The habit into which I have grown in making decisions, even about smaller matters, is to gather up all the information on the matter, thresh it out and sift it over into the clearest shape possible, pray over it, be content to have it go either way regardless of personal preferences, and then sleep over it. In the morning hour alone I am apt to know pretty clearly what to do. If not quite clear I wait a while longer, including sometimes more than one night's sleep. The sleep induces a quietness in which the thing assumes clear shape.
Then, too, there is a statement of the old Book that seems to me to fit in here, though I know well that some may think the interpretation of it rather fanciful. "So he giveth unto his beloved sleep" (Psa_127:2) is the reading of both old and revised versions. But the margin gives this alternate reading: "So he giveth unto his beloved in sleep." I do not say that this is the first meaning of that tender old bit of the Book. I do not know. But I recall how He gives bodily strength in sleep, and has turned the tide of sickness and weakness in sleep, and I recall, too, that in the Old Testament times He used to reveal His plan to men in their sleep.
The man who proved to be God's messenger to Job told that troubled man this:
"God speaketh once,
Yea twice, though man regardeth it not,
In a dream, in a vision of the night,
When deep sleep falleth upon men,
In slumberings upon the bed;
Then he openeth the ears of men,
And sealeth their instruction." (Job_33:14-18)
And the sixteenth Psalm has this:
"I will bless Jehovah, who hath given me counsel; Yea, my heart instructed! me in the night seasons." (Psa_16:7)
I am not speaking of dreams, but only of this— that through the perfectly natural channel of the thoughts, He gives in sleep that which guides us when awake. There is here no element of the supernatural involved. Through nature's duly appointed channels, the mental processes, God in a time of greatest stillness clears the thinking and suggests what to do.