now choose life!!!

today i had the thought what if we just choose life? so many times we get caught up in wondering. questioning where our lives are headed and what we are doing for god! i have been reading the book "seizing your divine moment" by erwin mcmanus. i read over some really cool scriptures in there.

see, i 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 possess. (deut 30;15-16)

i know in my own life questions rise and fall around who i am going to marry. what career am i going to persue? what things should i buy? who should be my friends? should i go on mission trips? all these questions have passed through my mind over and over again in the last couple of years. i know as a young adult asking these question and then pondering on them day and night can drive us mad if we don't persue god's heart. having your life driven around the previous mentioned questions can sometimes be the wrong questions to be asking in life. i know so many times we sit around and ponder them but never put any action into persuing the simple things in life. like have i loved on my parents, room-mates, and good friends today? i am finding joy lately in just giving a phone call to a good friend once a day instead of wasting my time worrying about life and where it is headed. if we lay our lives down for god and allow him to clearly define our days by living in community with our brother and sisters and putting them first, i would dare to say that the above questions disappear quickly. because all the questions above are about me and my selfish needs and desires. i experience true happiness when i lay my life down for others no matter what the cost! sometimes the immediate situation really stinks, but when i find myself on the other side of the gap with friends and the wake is something to smile at, knowing that my actions bettered a persons life or encouraged an encounter with christ. so in "choosing life", which only the father (god, jesus, holy spirt) can give, i experience a release of pressure of having to have life figured out!

i know the really hard moments for us to process are when we touch something that we thought was god or would better our lives and then they just disappear in a second! i think it is hard to challenge those moments for me because they are just hard to understand. but in the past when that has happened to me and now looking in hind sight, they all brought me to this place in the journey for a reason! some of the situations i screwed up and then some were totally out of my control. but the truth is that today i stand here with my self and my actions. do i move forward in laying my life down for others, or do i try to figure out what in the world is going on? pondering on the past gets us in trouble, learning from our past and then laying our lives down for others brings us to freedom!

let me know what you think?
benjamin