“God asks no man whether he will accept life; that is not the choice. You must take it; the only choice is how.”
H.W. Beecher
My oldest daughter just started high school at the same school I graduated from a couple decades ago. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about my high school days these last several weeks. The above quote rests next to my Senior picture in the yearbook for all eternity. When I chose it back then I’m sure I was dreaming of a lucrative career as a blogger. Married. 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. Well, I’m married anyway. And to the boy I was dating when that Senior portrait was taken nonetheless. I suppose some dreams do come true.
Back between the pages of my high school yearbook, I was a Christian. I met Jesus for the first time in my bedroom when I was in middle school so I felt like I had a good idea about who God was and what he wanted me to do with the life he gave me. Go to church. Do a few service projects. Be a good girl. I had all of that covered. I could live out my life and call upon Jesus whenever I felt like I needed him. Things were good.
But Jesus didn’t die on the cross for your life to be good. Good is decent health, a job to pay the bills and people who love you. Good is average. Midgrade. A ‘B’ at best. Good is the free samples of vanilla ice cream they hand out to everybody.
…I have come that you may have life and have it to the full. John 10:10.
Maybe you have all those good things. But are you still stressed with too much to do? Do you worry too much about the future? Maybe your job pays the bills but do you still keep striving for more? Discontent?
Do you have some really great people in your life that you ignore too many times or take for granted?
Your health is probably pretty good, but do you take the time for yourself to rest properly, excercise and eat well?
Do you sometimes feel like something is missing?
Maybe that’s because the way you are accepting the life you were given is to try to do things your own way. And that, truly my friend, just goes against the grain of the reason for humanity. If God created you for the sole purpose of loving you, how in the world can we just sit back and accept life as good? Reading a passage in the Bible here and there. Say a short prayer every now and then. That’s an insult to your Creator.
You were made for a purpose. And yours might be very simple.
Maybe you homeschool your own children and train them up in the way they should go. Or, maybe you work in retail and you shine your light every day to customers who just want to get high on a good bargain.
Maybe you’re a missionary or a pastor and people seem to put you on a pedastal because of whatever preconceived fabricated human idea that those positions get you closer to God.
Perhaps you spend your days in corporate meetings and make a living handling other people’s money.
All of those man-made positions and ideals are nothing. It doesn’t matter how hard you work, how late you stay up, or how much money you make. It’s all nothing. If you are working for the paycheck and for the praise. None of it matters, unless at the end of the day you acknowledge the One who put you there. Unless you can turn back around with the life you have accepted and open-handedly offer it back to the One who gave it to you, nothing you do matters.
What matters is how intentional you make the life you’ve been given. Are you aware of your purpose to glorify God in everything you do?
So, you have a choice. I have a choice. God breathed life into your lungs and gave you life without your consent. He made you without consulting you and made you wonderfully and purposefully. The only appropriate response is to seek His will in every decision and wish more than anything in the deepest areas of your heart to please the One who gave you life. The One who came to give you life and to have it to the full.
Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. Colossians 2:6
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