Choices

Choices can change our lives profoundly.

The choice to mend a broken relationship,

to say "yes" to a difficult assignment, to lay aside

some important work to play with a child, to visit

some forgotten person--these small choices may

affect our live eternally.

Gloria Gaither

I have found that the most important choice I have to make every single day is whether or not I will answer God's invitation to come and spend time with him in his precious word. For he says:

Come, all you who are thirsty,

come to the waters;

and you who have no money,

come, buy and eat!

Give ear and come to me;

hear me, that your soul may live.

Isaiah 55:1 & 3

These verses have become the theme to my life and ministry. It hasn’t always been easy to answer his invitation, but over the years the habit of spending part of my day with God has not only become an absolute necessity, but the most enjoyable part of my day—I can’t go a day without retreating to pray and reading God’s love letter written to me and you, the Holy Bible.

As I share about the life of a Listening Heart, I hear many of your struggles in the area of spending time alone with God in prayer and Bible study. Most of you desire help. I know the challenges of taking time every day for God. All of us are busy and it’s easy to become over committed. We have spouses, children, jobs, church, and aging parents vying for our time. We also have opposition, fighting against long “to do” lists, illness, and our enemy, who works hard at stealing our day. Our hamster-wheel days make us feel like we have no time to sit still. Satan does his best to block us from finding the abundant life found when spending time alone with God.

With 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year we all have 8,760 hours to do with as we see fit. But the final answer is--the choice is ours. God gave us free will to spend our day on what we choose. I'm grateful to God that he made me curious enough to want to know what this soul living that he promises in Isaiah 55 is all about. And like Gloria said, it's those small choices that affect our lives eternally.

Always Listen.