Thursday, May 19, 2022
Choose for yourselves today whom you will serve. Joshua 24:15
Making Choices
Making decisions is probably not on anyone’s list of favorite things to do. One of the first decisions we have to make as young adults is to leave home, strike out on our own, and start to make a life for ourselves. That may be the easiest decision we ever make. As life goes on and we begin to move into full fledged adulthood, we have many heavy decisions to make that can weigh us down.
But before we get to some of those heavy decisions of adulthood, we make little choices every day. The choices we make – every single choice we make – effects our whole life. One small choice leads to the next, and the next, and the next. We can make the wrong choice and find ourselves paying the consequences for the rest of our lives. We can find ourselves looking backwards in regret at the choices we made.
Think Before You Act
Before you make a choice, stop for just a second and think about how it could play out in your life. Walk it out a long way, if not all the way.
· The first thing to think about is if this is a decision that lines up with God’s words and commands?
· How will it affect your future?
· If you have family, how will it impact them?
· Are you prepared to live with this decision for the rest of your life? Our mistakes and bad choices do not define us, but they can make our lives very difficult.
Anytime we make a choice or a decision, if we consult the one true source in life we will avoid consequences that we painfully regret. God’s word gives instruction and advice that will match up with any problem or situation we may ever face. Make a conscious effort to keep natural drives and desires, emotions, and the need to please others out of the decision-making process and bring God to the front and center. He is the only one that you have to answer to that really matters. If you make a choice based on what would be pleasing to God, but it makes someone else upset, remember what is more important. You will be criticized and possibly persecuted because of your faith. You may be embarrassed but I would rather be embarrassed before men and stand before my Heavenly Father knowing that I made a choice based on what I believed to be most honoring to Him.
Big and small, our choices follow us and can send us down a specific path. Make each choice prayerfully and carefully.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love…Ephesians 1:3-4
