Choices – What Will Yours Be Today?
Every day we have to make choice. What might some of your choices be today?
We make simple choices daily:
- Sleep longer, get up early?
- Get dressed or stay in PJ’s
- Brush my teeth twice today?
- Eat 5 servings of fruit and veggies?
And then throughout life we make more complicated or major choices:
- Should I go to college?
- Should I marry this person?
- Should I buy a house?
And on and on the list goes. We just cannot get through life without making choices.
As I thought about choices I realized there are two important and emotional events taking place in our lives right now. And both of these have to do with choices.
The First: A friend of ours is on her deathbed. She only has hours to live. She has basically been a good friend to my husband and son for many years now. She has been a “good” person in the eyes of most people. She is kind and generous and does a lot for people. But she also had to make a choice about whether or not she would accept the Lord as her Savior. The truth of this is that we all have to make this choice. Hopefully many of you have made this choice and know for sure the you will be in heaven one day with the Lord. I am saddened because we do not know for sure if this lady has made that choice and now she lays unconscious, ready to die at any moment. My husband is still witnessing to her although he does not know for sure if she can even hear him, but we must not give up on a soul while the Lord allows them life on this earth. However, we will never know this side of heaven if she made the choice to accept Him. Please, please do not wait. This is the most important choice you can make in life and you do not know what day you will be taken from this earth. It could be today so don’t delay!
The Second: Another friend one day made a choice to marry someone whom she thought would bring her happiness and a nice home. She too knows now that she made the wrong choice. During this time of being married to this man, she was abused and driven by him to steal drugs from a pharmacy where she worked. If she did not bring home what he wanted, then he would become angry and abusive. Often she would go somewhere else after work because she could not get what he wanted and she feared to go home. She never wanted to do this, but felt trapped and fearful in her situation. She did eventually get out of that situation and is now married to a man that she considers her soul mate. They are living for the Lord and seeking to please Him. However, her wrong choices long ago “caught up with her” As everything came to a head they traced the stealing of drugs back to her and just this past week she had to sign papers to go to prison for 5 years! (update – she has served her time which was reduced to 4 years and is now out on probation happily serving the Lord alongside her husband)
In our eyes this is so unfair! But life isn’t fair. She never wanted to do this. She never took drugs herself. She is an honest and decent person. She has lived an upright life and has shown herself trustworthy. She had been abused and taken advantage of and yet now she cannot escape. Tomorrow everything will be finalized in a court hearing and they will handcuff her and take her off to prison. Wow! I cannot even imagine! This is a very emotional time for us as she is a member of our church and we have come to love her. We have seen her character and know that in our eyes she does not deserve this. Don’t we see so many unjust people walking the streets daily and yet it seems as though the one who really wants to do right must face these tough trials.
But the truth is, she made wrong choices and now someone has to pay the consequences.
You know, you and I have made wrong choices all throughout life. In fact we were born sinners and automatically made the choice to go away from God, yet God in His mercy sent His only begotten Son to pay the consequences for us so that we would not have to spend eternity in hell. He chose to die for us so that we could have life in Him.
We do rejoice in this:
Her choices, though not right, have cause her to turn back to the Lord
Her choices have driven her very close to the Lord in this past year
Her choices have given her an amazing testimony to all of us that she can trust in the Lord in spite of difficult circumstances.
- She says she knows this is God’s will for her. She is accepting it as from Him. She is ready to witness to those she will be in contact daily as she is in prison. She is fully trusting God through all of it.
- As our church shed many tears about this, it has drawn us closer to each other and closer to the Lord. We are blessed by her attitude and example to all of us
Her choices are making us look forward to all that God is going to bring about through this. God has taken her bad choices and is turning them around for good.
Rom. 8:28-29 Yes, all things do work together for good when we love God and He works them for our good in order that we might be more conformed to His image.
What about your choices today?
Make the right choices (aff. Link) FIRST and it will keep you from suffering in the future. Will your receive Him or reject Him? Will you serve Him or serve yourself?
When making choices, go to God’s Word for guidance and for His wisdom. If you need to find someone who can mentor you, who loves the Lord wholeheartedly, and who will help guide you according to God’s Word. then Listen and Do according to what God wants.
It is always best to make the right choices; it will bring God’s blessings. At times it may not look like this is so, but we can always rest on the face that God knows what He is doing.
Choose you this day whom ye will serve! Remember God cares about all our choices from the smallest to the greatest.
Joshua 24:15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.