Choices

From the moment our feet hit the ground in the morning, we are making choices. There is a busy highway of thoughts we respond to both emergent as well as important. We need to let the dog out - emergent so they don’t potty in the house, take a shower - important for hygiene, help our family out the door - both emergent and important depending on time frame and circumstances. The list is endless each day but my point is that with every action we take, it first started in our mind as a thought. 

Some choices are just rote, like the ones mentioned above. But let’s add some with emotions behind them. Do we wake up in the morning full of joy or dread, happiness and contentment or sadness and want or even emptiness?  Can you see the opposites being compared? Now, what is driving the emotion? What’s behind our thoughts? And what is driving our bodies into action?

James 1:17 says every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above; it comes down from the Father of lights [the Creator and Sustainer of the heavens], in whom there is no variation [no rising or setting] or shadow cast by His turning [for He is perfect and never changes]. 

God is GOOD. His thoughts toward us are GOOD, His love extended to us is GOOD. If we partner with the Father and His good, this active implementation can’t help but improve our lives. Negativity, doubt, confusion, evil works are NOT from God, never have been from God and never will be from God. Satan is responsible for that. It goes back to the Garden - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Both good and bad exist and have existed since the fall of man. 

1 Corinthians 6:19 states that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in us and was given to us by God. We do not belong to ourselves. Notice, it’s the spirit within us that provides life. Our bodies without a spirit are dead. That is why when we die, our spirit moves on and our flesh returns to the dirt (Ecclesiastes 3:20).

We cannot survive apart from the spirit within us. Can we agree it was God who created us and gave us both a spirit of our own and also the Holy Spirit, once we accepted Christ?

Now THIS IS IMPORTANT:  Understand, it is the spirits we align with that drives our flesh into action. 

The question is what spirit are are we aligning with - life or death? Every thought, every word and every action, we either align with our Creator, the God of the universe or satan, the god of THIS world. It’s one or the other. 

Are we taking a proactive or passive approach to our days? Are we purposed in our thoughts as we harness the spirit behind them or are we simply at the mercy of our circumstances mulling over and over how awful they are, how that person hurt us, how that family member is a jerk, etc?

Trust me, I’ve taken the latter road more times than I can count. And this is what I’ve learned:

professing, declaring, reading, and believing the Bible as my compass and then living a life caught up in my sadness, despair, hurt and anger is NOT partnering with God. It’s partnering with satan; the father of evil, lies, destruction and death. Simply put, if our actions don’t walk out our faith, we are partnering with a spirit of anti-christ. 

Now don’t get me wrong, God has INFINITE grace for our shortcomings, failures, flaws and imperfections, He loves us no less because of them. But His word is our instruction manual for every single thing, person, situation, and circumstance under the sun AND He gave us Holy Spirit here on earth to HELP us learn, believe and walk out His word! 

“The question is what spirit are are we aligning with - life or death?”

We have to put in as much as we want to get out and that’s NOT just thinking about His word, it’s living it - ESPECIALLY when it’s the LAST thing we want to do. 

I once heard the following during a very difficult season and have kept it hidden in my heart: “usually, your biggest trial comes on the heels of your biggest breakthrough.” When things get really hard and people come against us, the hardest thing is to keep a level head and not return the evil they dish out - no matter the circumstances. 

We each have been given our marching orders from the Bible - walk in love and pray for those who persecute us. If we are NOT doing that, we have aligned ourselves with the enemy. And if it’s a chronic situation, God will allow us to wander around in the desert until one of two things happens: we give up or we learn how to do things HIS way. It’s that breakthrough moment when we finally get it right that our tenacity succeeds in pulling heaven into our circumstances. We have FINALLY given God something to work with! He won’t bow to the devil - EVER. So if we have aligned our thoughts and actions with the dark side, we don’t give God much room to work because He will never work with us while we consciously or even unconsciously partner with his adversary.

Father God is so beautifully simple for us to grasp. We are the ones who complicate the process because we so often try to understand God in our own very limited terms. And we very often bring our negativity and doubt into that place. Also, what we so often forget is, just as our earthly bodies can’t survive without a spirit, the earth is also driven by spirit realms we can’t see and therefore so often overlook.

In life, we have both good and bad, hope and despair, understanding and confusion. But let it be known, positive perspective is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS birthed from God. God has never been and will never be the author of bad things, negativity, tragedy, sickness, disease, hardship, etc.

Throughout the bible, especially in Proverbs, God instructs us to GET wisdom & understanding (Proverbs 4:5; 4:7), knowledge (Proverbs 1:7), discernment (Proverbs 3:21) and self discipline (Proverbs 16:32; 25:28)! 

“We have to put in as much as we want to get out and that’s NOT just thinking about His word, it’s living it...”

Proverbs is beautifully cut and dry. Do this! Don’t do that! If God says to “GET” something, ASK HIM FOR IT! And then KEEP asking Him for it! Continuing to ask and press into the Kingdom will radically deepen and mature our faith in addition to training ourselves how to see life through heaven’s eyes (life) instead of the world’s eyes (death).

Now lastly, when persecution comes knocking on your door - and it will if you are a believer - learn how to handle it God’s way. He tells us in 1 Peter 5:8 to be sober [well balanced and self disciplined], be alert and cautious at all times. That enemy of yours, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion [fiercely hungry], seeking someone to devour. 

If God says it, it’s TRUE. We CAN NOT be complacent when it comes to confronting the evil that comes against us. God tells us how to respond to this perfectly in Ephesians 6:11-18 (AMP)

Put on the full armor of God [for His precepts are like the splendid armor of a heavily-armed soldier], so that you may be able to [successfully] stand up against all the schemes and the strategies and the deceits of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood [contending only with physical opponents], but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this [present] darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly (supernatural) places. Therefore, put on the complete armor of God, so that you will be able to [successfully] resist and stand your ground in the evil day [of danger], and having done everything [that the crisis demands], to stand firm [in your place, fully prepared, immovable, victorious]. So stand firm and hold your ground, having tightened the wide band of truth (personal integrity, moral courage) around your waist and having put on the breastplate of righteousness (an upright heart), and having strapped on your feet the gospel of peace in preparation [to face the enemy with firm-footed stability and the readiness produced by the good news]. Above all, lift up the [protective] shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

With all prayer and petition pray [with specific requests] at all times [on every occasion and in every season] in the Spirit, and with this in view, stay alert with all perseverance and petition [interceding in prayer] for all God’s people.

I encourage you, the deeper your faith and the more you trust God, the more the devil will come against you. You are a threat to his agenda and therefore his target. That’s when the doubt creeps in. That’s when the self pity slides in. That’s when the frustration wells up - when it’s HARD! That’s what long-suffering is! The Christian walk is the hardest road we can take - BUT it’s also the most rewarding.

“If God says it, it’s TRUE.”

Remember, it’s the spirit we align with that directs our flesh. Our lives boil down to our choices and who’s side we choose to align with at any given moment, in any given circumstance. We will never do it perfectly and it will most likely look pretty messy. But God sees it! He sees WHO we are partnering with and if He sees us trying to do things His way, His grace is more than enough to cover our chasms of lacking ability to do it well. If we could, we certainly wouldn’t need Jesus!