Choices...

~2 Peter 1:10 So, friends, confirm God's invitation to you, His choice of you. Don't put it off; do it now. Do this, and you'll have your life on a firm footing,~

Not being a parent myself I often watch parents & how they handle their children. My sister and brother -in-law are 2 of my favorite people to watch parent. Their children aren't perfect, and God really makes them work hard, but they have instilled the value of choices in their children from a very young age. Whenever their parents will tell my niece or nephew to do something you can see their little minds churning on whether to obey or not. When this happens my sister or brother will say "Make good choices." Something so simple, yet we often forget that it is our choice on how we handle a situation, and we often choose what the outcome may be.

Now my sweet neice and nephew may choose to not listen and then they get punished. If they choose to listen there is often a reward, whether it be praise for making that good choice or the opportunity to get do something so much more fun than time out. Either way the outcome of the situation is their choice, and it is not their parents fault if they choose not to listen.

As we grow up we have to make a lot of choices, from the insignificant what to eat for dinner or to the big choices like buying a house or getting married. With all this big choices we make, I think we often forget that everyday we get the opportunity to make lots of small choices. It is not everyday that you get married, buy a house, get a puppy, or make some huge decision like that. When we do have things like this in our life most people who believe in Jesus will pray and ask for guidance in making those decisions. They choose to ask God for help in these big choices. So, often we see these choices as the ones that will change our life, the ones that we better make sure are right.

Today I realized that we are fooling ourselves in thinking this way. Yes, we need to bring these "big" choices to God and ask for guidance, but we really really need to bring the "small" ones to him too; because ultimately they change our daily lives. Everyday we should start out with the attitude of "I choose to make today a good day and to live it walking the path God has laid out for me." Imagine the possibilities if we would take that 3 minutes to ask God what he wants from us that day and if we choose to listen and obey.

We all have those days, the ones where we wake up on the wrong side of the bed, where we just know it is going to be a bad day. On those days we choose to make the day awful, it wouldn't matter if we won a million dollars on those days, we would still re-tell that day as being the worst day ever until we won that money. Then there are those days where we wake up feeling great, all our clothes look amazing on us, our hair does just what we want, the person in front of us at Starbucks buys our drink because they think we are cute, our favorite song plays on the way to work, and we hit every green light. Awesome start to a day right? If we look at those days though we would see that we started it out by deciding it was going to be a good day; and even if it went down hill quickly after that we would still have had an okay day.

My mom used to always come in my room after I had a bad day and make me list at least 5 good things that had happened that day. She taught we to choose to focus on the good and to not dwell on the bad. Those days always stuck with me because I had to learn how to make a good choice, so to speak. If we start out each day choosing to make it a good day that glorifies the Lord and ended each day choosing to see the good things and ignoring the bad, we would be pretty darn happy and see that we are amazingly blessed.

We are so blessed that God gave us free will, that he gave Adam & Eve the choice to obey or to eat that forbidden fruit. Now, unfortunately they made a bad choice and there was a consequence for it, one that we all have to pay for. Didn't it seem like that was such a small choice though? To take a bite of that apple or to obey, what could such a "small"  choice possibly do? God gave us the choice to accept Christ into our lives, to repent for our sins, to live a life that has God at the center instead of ourselves. Aren't we so blessed that we can make that choice?

 "Small" choices can affect our lives just as greatly as "big" ones. So, let's choose to ask God for guidance in every choice we make, in every step we take, and in everyday we are blessed enough to live. We all need to remember to make good choices...


SIDE NOTE:

~Pslams 16:5  "My choice is you, God, first and only. And now I find I'm your choice"~

God has made an amazing choice, one none of use deserves and that is that He chose you! You are his beloved and He chose to sacrifice His son for you. How awesome is that!?!? One of the things I have realized in my marriage, a thing that can always make me smile is that my wonderful husband chose me! He picked me! Not me 10 lbs skinnier, or me who will eventually learn how too cook, he chose me me just the way I am. If that choice made by my husband can make my heart fill with joy, imagine the realization that God chose me for me! That God chose you, you just the way you are, not only that but He loves you so much that He gave you the choice to chose Him!