Make A Choice

Time is the great leveler - we all have 24 hours in a day.  You and I choose how we're going to spend these 24 hours.  What are we going to do?  How are we spending the majority of our time?  I am in the fall of my life so my hourglass looks like this one.  The importance of using my time well has escalated the closer I get to going to my Forever Home.

Using a Biblical term, I would say that you and I are 'serving' whatever or whomever takes up the most of each of our 24 hours.  A lot of us serve ourselves.  Looking out for #1.  Do I like it?  Does it benefit me?  Do I wanna do it?  Do I feel like doing it?  What's in for me?  Oh, yeah.  These questions come pretty easy because we use them a lot.  We may not say them out loud but we use them in our decision-making.

Many of serve our debts.  We have to work extra hours or extra jobs to pay for all of the stuff we already have.  We're upside down on cars and houses.  When we're not working, we're worrying about paying the bills.  The best wisdom about our money I've ever heard is - "The secret in managing your money correctly is not in how much you make.  The secret is in how much you spend."  Truth.

Some of us serve our hobbies -  like sports or exercising or shopping.  While we're shopping today we're planning about the next time we can go shopping.  Or we're not happy unless we're biking or walking or running or working out.  Or before the game we're watching on TV is over, we're flipping to the next channel for the next game and then the next game and then the next.

We all choose - either consciously or unconsciously - who or what we will serve.

Joshua makes this very clear to the Israelites as he throws down a challenge.  "Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve... But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." Joshua 24:15.

You and I need to make a conscious choice, not just roll through our lives spending our precious time on things that have no eternal value.  We don't want to get to the end of our lives with hearts full of regrets and emptiness, realizing we never made a choice - we just let the world push us to a place we never wanted to be.  

Or maybe we get there and realize looking in the rear view mirror that we made a lot of choices - but they were the wrong ones?  I have heard a lot of stories of people who were on their death beds regretting the choices they made.  I'm sure you've heard these stories, too.

I have made my choice and I know to the bottom of my soul that it's the right one.  I have laid down any 'idols' I was serving at the feet of the One, True, Living God and now it's all about him.

How about you?  If you have any doubts about the choices you have made in how to spend your short dash between birth and death here on earth, there is no better time than right now to start a new chapter in your life labelled, "The most important thing in my life: my love relationship with my Father God".  Notice I didn't say anything about religion.  Religion to me means all the manmade traditions and rules.  That's not what I'm about.  After reading the entire Bible each year for the last 14 years, I know that's not what God is about, either.

Make a decision today to put God first in your life.  You won't regret it.

I choose you, Abba Father.