Choice Creates

I could have said “creation choices” also but “choice creates” is more fitting for us I believe. The Bible states that God has created us in His image. We know that God is Love, so we must be Love also. Did you ever think about the fact that Love can not exist if there is no freedom to choose to love or to be love.  

In John 14: 12 we are told that we are to do the things that Jesus did and even greater things. We are told that we are sent just like Him in John 17:18, and 20:21. We are God’s children now according to 1Jn. 3:2.

I find that as I grow in the Lord I am confronted with the fact that I have no idea what all that really means- to be “sent like Jesus”.

I don’t think we understand the true value of choice much less all that the Word says we are. We talk a lot about free will and freedom, etc. God has a free will.  We say that we are created just like God-that includes having a free will, but what does that mean?! Here is a thought. God values our choice so much that He is willing to let us choose hell rather than take away our right to choice.

God is constantly faced with choices and at times we see Him change His mind, why?  Could it be our choices that allow Him to do differently than what He had planned? We have so many places in the Word where it says God relented or changed His mind, With Moses, with King Saul (for the worse, not better), with David, with Jonah and the people of Nineveh, etc. There are many instances recorded of God’s character allowing him to relent and show mercy as a result of man’s choice. Many times He foretells of judgment, yet He really desires to show mercy.  He warns us so that we can repent and see Him relent and send grace and mercy instead of judgment. God’s forgiveness is a statement of the fact that God chooses. His choice to forgive creates a whole new destiny available to man.

God is not the only one who can choose, or make choices. Angels, demons, satan, man, etc. all have the right to make choices. What we choose creates a destiny in it’s self. Our choices create futures. Each day we choose to create an environment that creates what we receive from the day. All the things that happen are not just the result of God’s choices.  Example—early in the morning you wake up and you look across the bed at your wife, You wake her up at 5 AM and ask her to get up and get you a cup of coffee while you get the paper to read, then start telling her what “we” need to do for the day.  What do you think will happen—What kind of environment did you create, one of friendship and respect or one of control? Now let’s consider a different scenario. You wake up at 5 AM and get out of bed quietly, go to the Kitchen and make a nice pot of coffee and get some flowers or something you know your wife likes and then read your paper. You clean up the leftover dishes from the night before and wait for her to get up and when she does she finds the flower in the bathroom and then she smells the breakfast you have started, etc. What is the difference in the environment you have created? Will you get the same results from both situations, I hope not!  You see “Choice creates”. Our choices create. Our choices create something that God has to work with to bring His design to pass. God has to work with our free will to bring His overall will to pass. We are not robots. We are created in Gods image. Remember without choice there can be no love.

One of satan’s methods of deception (his only weapon) is the manipulation of our choices. Causing us to question or doubt God’s character and motive, how we see God, as a Father, will affect our choices. He knows that. We all have imperfect fathers, some more imperfect than others. When we look at our circumstances, through our fathers’ example of God, many times we choose wrongly based on our misconception of what God’s character and motive is.

We see satan using this manipulation in man’s first encounter with him in the garden with Eve. The foundation of evil and sin is based on manipulation by satan to get us to reject who God really is, His true nature, conduct, and motive. Our choices to perceive God through our circumstances and life instead of what scripture says of Him have caused us to miss the truth and create a destiny that God does not desire for us.

God is a God of unity, community, and Love not of separation, loneliness and fear. Choices will and do create our future.  What have your choices created today? And what will they create for you tomorrow?

God tells us that what we sow we reap, not what He sows we reap. Our choices create the intimacy or lack of it that we live in with each other and with God.  As the saying goes, “Choose wisely”! It is your life!

One day a few years back before Dana and I were going overseas and such things, I was having a conversation with my Friend and Father. I was remarking about how I should have this and that and it was not fair that my friends were doing more than I was even though we started sharing the Gospel at the same times. I was possibly complaining but, (that probably would never happen), the Lord and I were talking and sharing with each other. The conversation came around to obedience and disobedience to things He had asked me to do and “My Choices”.

 It is amazing how you can start a totally innocent conversation with Father and it end up being something that you really were not wanting to talk about. I was talking about a possible negligence on His part and it ends up being a conversation about “my choices”. After a few “excuses” on my part, the Lord spoke very clearly to me, “I will show you what ‘your Choices’ have cost you;-- and Me and the Kingdom.”  In a flash He started showing me decisions I had made not to do what He had asked me. He showed me times when I had chosen my wife’s word over His, times I had shared more than He had spoken and what the results had been. He proceeded to let me see people who had been destroyed because I had not went to see them when HE had asked me to go. I was just too tired that day. (God does not always have someone else to send. You may be the last one).

I was crying in an instant and was having a hard time getting my rig stopped and off the road without crashing. I was overwhelmed with the results of my decisions, CHOICES! I had created life sometimes and death others. I can not tell you how worthless I felt. Interestingly He was not condemning me but, He was showing me, convicting me, loving me in truth.

I had not really ever wanted to consider “my choices” as having that much impact on my world much less His. I don’t want people to be paranoid about choices yet the facts remain that our choices do create different futures for not just us but in a much larger picture- others- also.

Since that discussion with Father, I have made some changes about how I make choices and I take my decisions much more seriously. I still struggle and make mistakes but I think that life is better and I make less wrong moves because I am listening now.  If I am sent “like” Jesus, then I can hear from Father and be led by the Spirit as He was when He was on earth. I have not just the right but the responsibility to hear and know His will and ways. I can be directed as He was.  Choices are much simpler when you have a Father you can trust who will lead you and guide you through Holy Spirit. He knows the future and what is coming into your life. He knows the beginning from the end.  I only have one real choice to make, to trust or not to trust Him. It sounds like a simple thing but as we know in this world it is not always easy.  Fears,  peer pressure, needs, lack of intimacy and many other “things of this world” would like to persuade us not to listen or obey Him.  He made everything that exists, He knows the future, the past. Maybe the question should be, which is more dangerous; to trust and obey Him or to trust and obey our fears or the pressures of the world?

The choice is really ours… and our choice will change the world!