Mensa Otabil - Choices
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Welcome to a brand new week. Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 19: «I call Heaven and Earth as witnesses today against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.»
Life is a choice, and each day we are faced with choices. Right from the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, throughout all of human history, God requires human beings to make choices. It’s the way He has made us. He doesn’t impose things on us; He gives us options to choose from. Even Jesus Christ had to make choices in the Garden of Gethsemane. He had to choose whether to pursue His mission or to abort it.
Whether we want to or not, each day we are faced with a choice to make, and we have to determine what the right thing to do is at every point in time. In our passage today, God told Moses to tell Israel that He was placing options before them: life and death, blessing and cursing. He says, «Choose life.» If you want to know my thought, I leave the choice to you.
It’s one of those profound things we learn about God’s relationship with us: although He knows the right thing for us to do, He doesn’t impose it upon us. He will tell us, He will nudge us, He will encourage us, but He never imposes it. So at every point in our lives, God places options before us, and we have to determine which way to choose, which way to go.
Now, if you look at the passage, it says, «I call Heaven and Earth as witnesses.» What does that mean? It means that our choices have both earthly and eternal consequences. The consequences, the outcomes of our choices, affect us while we are here on Earth, but it doesn’t end there. It also has eternal consequences-life after death and in the realm of the spirit.
So whenever we are making choices, especially the big ones, it’s important for us to realize that what we are deciding on has something to do with life here on Earth, and it also has eternal consequences. Thankfully, God did not leave the people of Israel just to figure out what to choose between life and death. He says, «Therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your descendants.»
There are also generational consequences. If you choose life, it benefits you and generations after you. If you choose the wrong thing, it also creates limitations for you and sometimes limitations for those who come after us. So God puts options before us, but He has not left us just to choose for ourselves.
How do we know the way God wants us to choose? He’s given us two important helps. The first is His Word. As we read the Bible, we expose our minds to God’s wisdom and see how God wants us to conduct our lives. The Bible shows us the lives of people who lived in the past, the choices they made, and the consequences of their choices. By learning from them, we can make better choices. So the Bible is our guide.
Secondly, the Holy Spirit helps us to make the right choices by His presence in us and the indications that He gives to each one of us as we are confronted with the big choices of our lives. What should I believe in life? Whom should I live my life with? What should I allow to go into my life? What should I live by, and what should I not live by? These are important choices we have to make, and we have to make them intentionally and deliberately, with the Word of God as our help and the Holy Spirit as our helper.
Let us pray. Say with me: «Heavenly Father, You have set life and death before me. Help me to always choose life and blessing. In Jesus' name, amen and amen.»