Encouragement

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DAILY CHOICES:
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Sometimes we don’t think about choices and the many kinds we make within the course of a day from the moment we get up in the morning until the time we go to bed at night. It would be interesting to make a list and see the kinds of choices we’ve made in one day’s time.
Then go over that list and see which one’s were the right choices or the wrong choices. This would enable a person to learn to appreciate this free gift of choice and how important it is to make Biblically sound choices that will bring life and blessing instead of death and cursing.

I challenge you to make a daily ‘choice list‘ as a way to check up on yourself and see how well in line you are with the leading of the Holy Spirit. Yes, it would mean honesty and humility before God, but that is good. We need to stay low in our hearts so that we might be exalted by Jesus in due time when He thinks its time and we’re ready.

I’m reminded of the Scripture in 1 Kings 18:21, where Elijah was before King Ahab and all the people there who were into Baal worship. He said, “How long will you halt (stop, pause, stay) between two opinions?(two choices). If the Lord be God, follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him, and the people answered him not a word.” These people were procrastinating between two choices--God and Baal. I like to paraphrase this Scripture to say it in our everyday language. Elijah was telling these people that they only had one of two choices to make and they needed to choose and quit procrastinating. So therefore, pick one.” But the people avoided making a verbal choice. Many times, we do no different than these people did.

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SELF PROTECTIVE CHOICE:
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And then we come to the choice to love other people. People who have hurt and abused us in many forms from verbal and physical abusive to sexual abuse for both men and women. Somebody says, “but we’re commanded to love others.” Yes, that's true, but don’t forget, we’ve also been given the freedom of choice and even us Christian’s don’t always make the right choices. Sometimes, out of our hurt and pain, we often make impulsive bad choices toward the person who wronged us. Of course, if we don’t come to see what we’ve done and repent before God in brokenness and receive cleansing by the blood of Jesus, then we’ll reap those bad seed we sowed (Gal.6:7).

As often happens, things going on in our lives today that are not so good can be the harvest off of bad seed we sowed years ago. If you plant something in a garden and if you tend it, it will grow and eventually produce a harvest. But if you happen to go out to look at your garden one day and you see that instead of healthy green, life-bearing plants, you have a garden full of dead weeds, you can pull up those weeds and plant ‘good seed’ so that later on, you’ll reap a blessed harvest. Do you see what I’m saying to you? Is the garden you planted 10 yrs. 5 yrs., or 1 year ago planted with bad weed seed, or the good seed of God’s Word?

If you’re walking through your garden today and you’re surrounded by brown, dried up weeds (things that aren‘t producing in your life), pull those death weeds up in the name of Jesus, and replant in faith, the good life-bearing seed of God’s Word. Amen. How do you plant it? By planting deep in your heart first then speaking out of your mouth the good seed of God’s Word in faith. “For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”

We can choose to sow good seed in our lives and the lives of our families, etc,. Or we can choose to sow death words (speaking negatively, complaining, murmuring, unbelief). Yes, Jesus gave us a commandment in John 15:12, to “Love one another, even as I have loved you.” And even though this is not a request but a command, we can still choose to obey it or disobey it. The choice is our’s. One choice will bring great blessing. The other choice will bring cursing.

Because God loves us beyond what we can comprehend, He wants us to have an abundant life here, right now, on earth. That abundant life is not just for ’someday by and by’ when we get to heaven---it’s for now, in this life also. This is one reason God said in Duet. 30:19, “ I set before you this day, life and blessing, death and cursing--choose life.”

When we choose life and follow through with our love and obedience to God, then it’s for sure; we’re going to have abundant blessings to come into our lives. Why? Because we made the right choice. We chose responsibly, according and in line with God’s Word. His Word that He promised would not return unto Him void, but it would prosper where it’s sent. It is God’s desire that we prosper and be in health (divine), even as our soul prospers (3 John 2).

So, many times, the choice to love a person who has wronged us can be quite confusing. Why is that? Simply because we want to know where is the justice in it? It goes against the very fabric of our minds and causes them to unravel in uncertainty as to how can we love this kind of evil? We can’t love evil. We’re to hate what God hates (evil) and love what He loves (people). For God to command that we love our abusers seems a harder task than we are able, or willing to choose to do.

Therefore, it seems more logical to retreat to the safety of ‘self-protection.’
What do I mean by that statement? Simply this. This kind of self-protection is the self-centered commitment to act without courage, compassion, boldness, or tenderness for the sake of the other person. If you read through the New Testament, you will see how Jesus loved people BOLDLY. Take for instance the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus presented her with choice that day, and He loved her boldly by even being seen talking to her, a woman on the streets, let alone a Samaritan woman.

