Choosing: A Neglected Power

Scripture:  Deuteronomy 30:20 – TLB - Choose to love the Lord your God and to obey him and to cling to him, for he is your life and the length of your days.

The power to choose seems to be one of the most underutilized powers in many a saint’s spiritual arsenal!  Many of us go about our daily lives on a kind of “automatic pilot,” allowing our emotions, moods, other people, (especially some prickly and disagreeable types), and/or our circumstances to rule the day!  The Word of God, however, takes a different stance on how we’re not to “ignore” this power of choosing, but rather assertively exercise it every day; it’s one of many divine privileges bestowed upon followers of Christ.

This power to choose runs like a thread throughout God’s Word.  For instance, we’re admonished by the Spirit to choose this day whom you will serve.  (Josh. 24:15)  “…I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.  So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants.”  (Oh that the church would awaken to this truth, then we would not be guilty of bearing  an ever- increasing likeness to the surrounding anti-Christian culture—one that is so repulsed by our mere church attendance, (or  use of Christianese),  but  patently contradictory behavior and attitudes in virtually every kind of social setting!  It’s one thing to be scorned by unbelievers when we are perceived as not emulating them or “working overtime” to try to gain their social acceptance; but this must NOT be our m.o.—our method of operation in this world!

We, the elect of God, must make it our continual goal to be able to say “I have chosen the faithful way; I have placed Your ordinances before me.  (Ps. 119:30)   Always remember that our citizenship is in heaven, from which we are to be daily awaiting our Savior’s imminent return and LIVING like it!  Both the power and freedom to choose to think and act biblically-- as one popular Christian broadcast’s motto states—belong to us who, by God’s grace, are in Christ, rather than in Adam.

Prayer:  Thank You, Father, for Your mercy and grace, which empower us to choose a life of divinely-approved and therefore genuine freedom purchased for us at Calvary, some 2,000 years ago.  Whom Your Son sets free, is free indeed—free to believe the truth, love the truth, and live out the truth, as it is in Jesus.  Thank You, in His great name! Amen!

(by Denise Diggs)