"Vigilance was the price of life."
--Louis L'Amour (The Rider of Lost Creek)
"Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the spring of life."
--James 1:12 (ESV)
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Choices! Life is full of choices; they have to be made everyday. We make them when the alarm goes up: get up or hit the snooze for another ten minutes, or pull the covers over our head and stay in bed. If we get up, we make a choice to brush our teeth, comb our hair, shave the splinters off our face and put on our clothes for the day. In all of that there are choices: what shirt, what pants, what shoes. Are you getting the picture? Even in the ordinary things of everyday life we are making choices.
Then there are those life choices that come at us. Some are foreseen, but others hit us right in the face. That is one reason we must stay vigilant. We must be ready to make the choice--the right choice. Don't think for a moment you can escape making choices for even when a person thinks they are not making a choice, they are. They have made the choice of not making one. And perhaps a more dangerous thought--if you don't make the choice someone else will make it for you.
You may be in a wilderness this morning. You may be facing a choice of life or death (physically, but more likely spiritually). Choices in the wilderness of life often mean the difference on whether to live or to die, to surrender or to survive. It may be of a physical nature if you are truly in the wilderness environment, or it may be of a spiritual nature in which case your eternal soul is at stake.
The wilderness, how many times have I had thoughts of it in my life. God often leads us to the wilderness, but take heart, He doesn't leave us there. That is, if we make the right choices. We read in Exodus, "So God led the people around by way of the wilderness of the Red Sea. And the children of Israel went up in orderly ranks out of the land of Egypt." (13:18, NKJV) Notice what God did--He led them "by way of the wilderness"! This is not some aimless wandering. Oh, the people might have thought so, but when God leads it is never aimless. He has a particular purpose in mind. He led them in an organized manner, there was no confusion, no chaos, and He took them out of Egypt--the place of sin, the place that represents the world system. But wait, God is leading, then why the great obstacle? There is a great sea in front of you, or a canyon that is too wide, or a chasm too deep, or a mountain too high. What in the world is God doing? When you think nothing could get worse, it does. When it rains it pours. You are smack dab faced with a barrier, a problem, a trouble that overwhelming and far too great for you to handle.
Often we wander in the wilderness, not realizing that it is God who is guiding. Chuck Swindoll wrote, "Suffering is not God's cruelty--it's His curriculum. God uses occasional hammer blows to shape us into His image." Now, the choice is ours. Do you accept the molding of God or do you run back to Egypt's sand? Is life too hard for you? Buckle us, stand firm. Perhaps one of the problems many have in this world is that life has been too easy. Need, or I should say, want something--put it on the credit card. "The idea that this world is a playground instead of a battleground has now been accepted in practice by the vast majority of Christians." (A.W. Tozer) See, that is one reason God has put you in the wilderness, to force you into making choices--that is, to make a warrior for the Kingdom of God.
But we don't want to listen to God, we don't want His "hammer" on our lives. One of the great dangers in life, and especially when in a wilderness is making our choices without listening to Him, and not recognizing His guidance. We want to strike out on our own, make our own choices after all that is freedom and we do not like the way that the Lord has chosen. Or, worse maybe, we murmur and grumble saying that it was better back from whence we came. "Then they said to Moses, 'Because there were no grave in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you so dealt with us, to bring us up out of Egypt?'" (Exodus 14:11, NKJV)
Two great dangers are here--forgetting the guiding hand of the Lord, and being deceived by falsehoods. First, the people had bought a lie. No grave in Egypt? The bones were drying up in the sands of Gaza. This was a direct slap in the face of Moses, but more so in the face of God. There are interesting facts, choices that are ours when we are wandering in the wilderness through a spiritual wasteland.
1. People often turn against God's Word and leadership when they find themselves in the wilderness.
2. People often prefer slavery to the world rather than the struggle through the wilderness with God.
Your choice....
D.C. Adkisson
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