March 16, 2018

What Choice Are You Making?

Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil. – Proverbs 4:25-27

We are distracted by the world. There are so many things, so many people, vying for our attention. We want to be involved, in the know, part of it all. Except maybe we were set apart for a higher purpose, a higher call.

We lament all the changes around us but we don’t do anything to correct what we don’t like. A sweet friend gets so angry at a television show she finds disgusting. Then why watch it? It’s like we’re drawn to the ugly. The simple truth is that television, like so many things, is a business. If no one watches, the show will be cancelled. The end. But we can’t seem to help ourselves.

Maybe we don’t want to help ourselves. Because some of the “rules” aren’t easy. We prefer to gossip, to divorce because of “irreconcilable differences,” or to have one too many drinks at the game or a celebration. We don’t want to hold ourselves to the standards God has laid out for us.

It’s so much easier to pick and choose what we’d prefer to see as the focus from the Bible. We don’t want to share our food or clothing so we condemn people we don’t know, labeling them lazy and unworthy. We forget that God tells us to be good to immigrants because we’d rather only welcome those who look, act and think like us.

We justify our actions because “everyone is doing it.” Somehow we think that makes it okay. We don’t want to cause trouble, to make people dislike us, to draw attention to ourselves. We remain silent, forgetting we are supposed to be different so that the light within us shines brightly for all to see Jesus.

Let someone else do it. We don’t want to be ridiculed and condemned. We don’t want to sacrifice. We simply want to live a good life – as defined by the world’s standards – and end up in heaven one day after we’d lived a long, happy life. We don’t want to struggle. We don’t want to give up anything. Surely, Jesus didn’t mean that we were to leave everything for Him?

Church has become more of a social venue rather than a place to worship and honor God. It is an option for those days when we feel like attending, feel like participating, feel like sacrificing our time for a God we claim to love.

It’s all about us. Oh, we say we know it isn’t really. But our actions tell a different story. Arrogance fills us as we tell others what we will and won’t do. I laugh silently at the words. Experience has taught me that God frequently calls us to do exactly what we’ve proclaimed we’ll never do.

Motives come from the heart and that is where God sees all and judges accordingly. What path are you on today? When you look ahead do you see a cross or do you see a vacation? Are you more concerned with comfort or in following the path Jesus has laid out for you?

We have a choice each day whether to serve ourselves or to serve Jesus. Each decision we make, every step we take, leads us down a path toward a final destination. What choice are you making?