Some people don’t like to make decisions. Just waiting for them to order in a restaurant can be a test of patience. Others make snap judgments—quick commitments they don’t follow through with. At different times, perhaps, we fall into both of these categories, but taking the middle-of-the-road approach is usually the better choice.Of course, following Jesus is the best, most important choice of all. For a young person, any person really, looking forward to the rest of your life serving God can seem an overwhelming, impossible goal. We know we’re human and how much we mess up—in our thought lives alone. How are we ever going to make it on the narrow way?
Have you ever heard the question, “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer is one bite at a time. You take a first bite (after it’s been properly seasoned and prepared). Then you take a second bite, then a third, then a fourth…And how do you complete a journey of 1,000 miles? It begins with that first step, then the second, then the third, then the fourth…
You get the picture.
You can do what seems impossible if you will just make the decision to take the first step, the first bite, and keep going from there—like that little grey bunny marching with his drum that keeps going and going and going.
Choice. You have it and I have it. The question is, what will we do with it? Our lives are made up of choices and consequences. I know I’m probably going to fall flat on my face again before Jesus calls me home. I’ll disappoint people, mostly myself, but you know what I want to make my life’s mantra? “Choose ye this choice.”
You know the verse, Joshua 24:15—“Choose ye this day whom ye will serve…as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” The thing is, serving God, even life in general, is more than a daily choice. It’s a choice-by-choice kind of thing. Life is one great chain of interconnected decisions. Every decision isn’t critical, but I long to make every choice God-honoring. I want to choose the best choice every choice. “Choose ye this choice” means the next “this”—the next decision I make.
It’s our choice to be sweet when someone gets us riled up and we are burning to just get them told. It’s our choice to give our best effort at work, school or home when it would be so much easier to just do the bare minimum and get by. It’s our choice, every choice, to live a life that chooses God’s ways over ours and over the pull of the world. The really awesome thing is that as we make God-honoring choices, God gives so much back to us in return. Psalm 37:4 says God gives us the desires of our hearts as we delight ourselves in Him. The payback is sweeter than anything we could imagine. God Himself is our reward. He has chosen to love us, and pleasing Him brings a peace, joy and completeness nothing in this world can compete with.
We don’t have to get overwhelmed by the mountain of choices ahead. Just face each one as it comes and make your next choice God-honoring. Before long you will have such a strong foundation underneath you and a habit of good decision making developed that when you face the real challenges of life, you’ll already be set up for success…through the succession of best choices you have already made. And when you mess up, shake the dust off, ask for and receive God's forgiveness and then set your mind for the next choice. God designed you for success, now walk in it, one choice at a time.
