Choices
We have so many to make in a given day even within an hour! How we need our sleep and that supernatural energy that comes from God to keep us alert and mindful of what is important and priority.
My first choice in the day is how I spend the first and most important hour (in my thinking) of the day – often on my knees it seems! I consider that the this hour is well spent as it keeps me in tune with my Heavenly Father, so that the Holy Spirit given to all Christians since Jesus’ ascension has a chance to impact my thoughts and heart so that I get to know what He wants in a particular day and can concentrate more on what/who God wants me to pray for. This hour used to be a duty, a choice, but now it has become a delightful thing to do even though when I’m tired or when it is dark on waking up it is harder to physically get moving with much gusto!
The breakfast choice is easy as I tend to have porridge most mornings.
As I link in with my mobile phones and the computer many more choices are put before me. Do I reply to this now?; Do I phone/email that person? Do I ignore that? etc. There’s a lot of thinking involved.
Before I start work, there is more praying to do so that I learn to lean on God throughout it, leaning not on my own understanding even with the timing of things that is always different from what I gauge.
However, there are more urgent choices to be made one of which came to my attention today when two friends urgently asked me to do something that to me was a bit alien and risked a family relationship continuing to flourish. I must say, I have been in a dilemma and had to repent of fears I had and have asked God for more courage and wisdom.
One of the huge choices we each have to face and make is regarding where we intend to spend eternity. God makes it very clear that there is an eternal life to be gained which starts here after we choose to repent of our sins (as there is no sin in heaven and God hates it anyway) and trust in Jesus Christ giving him the whole of our life. It’s a simple choice with huge repercussions as we don’t know how God is going to lead us from then on. However, his plans are always good for us but the challenges and suffering that go with these will be beyond our human ability – hence the Holy Spirit to guide, help and inpact us to enable us to overcome the obstacles. Once we become Christians we suddenly have an enemy – satan and his minions that seek to pull us down and steal, kill and destroy which is why we need one another to keep us in balance and to receive instruction etc. also, the best place for this being the local church. No one of us has got everything completely right but as a body functions when each part is considered so in the family of God.
As children put their trust in Jesus (and for them it can seem easier as they start off in a more humbler way) then God can enable them to make right choices as they go along so, when the big choices of who to marry, what job to do and where am I to live come along, they can have confidence in praying about all these issues knowing that God is more than ready to answer!
In the Old Testament of the Bible (in Joshua 24:15) Joshua wrote, “Choose you this day who you will serve…” and the stark choice remains today.