Latest / The Slippery Slope / The Choices We Make

Transcript

The Choices We Make · The Slippery Slope

• 0:34
  Hi Jay Fallon, thank you for listening to The Slippery Slope.
• 0:37
  So listen, I'm at that stage in life where you start to reflect
• 0:44
  on the things that you've done, what the things that you have
• 0:49
  achieved, the things that you've wanted to achieve that maybe
• 0:53
  you've failed at. I've failed at quite a few
• 0:55
  things. I've succeeded at quite a few
• 0:58
  things, but along the way you need to you make choices.
• 1:05
  Some of them are really bad, can be really bad.
• 1:07
  Some of them the ramifications can be disastrous.
• 1:11
  I have made choices throughout my lifetime which had the
• 1:15
  potential to be extremely disastrous.
• 1:18
  I should have died and not to exaggerate at all, some of the
• 1:23
  choices that I've made in my life should have led to my
• 1:28
  demise. And because of a few things that
• 1:32
  have been happening in my life recently and it ends not just my
• 1:35
  life, but also the lives of people around me, friends and
• 1:40
  family, acquaintances. I've been looking and thinking
• 1:44
  well, the choices that I've made and what I've done in my life
• 1:50
  and how things could have gone badly.
• 1:53
  How I believe that God has kept me very much from from my own my
• 2:02
  own poor decisions and kept me alive, I think.
• 2:07
  And there's one scripture when I was being reflecting about these
• 2:10
  things, the choices that I've made, the failures that I've
• 2:12
  had, the few successes that I've had, I've come back quite often
• 2:18
  to a verse Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 30, 19 to 20.
• 2:24
  I'm going to read First off, but something that came out of got
• 2:28
  questions and a few other reflections when I was looking
• 2:35
  up in got questions about, you know, what does it really mean?
• 2:38
  What's Deuteronomy talking about?
• 2:40
  So if you're not familiar to the verse of I'll read to you from
• 2:44
  the New King James Version, it says I announced to you today,
• 2:46
  this is Moses talking. Says I announced to you today
• 2:49
  that you shall surely perish. You shall not prolong your days
• 2:53
  in the land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess.
• 2:57
  I call heaven and earth as witnesses to day against you
• 3:00
  that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.
• 3:05
  Therefore choose life that both you and your descendants may
• 3:08
  live, that you may love the Lord your God, and you may obey His
• 3:13
  voice, and that you may cling to Him.
• 3:16
  For he is your life in the length of your days, and that
• 3:20
  you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your father's,
• 3:24
  to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give them.
• 3:28
  So we see. So as Moses nears the end of his
• 3:32
  ministry, he counsels God's people to choose life.
• 3:38
  He outlines the way to do this, saying Love the Lord your God,
• 3:43
  listen to his voice, and hold fast to them, for the Lord is
• 3:47
  your life. Moses reviews the terms of the
• 3:50
  covenant, explaining to the people of Israel that walking in
• 3:54
  a covenant relationship with God means making a radical decision
• 4:00
  to commit themselves wholly to the Lord and his ways.
• 4:04
  To choose the Lord is to choose life.
• 4:10
  It goes on to say that choose life indicates that people have
• 4:14
  a choice. Because sometimes if it feels
• 4:18
  like you're just doing things and you're just so driven by
• 4:21
  your own lusts, your own desires, or, or even it feels
• 4:28
  like you can be driven by outside factors and that you're
• 4:31
  really not in charge of the choices that, that are being
• 4:34
  made. Other people are making choices
• 4:36
  and, and affecting you and affecting the direction of your
• 4:39
  life. And it can be frustrating.
• 4:41
  But in reality, we'd all make choices and we have, we have
• 4:49
  that decision to make. We choose life by choosing God.
• 4:54
  When we respond to the Lord in faith, love, and obedience, we
• 4:58
  receive life eternal. Under the Old Covenant, Israel
• 5:03
  received life abounding with all God's goodness and physical
• 5:06
  blessings. Under the new Covenant,
• 5:10
  believers in Christ receive abundant life.
• 5:15
  It also made me think of and they bring this up what it says
• 5:18
  in Joshua 2415. Read the new King James Version,
• 5:22
  it says, and if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose
• 5:26
  for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods
• 5:31
  which your father served that were on the other side of the
• 5:33
  river, or the gods of the Emirates in whose land you
• 5:39
  dwell. But As for me and my house, we
• 5:42
  will serve the Lord. That's an extremely famous
• 5:45
  scripture. It's probably one of the most
• 5:47
  famous scriptures. It's up there with, you know,
• 5:49
  John 316, I think. As for me, in my house, we will
• 5:53
  serve the Lord. I saw that plaque in a lot of
• 5:56
  different houses that I remember growing up.
• 5:58
  You know, you go and visit people and Christians, whatever,
• 6:00
  they'd have that. Yeah.
• 6:01
  As for me in my house, I couldn't tell you how many
• 6:03
  family members had that plaque on their wall somewhere.
• 6:07
  As for me in my house, we will serve the Lord.
• 6:10
  But I've been reflecting on choices that I'd made, but also
• 6:13
  choices of friends and family and acquaintances, like I said,
• 6:17
  and, and talking to people. I was getting to talk to someone
• 6:21
  who I've known for or probably extremely long time.
• 6:27
  I've known them what my wife's known them for, you know, since
• 6:31
  we were teenagers, basically. Not basically, actually.
• 6:35
  And this person's explaining how they are struggling, struggling
• 6:40
  in life, struggling with the things that they are faced with
• 6:44
  in life, struggling to find joy, struggling, struggling with
