The Choice is Yours

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Galatians 5:13-15
¹³You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only don't let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge your selfish impulses, but serve each other through love. ¹⁴All the Law has been fulfilled in a single statement: Love your neighbor as yourself.¹⁵But if you bite and devour each other, be careful that you don't get eaten up by each other!

Reflect

Somebody once said that freedom of religion is the God-given right to choose to go to hell the human way or to go to Heaven God's way. Isn't that interesting? It's a pretty strong statement, but there's a lot of truth in it.

God created us with the ability to make our own choices. Of course, we haven't been left on our own to figure out what the best choices are. Not only does the Bible give us great guidelines, including the teachings of Jesus, but we can always turn to God in prayer to ask for guidance and direction.

Still, we often choose to ignore God and do what we want--which could be opposite of what God says is best. When this happens, we sometimes create a bad situation where we get hurt or hurt somebody else. And it always pushes us away from God.

The good news is that when we realize we've made a bad choice and we confess it to God, God is very willing to forgive us. God doesn't want to remember the times when we pushed ourselves away. It's a relief knowing that God doesn't hold our mistakes over our heads forever.

Respond

What are some of the not-so-good choices you have made over the last few days? In prayer, confess them to God. And ask God to help you make a plan to keep you from repeating those mistakes.

Relate

If today's devotion spoke to you in a particular way and you feel led to share your thoughts with others, please do so.