen to it and go, you know, I don't have to do everything someone calls me to do. I'm very fortunate in and I feel very blessed that people do call me to do a lot of things, but I don't have to say yes to all of them, and I'm not supposed to say yes to all of them.
L: Yes. Yeah, exactly. So any final remarks when it comes to commitment decisions?
J: I understand what a huge honor it is for the King of creation to invite us into his ministry. God does not need us to do anything. God is God. He's holy. He's powerful, he's capable, and the fact that he lets us join him in his work is huge. Hugest blessing in the world and just absolutely overwhelmingly astonishing to me that he lets me walk in conjunction with him to do anything on his behalf.
L: Yes. Yes. So good. So good. So Joni, thank you so much for being here and sharing so much wisdom with us.
Now I end each episode with an action step so that you're able to implement what you've learned from the episode and get the most out of it. So today's action step is for you to go through Joni's assessment, those questions that you would ask yourself when facing the big commitment of whether or not to accept it.
And I'll go over those briefly right now. It's: assess your current commitments; pray for direction; clarify the type of commitment, short term, long term, seasonal; does it promote your spiritual development or not; how does it affect your existing commitments and which thing needs to go; how does it build your relationships; look at the bigger purpose of maybe it's an opportunity to pass on to someone else or mentor someone else through it; and does it promote peace at home?
So we will end there. Joni, tell everyone where they can find your book and where they can find you online.
J: You can find my book, The Power of a Well-Placed Yes: God’s Abundant Faithfulness in a Small Church on Amazon. You can look me up on my website. My website is called Morning Glory Ministry: morningloryministry.com, and my music is found on music platforms anywhere you can find music. Spotify, Amazon, Apple. Look for Joni Topper. I've got two albums that are active right now on all those music platforms.
L: Awesome, and I will make sure to link all of those in the show notes for everyone.
And now let's pray us out.
Father God, I thank you so much for Joni sharing her wisdom and experiences with us so that we can make better commitment decisions. Help us to use that wisdom to know whether to say no, whether to accept a commitment, whether to cut back on something else, or whether to share it with a friend or someone else that this opportunity might be for. So God, I pray for discernment. I pray that each and every listener here would be encouraged by this to know how to take the steps to figure out whether something's from you, whether something's for this season or not, whether they should say yes and push through when there's obstacles or whether they should say no to save their sanity. So God, thank you for directing us in our commitments, in our decisions. We love you, and we praise you. Amen.
Joni, thank you so much for your time and sharing all of your wisdom with my audience. I really enjoyed this episode.
J: I loved being here. Thank you, Lauren.
L: You’re welcome. Bye.
J: Bye-bye.
OUTRO: Thanks for listening all the way through. For more content on decision making and discovering God's will, hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode or head over to anchoreddecisions.com for show notes and more content related to this episode. See you soon for another episode of the Anchored Decision Show.