Choose or Enjoy

August 22

Hearing the rumblings of a storm approaching, my husband and I decided a Sunday afternoon nap sounded enticing. Instead of sleep settling in, my mind resounded with two words from my husband's sermon that morning....chose and enjoy.

The sermon message came from 2 Timothy 2:22.

Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

He referenced the lives of Joseph, Lot's wife and David and their faux pas related to fleeing. (Personally, I think Joseph did a darn good job fleeing. Pharoah's wife just pulled a dirty trick framing him (catching his coat tails) because she was ticked. God worked it all together for good.)

Moses, in Hebrews 11:24-25, exemplifies what is means to make a sacrifice through choosing the Lord and foregoing worldly pleasures.

By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

Can you imagine how that thrilled God's heart?

Everyday we are faced with choices and the older we get the more we tend to evaluate the long lasting impact those choices have on others. Are we sowing for our own pleasures or for a harvest for the Lord.?

The choices we make in accordance with the Lord may seem like the tougher choice at the time and require sacrifice, but no matter how difficult the task...doing it with/for Christ has a depth of enjoyment greater than any fleeting sin.

Yesterday in Secrets of the Secret Life I read:

"One of the greatest gifts you can bring to your King is the gift of absolute sincerity. A purity of heart that says, "Lord, I am coming to You because You really are the center of my universe. You truly are all that I live for. My heart is totally and fully set upon you."

Whew, how do we get to that point with the demands of earthly life swooping around us?

For years we longed for a lake home. When the opportunity to buy Shiloh presented itself, I knelt down by a tree and thanked the Lord and asked that not a day go by that we didn't use it for the Lord. It has been hard work keeping this property up; and it gets harder each year as our children have moved away and we continue to age and slow down. We have been ridiculed for having a cross on our house, sneered at for scripture signs in the yard, the recipients of an unkind anonymous letter and had a crow sacrificed on our dock. Hold those things up against the tears which are shed every Sunday at church service, the strangers who have come through our doors for prayer or refuge, the people who have prayed to receive Christ or asked to be baptized and the persecution, while not the least bit enjoyable, is worth the price.

Reflecting on the past 14 years we are thankful for the times God has used Shiloh for His glory, but at the same time we know we have been blessed personally by God allowing us to make magnanimous memories here.

I've been catching snippets of the Left Behind movies series on TV. Those who came to Christ after the rapture (and those in underground churches around the world today) made tough and often life threatening choices by unashamedly professing their faith. No longer is being a Christian the popular or enjoyable choice in America. Like Moses, Christians are being mistreated more and more for our faith.

What are the costly choices we are making now, which bring God glory, but keep us from seemingly enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin?

Think about this....we can compare notes with Moses someday!