Choices make us who we are!

Who you are today is largely the culmination of the choices that you have made to date. When we set out on a journey to some distant destination most of us have a map or a GPS device to guide us safely to that destination. 

Life’s journey is not so simple. None of us come into this world with an inbuilt set of directions, and usually for the first few years of our life we are dependent upon our parents, who are often on a journey that they themselves have not walked before. 

Many of our choices are simple and straightforward, but some are literally life-changing. During World War II, Winston Churchill (Great Britain’s Prime Minister) was forced to make a painful choice. The British Secret Service had broken the Nazi code and informed Churchill that the Germans were going to bomb Coventry. He had two alternatives: (1) evacuate the citizens and save hundreds of lives at the expense of indicating to the Germans that the code was broken; or (2) take no action, which would kill hundreds but keep the information flowing and possibly save many more lives. Churchill had to choose and followed the second course. 

Few of us will have to make such a difficult choice, but we have to make many that are just as life-changing. 

It was Eleanor Roosevelt who said “One's philosophy is not best expressed in words. It is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility”.    

When my wife and I were "youth leaders" in church, we were sometimes asked by one or other of the young people we ministered to if we thought that the person they were "dating" was the right one for them to marry. Classic "no win" situation. If we said yes, and it all went wrong, our fault, if we said no and events proved us wrong, our fault. 

 

With choice comes responsibility, we decide upon a course of action, and regardless of the outcome, we own the results. Even if we decide to take no action, that result is still ours.

 

A boy asked his father, "Dad, if three frogs were sitting on a limb that hung over a pool, and one frog decided to jump off into the pool, how many frogs would be left on the limb?"

The dad replied, "Two."

"No," the son replied. "There are three frogs and one decides to jump, how many are left?"

The dad said, "Oh, I get it, if one decides to jump, the others would too. So there are none left."

The boy said, "No dad, the answer is three. The frog only DECIDED to jump."

 

 

We each make many choices every day, some minor, some important, some life changing. There is a choice that each one of us must make, but so few do... That choice is offered in  Deuteronomy 30:19 “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live.” 

The reward for making that choice is both temporal and eternal...“I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” John 10:10 (B) NIV

In choosing Jesus, not only do we have life, but we will have a life that is excessive, overflowing, surplus, over and above, more than enough, profuse, extraordinary, above the ordinary, more than sufficient. Choose life. Choose Christ.