YOU CHOOSE (Part 1)
Posted on December 7, 2015 by America's Keswick in Freedom Fighters
“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 than you may live, you and all 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 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.” Deuteronomy 30:19-20
Last week I shared with you that I HATE ADDICTION and gave you the reasons why. If you didn’t read that post, I want to encourage you to go back and read it.
Today’s post is a follow-up and I wanted to share what God has been showing me in my studies.
Flip Wilson coined the phrase “the devil made me do it,” and sometimes we are real quick to give the enemy more credit for our sin than he deserves.
Yes, the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10) but I want you to see something very important. YOU NEED TO GIVE HIM PERMISSION TO DO THAT IN YOUR LIFE! The enemy is cunning, crafty and will throw temptation at you daily. BUT we make the choice to yield to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.
I have been struggling with my weight for 45 years. Jan and I finally got serious about making this a life style change so that we can be better fit to serve the Lord in this last half of the game.
The plan we are using is MyNetDairy, which is a free app. Basically is it counting calories and the plan is working well for us. But it has been more than just losing weight to get fit. God has been showing me that I make the choice to either eat healthy and right, or to eat food that is going to be harmful to me and cause me to be “obese.” I don’t like that label, but every book and article that I read tells me that were I started a month ago – that is how the medical profession labels me.
Looking at calories has given me the freedom to make right choices in order for me to reach my goal and then to maintain the weight I need to be. We have wanted to eat a Bahamas’ Breeze ever since it opened several years ago, but every time we go it is too crowded to get in. We finally got there for lunch and when the menu came, we both looked for what we could eat to stay within our calories for the meal.
Skimming the menu we discovered that there were tons of choices but everything was 900+ calories. For me, that one meal would have been more than half of my calories for the day.
We could have said, let’s blow it – but we decided to thank the waitress, explained what was happening with our get healthy plan, and left. We ended up at Applebee’s and had a meal that was in the right range.
Choosing to do the right thing is very freeing, isn’t it? How many times do we make BAD/SINFUL choices only to try and blame it on the devil? In the addiction world, we blame it on our genes, our predisposition, or we make a bad choice because of something someone did to me which justifies my wrong behavior.
Go back and read the verses at the beginning of my post. Moses set before the children of Israel a choice – choice life – or choose death. My question for you and me is this – which do we want to choose? I want to choose life! I want to live life God’s way. I’ll share more about this next week.
Thanks for taking a few minutes to read our daily Freedom Fighter blogs.
Written by Dr. Bill Welte is President/CEO of America’s Keswick. He has been married to his child sweet heart for 40+ years, and has three married kids, one that is engaged, and 10 amazing grandkids. He loves music and is an avid reader.
The Daily Bible Reading: Esther 3-5, Luke 12:32-59
Think About This:You were designed for it. You have missed the point without it. What is it? Living every day for the glory of the Father! ~Paul David Tripp
This Week’s Verse to Memorize: The fear of man brings a snare, But whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe. ~Proverbs 29:25