Life Decisions--Make It Or Break It!

Lately I have been in the position to see more struggles in life close up and personal than probably what most people do.  Being a pastor, I always have people share their heartaches and pains, but recently it has been even different from that.

Without going into a lot details, I realize more than ever that so much of what we face in life is all about the decisions we make!  Decisions about the places we choose to go, the people we choose to hang out with, the things we choose to do or not do will always make us stronger in life or weaker, and eventually make us or break us!

In Deuteronomy 30:15-18, Moses tells the children of Israel, "See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.  For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to pocess.  But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed.  You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess."

There is a huge similarity here to what most teenagers are going through today.  They are literally crossing over from being dependent on their parents to being dependent on themselves.  It is a time of freedom and being loosed from their parents watching over them every minute of the time to being able to make their own decisions and call their own shots in life.  The problem is, for most teenagers, they have never heard the warnings in the above passage of Scripture, and if they have, they don't pay any attention to what the words mean for their lives.

Let me tell you about my experiences as a teenager, and on into my adult years of life.  I had always been told that I "needed to be a good boy for God to love me."  Those are wise words to adhere to but in the mind of a teenager, so very shallow when applied to the big meaning of life.  The real truth of the matter is that God loves you whether you are a good boy or not!  I have found out that the bigger issue in life is all about my love for God.  As a teenager, that had very little meaning for me as I "chased after the things of the world!" After all, so it seemed, the more things that I had the more successful I looked to everyone around me.  In my chasing, and I didn't realize this until well into my adult years, that my love for getting ahead took me into some really sinful ways that were counter productive for my love toward God.

Let me try to explain "sinful ways."  The Bible says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life!  I always saw God as watching my every move and punishing me for sin and rewarding me for righteousness.  I bet a lot of you reading this think the same thing.  But that is not the way it goes in the life process!  Look at it this way.  In the work process, the wages you earn for showing up and the work you do have very little to do with your boss!  He writes the check, but you get what you have coming to you.  If you are paid on commission, and you don't sell anything, the boss does not punish you by holding back a pay check.  There is just no reward there.  If you are paid by the hour and you don't show up for work, it is not the fault of your boss that your hours get cut back and you don't get raises as you were told you could get if did the job. The wages you earn in your job rise and fall on your shoulders and your decisions toward work.

The "wages of life" are the same way!  If I choose to live a life of sin, my wages lead toward death.  If I choose to lead a life of righteousness through Jesus Christ, which is honor to God, my life is blessed with the free gift of eternal life!  He has put these things into place as he created the world, but he is not sitting around waiting to punish you or to bless you.  It is all in our choices to honor him or dishonor him.  It is in our daily spiritual choices that life flows this way or that way! 

So lets go back to our decisions as a teenager, or an adult.  Now that I have my freedom, how do my choices determine my outcome in life?  We have a choice in our continued church attendance.  We can say, "You have no say over me now, I am free to do what I want!"  Think about the significance of what does this choice does for our wages, or outcome in life?  We might say"I am free to do what I want!  I'm ready to have sex since I am an adult now!"  Many young women are raising children by themselves because the then "adult dad" is now running like a sniffling, little boy!  Or, we might say, "I'm an adult now, I can drink and use drugs and no one can stop me!"  You would be surprised how many young adult men and women I have officiated over at their funeral, because of their adult freedom to do so.  It is sad!

So you are an adult now?  You are eighteen and ready to conquer the world around you. Listen to me!  While you set out to conquer this great big world, take God with you.  Let him show and direct your every step!  Honor him and love him and you can't go wrong! His wages are abundant and eternal life!  Romans 6:23; John 10:10  Think about it!