The Choice Is Yours !

0Common Sense Commentary:

In personal, Christian growth, the first and last entry, on our account with God, other than what He, Himself has done, is "Our Choices". He has made all His decisions and choices in our favor, created us "in His own image", and handed us a clean "Life slate" for our life's choices. If we died as a fetus or young child, we would go to heaven with a clean slate. However, when we reach the "age of accountability", which I believe varies, but is usually somewhere around twelve, we must make our own personal choices for the direction in which we will go. For these reasons, our first cognitive, reasoning becomes our own defining choice. So, we have voluntarily, willfully, stepped off into our future and made the first entry on our account with God, whatever anyone else may do.

We all begin life with a blank slate given us by our Creator. You may write what YOU WILL on that slate. Others may influence you, inborn tendencies will woo you, circumstances will threaten you, God's Holy Spirit will plead with you .... but YOU alone will make your first and your last choices and decisions in life. If your children chose to pull the plug on you, you will choose how you react, if you are conscious. If not, you will already have made your last decision. Your children will give account for THEIR choices, right or wrong.

We start life under the care and training of our parents. Their quality of care and training, for you, are THEIR choices which THEY will give account for. Their choices lay a foundation of inclinations in your nature and personality. These formative factors are an integral bias in forming your individuality; but they are not the primary determinant in your life and destiny. YOU WILL MAKE THAT CHOICE !!! If it were not so, God's judgement upon our sins would neither be fair nor like Him as a Father. We will only answer for what we have power over to choose. If our temptations were too great, too strong to resist, a just God would not accredit them to us. We can try to convince Him that ours is a special case, that we "had no control over that overpowering temptation", but He denies our claim. WE ARE RESPONSIBLE for our actions ! "There hath no temptation taken you but such is COMMON to man: but God is faithful, who WILL NOT suffer you to be tempted above that YE ARE ABLE; but WILL with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." 1Cor.10:13. He makes it very clear that sin is OUR CHOICE not His. He "makes a way to escape, but it is We who reject or accept it. Almost all of the GOOD and BAD things which happen to a person are not the result of chance but are, in some small or great degree, the result of good or bad CHOICES which we have made. No, not someone or something else ,we can blame, but our own selves. If we could be justified by pointing blame to our parents, then to whom do they point blame, THEIR PARENTS ? If that works, who do their parents blame and on and on all the way back to Adam and Eve. Who do they blame .... GOD ? Oh yes, oh yes, I forgot again, "The Devil made me do it".

We are far better off, eternally so, to simply be honest, confess our guilt and ask God's forgiveness and be free of the sin and the guilt. "If we confess OUR sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1JN.1:9 . That is not just easier, it is the only way and results in a "clean" slate again. "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin." Rom.4:8. You see, all of a believers sins were put upon Jesus on the cross and, there they were judged and paid for by Him in His death. "For God ".... hath made Him (Jesus) to be sin for us, Him who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." "IN HIM, IN HIM, IN HIM". 2Cor.5:21.

So, the choice is yours. Will it be for Jesus or those other powers in your flesh or other people's power over you to do their will ? The choice is yours and it lasts forever and ever and ever.
"Choose you this day whom you will serve .... " Joshua 24:15

Pass it on. RB