YOU GET TO CHOOSE
Hebrews 11:25 - “Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.”
I think some people forget that one of the greatest gifts God ever gave humanity is choice. I know a lot of people just believe that God is in total control and anything that happens was just His will, whether it be good or bad. That, however, goes against Scripture. Deuteronomy 30:19 says, “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live.”
What a gift God gave us, this ability to choose. What a responsibility God gave us, this ability to choose. It starts with choosing Him or rejecting Him and goes all the way down to the choices we make each day. So many choices. Some that have eternal significance and others that we make daily that seem insignificant, but they do affect our lives. Since we have to choose, we have to get the wisdom of God to make the correct choices for our lives.
Since we have choices to make every day, some big and some that seem small, our lives are made up of the sum total of all the choices we have made. God says to us, “I set life and death before you; you choose.” Moses had to choose. He chose to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than choose the easy way out and enjoy the place in Pharaoh’s house that had been given to him.
In order to make right choices, we need the wisdom of God. Proverbs 4:7 says, “Wisdom is the principal thing…” We are to get wisdom from God. James tells us that if we lack wisdom—and we do—we should ask of God, and He will give it to us liberally, and He won’t be mad that we asked Him. How do you know when you get the wisdom of God? James3:17–18 says that God’s wisdom is pure, peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. With all those descriptions, it should be fairly easy to discern whether you are walking in your wisdom, the world’s wisdom, or godly wisdom.
So now you can make a proper, godly choice. We have to choose, but only after we have consulted the wisdom of God. When you make a choice, check your heart. Do you sense the peace of God? Then it doesn’t matter what it looks like. You didn’t choose based on circumstances, but you chose based on the leading of the Lord.