• 6:50
  depression, struggling with a disorder in their life because
• 6:55
  of the depression in their lives, struggling to find love.
• 7:02
  But when talking to this person or having this person tell me
• 7:09
  all these issues, all these struggles that they were, that
• 7:11
  were going on in their lives, in their life, at the end of it, I
• 7:16
  said, you know, you're having this issue, you're, you're
• 7:21
  suffering from depression. And it's, it's bringing out some
• 7:25
  really serious or some bad behaviours.
• 7:30
  And not bad as in, you know, evil or wrong, but just things
• 7:33
  that really are detrimental to your life, to your health.
• 7:39
  And at the end of the day, you have to, you have to change, but
• 7:43
  you have to choose a different path.
• 7:45
  You cannot just keep going down the same path and then making
• 7:51
  the same choices and then thinking or wondering why am I
• 7:56
  still getting the same outcome? Why am I still struggling in
• 7:59
  this certain area? Why am I still finding it hard
• 8:03
  to to find love, to find fulfilment, to find joy, but you
• 8:08
  keep making the same choices. So I'm telling this person you,
• 8:11
  you've got to change. If nothing changes, nothing
• 8:15
  changes. I did the podcast 11 months ago,
• 8:18
  I think it was, if nothing changes, then nothing changes.
• 8:23
  But when you're, if you want change and you're willing to
• 8:28
  change, you need to make the right choice in the direction
• 8:34
  that you want to go. What is the outcome that you
• 8:36
  want? What is the, what is the choice
• 8:39
  that's going to get you to fulfil that outcome that you're
• 8:43
  looking for? I believe that when I was
• 8:47
  reflecting on Deuteronomy, you know, because it's in the Old
• 8:51
  Testament, sometimes it's, it's easy, I think for Christians to
• 8:55
  sometimes think, well, the this is God talking to, he's talking
• 9:00
  to the Israelites. This is just a, a lesson for
• 9:02
  them. But bigger picture, you'll pull
• 9:05
  back and you know, like this, like I said from that got
• 9:08
  questions article, you're looking at the new covenant and
• 9:12
  God saying to us, well, choose life under the new government,
• 9:18
  believers have that decision to make to choose Christ and
• 9:25
  receive abundant life. And receiving abundant life
• 9:28
  isn't like, well, you're going to be rich and famous and blah,
• 9:30
  blah, blah. You know, which I think a lot of
• 9:32
  people misinterpreted as abundant life here.
• 9:36
  We're going to have all these blessings in the world.
• 9:39
  We're going to have all this money.
• 9:40
  We're going to, you know, not have any worries, not have any
• 9:42
  cares. But we choose life because we
• 9:46
  choose God. We choose Jesus because then we
• 9:49
  have that. What's that?
• 9:54
  What's that old like kind of a proverb or you know, you always
• 9:57
  see it on the, the posters, you know, the, the, the set of two
• 10:01
  footprints in the sand. And then, and then there's that
• 10:04
  section of life where there's only one set of footprints.
• 10:07
  And then the purse is saying, what happened to you wise?
• 10:08
  You're only talking to God and he's all this is the, the time
• 10:11
  of your life when you were struggling.
• 10:13
  And this is the time when you you weren't by yourself.
• 10:16
  This is when I was carrying you, Jesus saying to that person,
• 10:18
  this is when I was carrying you in that life.
• 10:21
  And that's what when we choose life, when we choose to have
• 10:23
  Christ in our life, we are choosing abundant life.
• 10:26
  We're choosing to not rely on ourselves, but to rely on God.
• 10:34
  And I've just been reflecting on that so much more.
• 10:37
  And I was reminded that, reminded of that too, when I was
• 10:44
  talking to someone else who's struggling with with drug
• 10:48
  addiction. And you can't get over the fact
• 10:53
  that they've made some extremely terrible choices and not not
• 10:58
  trying to judge this person at all, because like I said, I've
• 11:00
  made choices in my life that I think, well, extremely terrible.
• 11:06
  They should have. I could have easily have passed
• 11:09
  away, have died, but I didn't only for the grace of God, but
• 11:16
  the the people who or this person I know who's struggling
• 11:19
  at the moment with drug addiction or the other person
• 11:21
  who I was talking about for you, you know, really struggle with
• 11:24
  the issues depression in their lives.
• 11:26
  And but they're constantly making the same mistakes over
• 11:28
  and over and over again, just going down the same path and
• 11:34
  falling into the same temptations.
• 11:35
  You sit the goal, you've got to choose a different path.
• 11:42
  Choose this day who you're going to serve.
• 11:48
  Choose life. So I would encourage you,
• 11:51
  encourage anyone out there who's struggling, struggling with the
• 11:55
  struggling to change, struggling.
• 11:56
  You know you, you know that things need to change in life,
• 12:00
  in your life. And you want to know, well, how
• 12:03
  can I make things change or how can I see those changes come
• 12:07
  about in my life or the better I would say you have to choose
• 12:13
  life. You have to choose the think,
• 12:15
  well, this is the outcome I, I want.
• 12:18
  And what are the right choices that I'm going to make that are
• 12:21
  going to get me towards that outcome?
• 12:25
  But more importantly, like it says in God's word, I've given
• 12:32
  you the choice between life and death.
• 12:33
  God has given us the choice between life and death, between
• 12:37
  blessings and cursings, and we should choose life.
• 12:44
  We we need to choose life. We need to make that choice to
• 12:48
  live righteously and to choose to serve the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 12:56
  That's is what I've been reflecting on.
• 12:58
  I hope that helps you. I'm Jay Fallon.
• 13:02
  Thanks for listening to The Slippery Slope.