The conflict between choosing God or choosing self begins the moment we wake up in the morning. How do you wake up most mornings? Do you use an alarm? Do you hit snooze once, twice, five times? The temptation is to lie in bed and ‘thaw out’ for a few minutes. Where do your thoughts go as your mind becomes alert? To the mobile phone to check messages from people or to first read God’s word and talk with your heavenly Father.
It is amazing how quickly we can make our schedules for the day and our to-do lists our priorities. How often do we think of ourselves first and then maybe later at some point give a passing thought to God.
Paul the apostle of Christ struggled as well and he wrote to live according to the desires of our sinful nature is the road to death whereas to be led by the Spirit is to choose life and joy. Shouldn’t we choose life? Let the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit flow out from us in worship of God and care of God’s creation.
We need to make informed choices every day. Let’s choose to follow the way of sacrificial love that Christ has shown. Practically, what would this look like? We would begin by thanking the Lord Jesus for the gift of a new day and affirming that God loves me and that nothing will happen to me today which God and I can’t handle. No matter how much we think about our day or our agenda, the reality is that a new day is a gift from God to us.
We should start each day intentionally acknowledging and affirming that we are children of God, this practice could easily transform how we think about and live out the rest of the moments in the day. Let us choose each morning to put on “a heart of compassion, kindness, meekness and longsuffering, forbearing one another and forgiving each other” (Colossians 3:12, 13).