Choices

We all make many, many choices each and every day. White shirt or blue? Pants or shorts? Socks/Shoes or sandals? Get up early or sleep in? Hit the snooze button or not? And those choices are just first thing in the morning!

We decide how we will respond at work, school and home to other people. We choose what attitude we will have and what will affect our attitude. We choose to be grumpy or kind. We opt whether to smile or keep our face plain. We choose to be selfish or giving... Many, many choices.

Do the choices you make each day affect others? Of course they do! Your choices affect others as you drive down the road, as you prepare meals, as you wash, dry and fold clothes. Does your family feel the love in what you do, or do they see you acting begrudgingly about work and home tasks? I have seen my negative attitude affect my kids, it spreads like a bad disease.

We choose if we will be kind when our children request something, or if we will snap at them. We choose how we will respond when we are asked something. Will you help at church? Will you donate food to the local food bank? Will you share what things you have with others in need?

Will I choose to love my child by playing the game she wants to play? Will I do a puzzle with her for the third time, mostly because she needs my love and attention? Will I choose to clean my son's room with him (again) because I know it is overwhelming for him to do on his own? Will I choose to listen to VeggieTales music which is uplifting in the car, or secular music which is not so encouraging? Sometimes the choices are tough ones...

It is a constant battle each day to pick all of these things, major or minor. Satan is continually trying to fight with your positive, happy side to make you be negative and angry. God is offering you His Word to read and fellowship time each day, if we only accept it...

Whom do you serve? Many of us serve others in our jobs, our home, and in the community. Do you serve God first, or last? Do you serve God while serving your family? I love to provide a healthy, delicious meal for my family made with love and delivered with a smile. The "thank you's" are icing on the cake. (not always literally!) I do what I do to serve God.

Choices, choices... Whom do you serve? I hope you make a right choice to honor God today. It is bound to bring joy to HIS heart, and maybe your heart too.

Joshua 24:14-16

“Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness...if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve... But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Psalm 25:12

"Who, then, are those who fear the Lord? He will instruct them in the ways they should choose."

Proverbs 8:9-11

"To the discerning all of them are right; they are upright to those who have found knowledge.  Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her."

Here is a poem that I enjoy that applies to this message:

Robert Frost. 1875–

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. http://bartleby.com/104/67.html