Articles
What’s Your Choice?
What’s Your Choice?
Many are avid baseball fans, but there are others who care nothing about it. Some love to sit in a fishing boat hour after hour; this bores others stiff. Opera has it devotees; others can’t stand it.
Probably most would agree that baseball, fishing, and opera are not matters of life and death. If you like it, fine. If you don’t, that’s OK too.
►Does It Really Matter?
Does devotion to God fit in the same category with sports, hobbies, gardening, and other pastimes? In other words, fine if you like it, but OK if you don’t?
That seems to be how some feel about it. To them it’s quite all right if others wish to pursue a relationship with God, but that’s just not their thing.
Our society sets a high premium on the right to choose. God is the one who gave us a free will. We can seek Him, or we can pursue a hundred other options.
But are we prepared to argue that all choices are equally valid? Is it just as valid to be an atheist as to be a Christian? Is it just as valid to worship idols as to worship the Maker of all things? Does it matter if we get into the occult or the drug scene or pornography?
►The Joshua Challenge
Joshua told his people, “If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15 NASB).
Is Joshua saying they have a choice? Absolutely. Is he saying it doesn’t matter which way they go. Of course not. He knew which way would lead to ultimate happiness, but they were the ones to decide. God does not make anyone serve Him. For service to God to be of any value, it must be freely chosen.
Moses had warned his people, “. . . I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live . . .” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
Christ offers us a choice: the way that leads to life or the way that ends in destruction (Matthew 7:13-14). Which shall we choose? Or more accurately, which are we choosing?
We’re on one path or the other—right now.
--David Gibson
