Choices, Choices
There was no video recording of the May 15, 2011 service. Below is a newspaper article that I wrote using material from the message on this day.
I had the opportunity to listen recently to a recording that Earl Nightingale made over 30 years ago where he was speaking about “The Strangest Secret”. While the principles he spoke about were not new to me, I realized I had not acted upon many of them with any great consistency over the years. Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation? It would have been easy to come up with a variety of excuses as to why I never followed through and acted upon what I should have, but the bottom line is I had not been as teachable as I should have been in these areas. I was in fact 100% responsible for the choices I made and I will continue to be 100% responsible for the choices I will make in the future.
When you take the time to think about it, you do realize don’t you, life is all about choices. From the time you get up in the morning until you go to bed, you are constantly making choices relating to things like, what will I wear, what types of food will I eat, what will I do with my time, how will I respond to situations and circumstances that arise throughout the day, what attitudes will I express, and the list goes on and on. Remember, every choice you make has some form of consequence attached to it. The consequences may or may not be immediate, and they may even be accumulative in affect and not show up for a period of time, even years, but every choice does have a consequence. Someone has said, “The end result of your life here on earth will always be the sum total of the choices you made while you were here.” Albert Camus wrote, “Life is the sum of all your choices,” which means, “there are a thousand little choices in a day and all of them count.” When you think about choices you make in life, there are some that matter a lot, because they are life changers that dramatically influence the direction of your life and the lives of those around you. Joshua, chosen by God to lead the people of Israel into the promised land after the death of Moses in Joshua 24: 1-15 calls the nation to make a choice, “Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshipped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. {15} But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”
The choice to live your life in faith and obedience to God is one of those “biggies” that will impact and influence many other choices you make in your life. Anso Coetzer has said, “Decisions become easier when your will to please God outweighs your will to please the world.” While your choice about who you will follow in this life is of supreme importance it is not the only major choice you must make in your lifetime. Earl Nightingale says, another one of the “biggy” choices relates to what we believe about success and how we define it, not only for others, but especially for our self. This is because the choices we make regarding what we will focus our time and attention on relate to what we believe is really important in life. Therefore, Earl Nightingale says, the result of your choices lead to:
1. You get what you think about most of the time
2. You become what you think about most of the time Take a moment and reflect back on the last few weeks of your life. What have you thought about most of the time? Have your attitudes been positive or negative? Have you been expressing faith or doubt? Has there been any specific area that has engaged a noticeable chunk of your time or has your life just kind of drifted along? What do you believe?
In the 9th chapter of the Gospel of Mark there was a father who had a demon possessed son. Everything he tried to do to help his son had not worked and no one could help him, including the disciples of Jesus. In sharing the history of the child, the father said to Jesus in Mark 9:22, “if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” Jesus turned the table on the father, calling for a choice to be made when He responded, “If you can? Everything is possible for him who believes.” In other words, Jesus was saying to the father, he held the key to the miracle of his son’s well being and the key was in his thoughts, in what he believed. The father responded to Jesus openly and honestly and made a choice as he declared, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” What do you believe about your life? What do you believe about your ability to be successful? What do you think about most of the time? No one else can ever make your choices for you. Your choices are yours alone. They are as much a part of you as every breath you will take, every moment of your life. You are 100% responsible for them. You cannot blame anyone else for them. So, what will it be in your life today? What choices will you make today. Will you obey God’s Word or will you do your own thing? Remember,
1. You get what you think about most of the time
2. You become what you think about most of the time
