Choose you this day whom you will serve!

Deuteronomy   30:19

“Choose Life”

For free will to work God put one tree in the garden with the instruction not to partake of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:16-17)    Adam was free to “choose” to name every thing; to have dominion over everything; to go where ever he wanted and to eat from all the trees that were good for food (except just that one).   God, the Alpha and Omega, knowing the beginning from the end, knew that the gift of free will would of necessity be a choice that every one of HIS children would have to each individually make. (Revelation 22:13-14)     This “free will” decision to Choose Life is so important that it has been made available to every child of God.  In Deuteronomy 30:19  we read: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life,” . . . . .  God invites us all to make the eternally important decision that brings us to the saving knowledge that Jesus Christ came to give us the choice to follow him “The Way the Truth and the Life”  (John14:6)  and not to follow Satan who is:   “A liar and the father of all lies.”   We are told to resist the devil and he will flee from us.  (James 4:7-8) 

Important thing to remember is God will not make us choose life.  However, HE did send His Son Jesus Christ to Earth to show us the way.  And even with His loving invitation to “follow me”, he does not make us follow.  The truth is, we must each individually hear His voice, respond and “choose” to follow Him.      (Mark8:34,   35-36)      As followers of Christ Jesus our daily prayer is to affirm the many promises that we read in God’s word like: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord , plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jer. 29:11)

At those times when we are most challenged, we must even more fervently look to God who will remind us of our hope in HIM with verses like these from His Word: “Bless the Lord , O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases,” (Psalms 103:2-3)
“For nothing will be impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37)

Jesus declared “It is finished” at that very moment when “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”  (1 Peter 2:24b)       While encourage by these verses, like all true believers, we also declare with apostle Paul that “Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.” (2 Cor. 5:8-9)   And also like Paul we can say: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)

After first becoming followers of Jesus Christ we learned with a grateful heart, that the blood He shed on the cross was for the remission of all our sins past, present and future. Even more, only within the past year have we come to see that the scourging Jesus suffered before his crucifixion was a fulfillment of Isaiah53:5
“But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”     As good as that revelation is, better still is the peace that comes from the understanding that we no longer need fear death because “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”    (1 Cor. 15:26)

“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.” (Romans5:17,   18-19)      “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”     (1Cor15:20-21,   22-23)        ‘Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual.’     (1Cor15:45-46)

These verses maybe familiar to many, however I still enjoy sharing them while also reminding myself of God’s unending Love.  (John 3:16-17)