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We Are Choosing All Day Long
Episode #633
1-20-19
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Joan Wentzel
This is the continuation of a series of podcasts started in Episode #632
When God calls us to choose, He’s not asking us to do something difficult. Choosing is His gift to us in free will, and we know how to do it very well!
Joan:
I think it’s real easy to make choice difficult because we’re, we are so unaware that we choose every single moment. I choose this moment what I’m listening to. I choose what I’m thinking about. And we act as if we don’t. We act as if when God calls us to choice it’s some big thing. We make it hard simply because we don’t want to do it.
John:
It becomes real clear. Yeah!
Joan:
Yes! I can make any… I can make anything hard. And yet we’re choosing. Every single minute… I’m choosing to… Whatever I’m doing I have made a choice to do. Whatever I’m thinking about I’ve made a choice to let those thoughts in, to brood on them, to go down that path. I, I choose constantly.
Martha:
Well, I see with new force where Moses said, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.” And then he tells them what to choose. “Choose life so you will live; you and your descendants.” But it’s… Heaven and earth witnesses to our choice and I can tell you God supports our choice. He has given it. He will not retract it. He will not violate it. He will put us in a corner where we see the choice. But He will never make the choice.
John:
He reverences our free will.
Martha:
Exactly!
John:
It’s a reverence.
Martha:
It’s a reverence.
John:
Because He gave it to us.
Martha:
It’s sacred.
John:
It’s sacred. It’s a reverence. And it’s about love. And so He can’t… He, He, if He forced it on us, He would be forcing love, which isn’t love. Servitude. That’s gross! If your, if your wife is a slave, that’s not about love.
Joan:
No, and I remember Martha saying years ago that God will move all of heaven and earth based on your choice. And yet we still say, “I don’t know what to do!” I’ll tell you, I’ll say that’s, that’s through my victim words. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t do it. It’s too hard.”
Martha:
“There is nothing I can choose.”
John:
Yeah, yeah.
Martha:
And the interesting thing is God responds to us according to our choice. I’ve said to people at times, “You have come to this suffering because somewhere you chose the Lord.” And I know that when I am in suffering I cannot say to Him, “How unfair!” I know that I have chosen a pathway that requires chastening and cleansing. And so I can’t, I can’t object to where He takes me because I’ve said, “Whatever it takes, Lord. Just get me, get me to be there in the end with You.” So God responds to us. He responds to our choice.
John:
The enemy’s whole goal is just to make it look like it’s difficult and impossible. It’s not only difficult, it’s impossible. And as long as we’re snowed under the, the “it’s impossible” he wins. And, you know, I mean we get what we want anyway. We’re, you know, if we’re, we’re making those choices according to what we want and making excuses. But he does, he does snow us under.
Martha:
But all He needs from us is the choice. The performance, the process, everything else He will undertake. All He wants from us is to choose. And it’s Joshua 24:15 “If it’s disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose this day who you will serve whether the gods which your fathers served on the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you were living. But as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.”
So you don’t, you don’t have to love the Lord but you have to choose to love the Lord. You don’t have to follow the Lord but you have to choose to follow the Lord before you will ever follow.
And I saw this in studying for writing Adoration about Mary and Martha. Jesus defended Mary by the ground of her choice. “Martha, Martha, you are concerned about many things but only one thing is necessary. For Mary has chosen the good part which shall not be taken from her.” And the new Passion Translation that we’re so into: “Mary has discovered the one thing most important by choosing to sit at My feet. She is undistracted, and I won’t take this privilege from her.” So that story brings about the basic; as Joan said, it’s basic and it’s primal.
Then I remembered Proverbs 1, in the first chapter of Proverbs. Oh my! “Then they will call on me, but I will not answer;” Oh my goodness! “They will seek me diligently but they will not find me, because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord.” The bottom line of the problem with that where God doesn’t answer is you have to choose the fear of the Lord. “They would not accept my counsel, they spurned all my reproof. So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way and be satiated with their own devices.
For the waywardness of the naive will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them. But he who listens to me (which is a choice) shall live securely and shall be at ease from the dread of evil.”
It really is a choice between life and death.
John:
Absolutely, yeah.
Martha:
The result of your choice is either life or death.
John:
Well, Martha was making a big choice. Martha was choosing the many, the many things. She was choosing…
Martha:
Everything!
John:
…to prove to— Everything else. She was choosing to, to do her service for the people. She was choosing. She had made a choice.
Martha:
She had made a choice not to be with Jesus.
John:
Right! To serve Him and not be with Him.
Martha:
Right. Exactly.
John:
It’s not like she was against Him, so to, so to speak. She was serving Him. Trying to feed Him. Trying to make sure all the people were happy and everything like that; whatever she was doing. And so she did make a choice.
Martha:
Um hmm. Most definitely!
John:
And work often seems like a good choice because it seems good.
John:
Yeah, yeah.
Joan:
Yet Jesus didn’t say that.
John:
Right. (Laughing) Right.
Martha:
Wish I’d put that in the book, Joan (laughs).
John:
You said on the notes that you have here, not to choose is not safe.
Martha:
You can’t avoid it.
John:
Well, you’re not, you’re not in a place of safety. If I don’t choose… You know, sometimes you can delude yourself to think that if I don’t choose then I’m ok and everything. Yeah, I’m hidden over here in this, this little spot.
Martha:
God doesn’t know me!
John:
Yeah! But that’s, that’s… You say not to choose is to choose no. So you are making that choice. So your, your no choice or your choice…
Martha:
Passive.
John:
…not to make a choice and your passive choice, yeah, is not a safe thing because it literally pushes you straight into the no camp.
Martha:
Good point!
Joan:
What I can say for myself is somewhere in us we always know. We can’t… I tried to get by for years, “Well, I just didn’t know.” No, we always know deep inside us. There is a place we know that we have said yes or we have said no and in time, we just live it out. In my life my no very much lived out in terrible, terrible ways, to not only to myself but to everyone I loved and everyone in my path. And yet God is so gracious because again He brings you back to choose. Even the no can be turned to a yes. He is so gracious.
Martha:
And long suffering.
Joan:
And long suffering.
Martha:
He waits. He waits to bless us. He longs to bless us. And even in Deuteronomy is this tremendous foundational thing here. In 28 is the obedience blessing and 29 is the disobedience curse. Then He says to Israel, “If you experience all these blessings and then you forget the Lord and you wander away, just come back and He will give you more than you had at the beginning.” If you choose Him! That’s all we have to do. Just choose! And He will respond with outlandish grace even though we’ve gone the wrong way.
And you’re right, Joan. He’s ever so willing. He still wants to give to us life in all its aspects. He’s just amazing.
Joan:
He doesn’t want death for anyone. But in giving us free will He has given us the choice. But He wants life for us. He will… I have seen Him just extend such mercy and grace to me so outlandish I can’t even describe it because He wanted me to live more than I wanted to live.
John:
There you go. That’s it!
Martha:
And His want overcame your want.
Joan:
Yes!
Martha:
And that’s, I think that’s… Also I’ve seen recently it’s our job to pray for people who choose death. Sometimes people choose death and think they’re choosing Christ. That’s how deceived and deluded we can be. There’s a verse that says, “God will choose your delusion if you want that.” But He will also pursue us to an amazing degree. We can treat Him badly and scorn Him and He will still… He’s still there. He’s still there.
We Are Choosing All Day Long – Episode #633 – Shulamite Podcast
We are always choosing. We choose all the time, all day long. We choose who we listen to and who we talk to and who we read and what we do. When God calls us to choose, He’s not asking us to do something difficult. Choosing is His gift to us, and we know how!
