Deuteronomy 30:19 Today I have given you the choice between life and death,between blessings and curses…………………that you would choose life so that you and your descendants might live!

   I have learned a lot of things since i began my walk with God and not all of the lessons were easy to learn. I can be so bull headed at times and that can cause me to have to endure many more things than if I would just listen and do what God tells me to do the first time that He tells me. Have you ever been facing a choice and everything in you is telling you to do one thing but your Spirit is telling you to do something else? If you are anything like me you face that situation almost on a daily basis. I can not tell you how many times that I have known what I needed to do but I didn’t do it. And because I chose to do what I wanted to do I had to suffer some type of consequence from it. We can be the point of our own misery just from the choices that we make. God said that He had given us the gift of free choice but at times it sure doesn’t feel like it is a gift. It is a all out war inside of me sometimes when I am faced with a choice to make. My Spirit will be telling me what I need to do but my flesh or my feelings will be screaming that it wants to do something else.

   I had a time in my life that I would always do what I felt God was telling me to do in any and every situation. I had made the decision that since what I was doing was not working, I was going to try God’s way to have the life that Jesus provides for us, so, I was only going to do what I felt God was telling me that I should do instead of what I wanted to do. And to be honest with you I became the happiest that I had ever been. There was something about knowing that I was doing what I was suppose to be doing that made me free inside. It didn’t bother me to not be able to do what my flesh or my feelings were urging me to do. And I didn’t have that war inside of me like I had for so many years. I would quickly make the decision to go ahead and do what I knew to do before my flesh and feelings could get to involved.

   I wish I could say that it stayed that way but it didn’t. I began to compromise with some of the choices that I made. If I knew that I should do something but didn’t feel like doing it I would do half of it and say that I would finish it later, but later would never come. Or I would say that I would do it in a little while but I would let my flesh and feelings get in the way and I wouldn’t ever do it.

   I started to notice that I was getting down and that I would be sad or just in a bad mood a lot. Or I  would make a choice and then feel bad about it or have regrets for the choice that I made. When I noticed that I had began to let my flesh and my feelings  control my choices I was so angry at myself for letting myself get back to that way of living again. There is a pain that comes along with knowing what you need to do to make a change but you don’t do it. It was hard to face the fact that some of the issues that I was facing were because of me and that I knew what to do but I wouldn’t do it. Therefore, I was the cause of alot of my own misery.

   I prayed to God about it one night and He told me that I had to fight for the life that Jesus has for me. That I do have an enemy that does not want me to be happy or free. That I have to do what I know I should do, when I need to do it, and not allow the enemy to use my flesh or feelings to stop me. And that God’s grace will help me endure if I choose to make right choices. He also made me realize that I had began to lose sight of my own happiness because of the choices that I was making. And that I would start to feel better about myself and enjoy my life more when I start to make the choices that I knew were best for me to make.

   Now I understand that I am only hurting myself when I make wrong choices. I understand that if I want the best life that I can have, I have to make the right choices. I have the key to my blessings or my curses by the choices that I make. I can have the life that Jesus has for me, or I can have the life that the devil has for me all by the choices that I make. And I have learned that when I rely on myself I will follow my flesh and my feelings. But if I rely on God’s grace to help me, I will make the right choices by following the Spirit. 

   We all have the choice to be blessed or cursed, happy or unhappy, full or empty, to be free or entangled by our flesh and feelings, to have life or suffer death (in the spirit). It is up to us which we choose. But thank God that we have His grace to be able to make right choices by following the Spirit and to have the life that Jesus provides.