Choices and Options

Everyday we have millions of choices and options to make. Should I get this done now or put it off until later? Should I have the Chef Salad or fried chicken? Should I stay up to watch the Late Movie or go to bed early?
Every few minutes we have an assortment of options to do things a certain way, thus steering ourselves to a certain outcome.
But everyday personal, work and food choices aren’t the only decisions we need to make. We are also presented with spiritual choices. Though we think our lives are uneventful…these choices are actually challenges.

God presents challenges to us for our spiritual benefit.
Spiritual challenges are continuously being presented to us, and how we tackle our challenges determines what path our spiritual lives take. God gives us challenges and opportunities to help us grow. But we routinely make the same choices that keep us in the same place we’ve been for so long. We need to rise up to the challenges that God is presenting to us.

God’s challenges require our thought, our conscience, our sense of justice and goodness.
As children of God, He desires us to live above what is the norm. He desires for us to become people with integrity, faith, wisdom and love. But in order to do that, He has to teach us, and what better way to do that than to put us in places and situations where we have to make decisions and learn through experience. Some challenges in our lives may seem trivial, but believe it or not, just acting on making positive choices sends out waves of goodness and love that can only come from God.

There are small choices that occur daily that many of us overlook. Small choices that not only help us to grow spiritually, but contribute to the healing of the world.
When you go to work, do you smile at your fellow workers or snarl at them? When people are laughing at someone, do you join in or steer clear? When you see a homeless punk kid asking for money, do you look away and mumble a judgment or do you give him a coin to acknowledge his personhood? When a person rubs you the wrong way, are you rude every time you have to deal with him or do you try to be civil and give him the benefit of the doubt?

And then there are choices that are not right in front of us, but require our own initiative and action.
Is there a friend whom you haven’t talked to in a long while? Pick up the phone and let them know you still think of them.
Or is there a person you see all the time but whom you’ve never been introduced? Say hello and extend your hand in friendship.
Or maybe there is a problem that no one wants to deal with. Don’t wait for someone else. Go ahead and do it.

Spiritually, we have choices and options that transform our lives.
When we have trials, we can carry our own burdens...or trust God to take them.
When we have difficult situations, we can complain hopelessly...or ask the Lord to help us through.
When we have pain, we can turn inward...or turn to Jesus for comfort. These are choices that God gives us to help us rely on Him and grow in faith.

When God gives us challenges and we choose the way of the Lord, we begin to become a part of God’s solution.
If we choose our selfish ways, we continue to make no difference to anyone. Not giving hope, not making a difference and not changing the world. We remain as any other person out for themselves.

Every choice is a challenge from God. Start paying attention to the challenges. These opportunities are right there for you.
Take the challenge.

“He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much.” Luke 16:10

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