Choose Life

There's a constant battle raging within each one of us.  It's the battle of the mind and heart.  My devotion this morning said something profound.

"Your mind shuttles back and forth, hither and yon, weaving webs of anxious confusion.  As My thoughts rise up within you, they become entangled in those sticky webs of worry.  Thus, my voice is muffled and you hear only 'white noise'.  Ask My Spirit to quiet your mind so that you can think My thoughts."  Sarah Young, Jesus Calling . 

Think My thoughts?  Wow!  What a thought...we know that His ways and thoughts are higher than ours...can we actually think His thoughts?  Amazingly, we have His Spirit in us...so it must be possible to think His thoughts.

But how?  My thoughts are raging and so much louder than the sweet small voice of the Spirit.

A visiting teaching pastor, Jared, said yesterday that the living of this new creation is not a one time event...don't we wish it was? 

When we invite Christ in, God's Word says that we instantly become a new creation...Barah!...the greek word for making something new.  It conjurs up the image of a magician throwing his hands wide and declaring something done...BARAH...a new creation...an instant and forever change...the old is gone, the new has come.

But living this new creation isn't complete in this one amazing, miraculous action.  And this is a hard one to wrap the mind around. 

We are a new creation, but we are also becoming a new creation. 

Ann Voskamp says, "Christianity is a lifetime of becoming who you really are."

And so the living of this new creation is a daily...step by step journey.  Jared said, "...maybe not the first time you choose to encourage that co-worker that persecutes you and makes your life a living hell (not sure Jared said hell in church...my version of what he said), and maybe not the tenth or one thousandth time, but eventually your nature will become one who encourages."  The same is true when you choose grace instead of retaliation, trust instead of fear, kindness instead of a sharp tongue.  Eventually, those things become our natural response.

He quoted Cicero who said, "Virtue is what happens when wise and courageous behavior become second nature."

Then this morning, along with reading what Sarah Young wrote in today's devotion, I found this portion of scripture. 

The Lord is speaking to the Israelites...they have been disobedient, fearful and not trusting...they find themselves in between the leadership of Moses and Joshua.  And the Lord says this:

Deuteronomy 30: 19-20

"I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.  So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraam, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them."  (emphasis mine)

Choose life...by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice and by holding fast to Him. 

This is the living of this new creation.

This is how we begin to silence our own raging thoughts...so that we may think His thoughts.

This is the practice of becoming who we already are.

And it's a daily choice. 

"Choose life in order that you may live..."