September 16

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 thou and thy seed may live: Deuteronomy 30:19

The choice Joshua presented to the people was either life and blessing or death and cursing.  That was the choice they had.  The way for them to choose life was to choose to love the Lord and walk in His ways (vs. 15-16).  They couldn’t have decided to choose life and blessing and yet turn away from the commands of God.  Sometimes we would like to make a choice that we don’t have the option to make.  Or we want to make a choice with certain conditions.

Our choice today is to choose to love Jesus and believe in Him or not to.  We can’t decide to become a child of God without believing in Jesus.  The option is not there to become one of God’s children without going through Jesus Christ (John 14:6).  That should be obvious to you if you are a Christian.  But how many times do we try to choose ‘unavailable options’ in other areas of the Word of God?

For example, the Bible says that you reap what you sow.  So if you are planting seeds of strife and discord and yet you are proclaiming you have the peace of God in your life then your efforts to choose to walk in God’s peace won’t go very far.  You will be struggling until you repent of that strife and make the right choice of doing what the Word of God says to do to in order to have peace (Philippians 4:6-8, Isaiah 26:3, 2 Corinthians 13:11).

We’ve got to be sure that the choices we make and are in line with the Word of God in order to get the results we think we are going to get.  We don’t write the test.  God has already written the test and we can’t fill in the answers that we want!  But we can be assured that God’s choices are all good choices.

"For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace, and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome." Jeremiah 29:11 The Amplified Bible