CHOICES

Free will is a precursor to choice.  God’s generosity to us as humans because of his undying love graced each and everyone of us free will.  Freedom to choose Him over flesh.  Flesh meaning self or temptations from the evil one.  God desires mutual love and admiration from us but He does not want to just take it, even though as a powerful God, He can do so.  But then to put it in perspective, if He did so, He wouldn’t be the pure and perfect God that He is. 

So we own our will.  The question is, will we pattern our will according to His, or according to the world’s?  Let’s look at the world’s will for a moment.  The world seems to follow a pattern of immediate self-gratification.  Whatever feels good to us at the time, whether it is right or wrong, must be right.  So many people say, “Well, as long as I am not doing evil against another, then that means I am good and I deserve to be in the kingdom of God after I die.”  WRONG!  Yes, there is a basic tenet that doing the right thing makes you a good person, but just by being a good person doesn’t give you the golden ticket to the stairway to Heaven! 

It was kind of a shocker when I came across a verse in the Bible John 1:1-5.  It says, “In the beginning the Word already existed.  The Word was with God and the Word was God.  He existed in the beginning with God. God created everything through Him, and nothing was created except through him.  The word gave life to everything that was created and His life brought light to everyone.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” 

So I picked apart that whole verse.  It could only refer to one person, and that is Jesus.  God in this verse is the Father God.  But He was with someone else.  The bible calls Him the “WORD” and the Word existed with God.  And it goes on to say His “LIFE” brought light to everyone.  Ok, so we know God was already in existence but Jesus lived a “life” and to understand it, the book has to parallel it to something we can understand because each of us has a “life” a physical birth and a physical death.  So did Jesus.  In other words, if you really think about it, the verse is saying that even before Adam and Eve, Jesus was already with God and in the works and Genesis to Revelation our the whole story.  The thing is, we are living in that story.  Our generation is that which is close to the end.  Everything that went on from the writing of the book of Revelation didn’t stop there.  Tara, my daughter had a good point that I didn’t even think about.  We were watching the movie “Monumental” and she said, “So if the Bible stories continued, the pilgrim’s story would be in it.”  Light bulb moment!  And yes, to this very day, the Bible stories continues because we are still awaiting the return of Jesus to get His church back.  His Bride.  Wow! It’s so amazing to me!  But I digress.

God doesn’t expect us to be perfect.  No one is.  A sin is a sin is a sin and in God’s eyes, all sins are the same.  It’s the choices that we make that have definite consequences.  So here’s an example.  A person gives up on life and CHOOSES to commit suicide.  That person needs to understand that once he makes the choice and follows through with it, his choice becomes the dominant factor that in turn chooses for him.  He is no longer free to choose the consequences of his choice.   His choice has chosen for him and that is death.

When we make bad choices, it doesn't surprise God.  He already knows and He is in control.  Thanks to Him he can reverse that choice but only if we allow him to do so.  The suicidal guy didn’t have to choose to kill himself.  He could have chosen to allow God to move in his life and straighten out whatever he thought was hopeless.  As long as he has Jesus in his heart, as the verse says, “Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world.”

In my own experience, when difficult times arise, I give God complete control and forget about it.  Time and time again He has proven that nothing is impossible for Him.  Otherwise, I would have been a complete basket case today as I sit here writing to you because of all the trials I have been through in my life.  I give GOD the glory, every day, in every way.

Until my next rant…. LOVE ONE ANOTHER!