Choose Life

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. But if your heart turns away and you will not obey, but are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them......So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them. (Deuteronomy 30:15-17,19-20 NASB)

I believe we face a daily choice, in fact it may be a choice we have to make several times each day. Moses sets this choice out very clearly for the people of Israel and concludes by encouraging them to choose life. 

Choosing life may not be automatic and it's certainly not our default setting. We have a stark choice: choose dependence on him and find life or follow the pathway of independence which leads to something inside of us dying. We think independence and self-sufficiency is something to be strived for as we think it will lead to freedom. The opposite is true. Freedom, true freedom, is only found when we are totally dependent on him. 

Love always gives a choice. Sometimes it's not easy to choose life because the pain and brokenness of our heart can overwhelm us. On those times when, for one reason or another, we don't choose life the choice is not taken from us as Father always provides another opportunity to come back home. He is the Father of the second chance. 

Jeremiah 31:3 tells us we are loved with an everlasting love. An eternal love that began in the heart of the Father before time began, a love that has run through all of history, a love that is loving us now and one that will continue to love us for all of eternity yet to come. Everlasting love is not something we are used to. Love, to us, has an on/off switch. It's dependent on us, on others or on our circumstances. 

As we read through Jeremiah 31 we see how this love works a transformation in us. It rebuilds the broken places, it gathers us, it provides for us and it gives us hope for our future. Towards the end of the chapter we see how this external love flows from an eternal covenant. 

"I will be their God and they will be my people". 

When this is quoted in the New Testament we are given a much more personal promise.....

"I will be a Father to you and you will be my sons and daughters".

Because we are held in the Father's everlasting love let us choose life. After all, Jesus came that we might have life and life in all its fulness. That's abundant and complete life.