Back in the days when I could eat real food, I took my mother to a new Italian restaurant to celebrate her birthday. We arrived a little before noon to find an empty restaurant. The hostess immediately seated us and our waitress arrived, gave us menus and asked us what we would like to drink. We started to examine the menu. There were thirteen types of pasta, ten types of sauces, and a dozen type of meats and vegetables that could be combined in any way that we wanted. This meant that we had literally hundreds of options from which to choose. (It didn’t help that most everything was labeled in Italian with English descriptions.) We asked the waitress for a couple of minutes to decide from the vast array of choices. Exactly one hundred and twenty-one seconds later, she returned and asked if we were ready to order. We asked helplessly for more time to make our choices. The problem was not that making a choice between what we liked and what we didn’t want, but how to make a choice when there were so many good options to choose from.
In our world today, it is often not about Christians making the right choice as it is about making the righteous choice. Our lives are filled with so many options and none of them are truly bad, but due to the amount of choices, we tend either to choose too many and become too busy for God or choose the ones that do not necessarily bring us closer to God. We think that it will not matter if we miss church services this week to attend a sporting event. We rationalize that the work around the house needs to be done now and that we will have time for God later. Someday we will take our children to Sunday School, but the soccer coach demands that they play on Sunday morning. Tomorrow we will pray. Someday we will read the Bible with our children. There is just so many other choices that have to be made now. God can wait, can’t He?
Joshua 24:15
“And if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
The test of the Christian life is not found in doing good works or proving ourselves to God, but it is found in our response to the gift of grace and salvation given to us through Jesus our Lord. If your children were asked, who does your house serve, how would they answer. Are your choices right ones based on what the culture says are important or are your choices righteous based on following Christ? When your life is measured at its end, what part, if any, will be seen as choosing God. Choose righteously and serve not other things, but serve the Lord.
Pastor Baker