What will you choose?

‘One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after…’

In life we will always have choices.  It may not feel so in the moment, but it’s true nonetheless.  At our most comfortable and at our most trying we have (and always will have) the ability to choose – fear or faith.  Fear that overcomes faith will be a prison.  Faith that overcomes fear is freedom.

There is no position in life that one may obtain (riches, security, power) that can safeguard against the outstretched arm of pain or worry.  However, there is also no destitution that can come upon us which can render us beyond the reach of faith and hope.  The presence of clouds doesn’t change the fact that the sun is shining still.  We can’t see it, yet we know it.

The same is true in life.  Christ in on His throne, and all things are being brought into submission to Him (Heb 2 from Ps 8).

Now in putting everything in submission to Him, He left NOTHING outside His control.  At present, we do not yet see everything in submission to Him, but we do see Him…,namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor….

How then do we ‘see’ Jesus crowned with glory and honor while we don’t ‘yet see’ all things in submission to Him?  Faith.  Belief.

David prays in Psalm 27,

One thing have I asked of the Lord, that I will seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple.

So we can see some action words in these verses: ask, seek, dwell, gaze, inquire (or meditate).  These words must help to guide our choices throughout life’s highs and lows.

Whether healthy or dying, are we seeking to dwell in the Lord’s house?  Whether rich or poor, do we seek to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord?  Whether comfortable or afraid, are we inquiring in the Lord’s temple?  The Lord, reigning at the center of everything, must be our one thing.  And we must seek after it continually.  For faith chosen today is good, but the choice will return again tomorrow.  Faith is like manna in that way.  Yesterday’s is no good for today.

The glory of the gospel of Christ is that we now have a choice where before there was only despair.  Therefore, let us joyfully and courageously partake of the freedom we have been given to choose.  Or as Hebrews 10 proclaims,

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, through His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in FULL ASSURANCE OF FAITH.  …LET US OLD FAST THE CONFESSION OF OUR HOPE WITHOUT WAVERING, FOR HE WHO PROMISED IS FAITHFUL.