Choices! Choices! Everyday life, for each of us, is filled with decisions we must make. Some of the choices we make will have no real significance or lasting effect, even if later we conclude we made the wrong one, such as the choice to wear your blue suit rather than your brown one to an important job interview.
Other choices are of great significance and do have a lasting effect because they are choices between right and wrong, between good and evil.
How often do we find ourselves standing at the crossroads of life, only to be pulled in two different directions? Either road we can choose from seems appealing. We see there are advantages and disadvantages to each; so, we weigh them carefully. And often the decisions we make are not based upon right or wrong, but upon what the eye sees to be best for us. The decisions before us may make us feel somewhat like the apostle Paul who declared that “…there was a war going on in his body.” (Romans 7: 23)
Nothing would be more comforting than having someone else make tough decisions for us. In that way, we would be relieved of the responsibility, and the eventual accountability, of our actions. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work like that. God has given to each of us the intellectual ability and the spiritual sensitivity to choose for ourselves what is best for us, and that which will glorify him.
Joshua, the successor of Moses, and God called leader of Israel, called for his people to make a choice. Once inside the land of promise the people began to follow after the gods of the Amorites. Joshua said to them: “And if it seemed evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve; whether the gods which your father’s served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24: 15)
God has made each of us a free agent. We are not robots, nor are we pawns which God moves about on the chess board of life, suiting his whim and fancy. We are free to love and serve God; or else free to deny him and serve the gods of our flesh. The choice is clearly our own to make.
The Lord Jesus, sitting before a vast multitude of people, spoke of man as a servant. The only question is, “Who will he serve?” Jesus said: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matthew 6: 24)
The man who tries to serve God, and the world, is like the child who walks the fence rail between the fishpond and the rose garden. He cannot balance himself forever, and will either fall to one side or the other, unless he makes the decision to jump off, making the choice for himself.
Today, you will be faced with the decisions which must be made. In every situation where choice is involved, choose God! Let him be glorified in your life before men who are certain to be watching.
Jerry L Dunn is pastor of Oak Street Baptist Church, 605 E. Oak Street, Kingman.
