Choices - some questions to think about:

• What choices do you make day by day?
• What important choices have you made in your life?
• How "free" are those choices?
• What influences our choices?
• Are our so-called choices not more complicated than we often think!?

Choose God!

• The bible urges us to choose to follow God. This is a real choice for each of us to make, for which we are responsible before God.
• "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." (Joshua 24v15)
• "This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life…" (Deuteronomy 30v19-20)

Danger of Pride if we think that we are choosing God and right living and should be rewarded for that. So the bible applies a corrective to this:

• "The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt." (Deuteronomy 7v7-8)
• "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2v8)
• We need to stay humble, recognising that we depend on God, even for the help we need to make right choices.

We are Chosen by God. This is more important than our choice of him and his ways!

• "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit - fruit that will last." (John 15v16)
• "For many are invited, but few are chosen." (Matthew 22v14) Jesus is talking here about the invited wedding guests in a story he told, who must accept conditions of entry, clean clothes offered by the host. One man refuses to change out of his dirty clothes, leading to this remark. So his being chosen is linked to his choice to accpet the conditions of choice.

We must Confirm God's Choice by behaving like chosen people.

• "Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." (2Peter 1v10-11)

God wants us to rejoice that we are Chosen & feel secure as a result. Nothing can separate us from his love.

• "For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession." (Deuteronomy 7v6)
• "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will - to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves." (Ephesians 1v4-6)
• Like the best human fathers, God wants us to feel secure in the assurance of his love for us and choice of us.

We should also remember that we are Chosen for God. That means we should live in ways he approves for him.

• "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light." (1Peter 2v9)
• "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience." (Colossians 3v12)
• Do our lives show that we are God's children, chosen by him?

Choose as chosen is perhaps a way to summarise the holding together of these two lines of thought.

• Rejoice in God's choice of you – be secure; trust him
  • "I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand." (John 10v28)
• Encourage others to choose God
  • "Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes." (1Corinthians 4v5)
• Choose to be guided by God
  • "Live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature." (Galatians 5v16)

May God help us to integrate this way of seeing things into our lives. "Predestination" has ben a controversial subject in Church history. May we avoid the excess of stressing one side or the other of God's choice of us or ours of him, but rather hold both together in a creative tension.