Choose Life

There is something new and deep being worked out in my heart. I hesitate to name it, because I can't exactly get my mind around it. It has to do with obedience and humility and contentedness and freedom. Is there a word for that? Whatever it is, I have the sense that it is really, really great. I can't name it, but I want it.

At the same time, it is hard! Daily, I find myself faced with choices that I know are either going to take me closer to this thing or draw me away. Inevitably, my gut reaction (my flesh reaction) hits first, and it is bad news! But if I pause, the gut reaction is redeemed, and I discover the Spirit response.

The Spirit response always costs me something: a fleshy death.

Death to self.

I hesitate.

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 30:19-20a

The lord IS my life. Life in the flesh is my death. The Lord is my blessing. Life in the flesh is cursed. To choose to die to self IS to choose life.

I would be embarrassed to tell you the petty details of the daily decisions with which I wrestle. The  moment by moment stuff can seem so trivial on the surface. But what God is doing in me is nothing short of a miracle.

He whispers to my heart, in each mundane moment, "Choose life, Jenn! Choose life!"

And when I do, I feel His pleasure.

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