Yet His bold love pierced her heart with truth, that her soul was empty and thirsty for God, her Creator--and He was the answer to her dry and barren life. He was the Living Water, and to drink of Him as that living water, she would never thirst again. But she had a choice to either believe He was the Messiah and receive His Living Water, or she could choose to reject Him and walk away. She made the right choice. She made a responsible choice that brought good consequences into her life.

I know you’ve heard people say, “life is not fair!” Perhaps you’ve said this also. I certainly have, many more times than I can count. And when I felt unfairness and cruelty come sailing into my life, I wanted to do whatever was necessary to protect myself from it. I certainly didn’t want to embrace it. And somewhere mixed in with the sorrows, the heartaches and the injustices, is something called joy, or happiness. The Bible refers to “Blessed” as HAPPY. “Blessed (happy) is the man who delights in the Lord...” I said this before, I want to say it again as a reminder---everything we do in life is by a choice of our will.

The choices we make will determine the kind of consequences we will reap (Gal.6:7). In the area of protection, we have a choice to either “Trust God with all our hearts and lean not unto our own understanding” (Prov. 3:4,5). Believing that He is well able to keep that which we have committed unto Him. You have the choice to rest in faith, trusting that God has everything about your life well planned out and under control (Jer.29:11), or you can choose to ignore God’s Word and His protective care and go about protecting yourself. Thinking that you can do a better job of it.

But can I tell you that the moment you find yourself in the middle of an abusive storm---in angry protest, you will cry out, “God, where are you? This is cruel and unfair!” But remember, with the free will God created you with, you made a choice, independent of Him and His wise counsel. And because God is not a man that He should lie, and a God of integrity, He honored your choice to be independent of Him so you could try and protect yourself from the abuses of life.

He honored your choice of will, though it wasn’t a good choice---yet, He honored it in order to show you just how dependent you really are upon His mercy and grace. But while in the storm, all you can see is that you’re being blown about and beat up and, ‘where is God? He doesn’t seem to care. He doesn’t seem to hear your cries, you think. And in anger, you continue to cry out, ‘God, it’s not fair for you to stand by and watch me being abused and thrown about! You must not love me!”

If you could see your heavenly Father’s face at that moment, you would be astonished to see those compassionate and loving tears streaming down His face BECAUSE of the abuse He see’s His Child being subjected to. God is sovereign and He does intervene many times in our behalf that He never gets credit for. How about the time you nearly ran into a bridge because you had fallen asleep at the wheel and just missed hitting it by a hair? How about the time you spun around crazily on wet pavement in a busy four-lane highway but nothing hit you and you came to a stop just inches before going off a steep embankment?

These two incidents happened to me before I made Jesus the Lord of my life. It was a sovereign act of God’s grace and mercy that kept me from harm---angels were dispatched to assist and protect me. It was my choice to be on the road at both these times when I shouldn’t have been. I’m sure you can think of times when God intervened in your life too, despite a bad choice you made. But this is the exception.

All abuse, whether it is physical, mental, verbal, or sexual, it is painful and very often hard to bear. And the thing that makes it so hard is because in the face of the abuse from another person, we are asked to make a heart-wrenching choice. We are asked of God to love the abuser, and not only love them but turn the other cheek and forgive them. We’re to offer them our cloaks and go with them one more mile if needed. How can this be, you wonder?

In protecting ourselves, our first reaction is, “Why shouldn’t I protect myself? Look what they did to me!” And in light of this injustice, we war with the question in our minds and hearts, is God against me?” No, God, your heavenly Father is FOR you, not against you. He loves you unconditionally. He loves you enough to allow you to have a free will of choice, of which you will give an accounting for the choices you made in life, good or bad. We all will.

God’s mercy and His judgment are so intertwined. He allows His children to make choices in order that we might learn to choose life and blessing, instead of death and cursing. It’s the same principle we use with our children. God is our pattern as a Parent. We allow our children to make choices, even though they may not be wise, but we allow them to go on with it. Why? So they will learn the importance of and the difference between making wise choices and foolish choices.

We are to counsel them according to God’s Word so their choices will bring His blessings into their lives and things will go well for them. Do you think God wants any less for us, His Children? Jesus said in Matthew 7:11, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?” Praise God, don’t you know He’s given us the keys to the storehouse!

Plain As Day Ministries

Shirley Williams

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