Our Choices Determine Our Success

Lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood truths about our “Pow­er of Choice.”

WHEN LIFE IS A CHALLENGE: 

I have often heard it said, and am guilty of such say­ing myself; “life can be a chal­lenge.”  The word chal­lenge is often used in law sig­ni­fy­ing a false stand­ing. While the truth is the word chal­lenge sim­ply implies a non truth; it is some­thing that is false.  It appears peo­ple in gen­er­al are mak­ing up chal­lenges as they go through life; many just mean things are some­times dif­fi­cult to over­come.  I sug­gest the word is sim­ply over and improp­er­ly-used as excus­es.   The word comes to us from many cen­turies ago mean­ing to accuse false­ly.  [Tak­en from etymonline.com/search?q=Challenge; c. 1200, “to rebuke,” from Old French cha­longi­er “com­plain, protest; hag­gle, quib­ble,” from Vul­gar Latin *calum­niare “to accuse false­ly,” from Latin calum­niari “to accuse false­ly, mis­rep­re­sent, slan­der,” from calum­nia “trick­ery”]

Over­com­ing what peo­ple com­mon­ly call life’s chal­lenges can result from the choic­es made on their jour­ney.  When we learn that a chal­lenge is real­ly some­thing made up and is not true at all, but sim­ply a dif­fi­cul­ty we face.  We can over­come our dif­fi­cul­ties with far more ease in the choic­es we make; doing so can actu­al­ly become com­mon sense for us.  Aside from the spir­i­tu­al help God pro­vides us all, we can as indi­vid­u­als decide; choos­ing to use our will pow­er on our behalf.  It can become com­mon sense and a very mer­i­to­ri­ous action for each of us to choose, since the pow­er of choice is ours and comes to us as our free will.  We can choose to rec­og­nize the fal­si­ty of the chal­lenge at hand and move to over­come our per­ceived dif­fi­cul­ty with faith as we deny the fal­si­ty and call things that are per­ceived as false as though it were not false, that is as though it be.  By our choice, and with the pow­er of God in us, we can choose to call things that are not as though they are.  When done so prop­er­ly, with faith and com­mon sense we can do so with­out lying.

I have lived such expe­ri­ences.  Here is one exam­ple.

Not so long ago I had a chal­lenge, or so I thought at that time.  I have a very nice work shop in a large met­al build­ing of pole barn type con­struc­tion on land by our home.  It has five inch poles of treat­ed lum­ber set 3 to 4 feet deep in the soil mak­ing a very strong wood frame of the met­al build.  The Chal­leng­ing issue for me that came up was a leak­ing roof.  As the build­ing aged [near 30 years] the met­al had moved through expan­sion and con­trac­tion thus loos­en­ing the fas­ten­ers and allow­ing some to leak dur­ing rains.  I become con­cerned the leak­ing water could cause struc­tur­al wood dam­age so it was time to look at stop­ping the leaks.  But I was chal­lenged in that I am a senior.  At 84 years it would not be wise to be climb­ing a lat­ter to do such repairs.  So I chose not to risk doing this work myself, and wise­ly, I then chose to look for help to get this repair work done.  So I pro­ceed­ed in faith, believ­ing I could find help to do the repairs.

It was truth [not a chal­lenge] that the build­ing leaked and would like­ly cause con­se­quen­tial dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the wood struc­ture.   It boiled down to the real chal­lenge I faced being that of mon­ey.  At the point of see­ing mon­ey as an issue I could have said to myself, I can afford to repair that roof, let it go.  But I chose to think pos­i­tive in that per­haps there was a way to afford to do the repairs.  I would not know unless I found out the “truth” of the mat­ter.  As I inves­ti­gat­ed the cost, I found out could be sub­stan­tial.  I sought out con­trac­tors to price the work and had one bid well over $5000 to apply a mod­ern day seal to the met­al roof in much the same way one would paint it but with spe­cial sealant com­pounds.  I was feel­ing this to be out of my bud­get.  As I became dis­cour­aged with such pric­ing then a com­mon fault of us humans set in try­ing to over­whelm me:  It became “my intel­lect began rea­son­ing to chal­lenge my faith.”  Yes, of course rea­son­ing and log­ic can be our friend, but at times rea­son­ing will trig­ger doubts to our faith.

Feel­ing the chal­lenge of the sit­u­a­tion, think­ing I could not bud­get the repairs, I began strug­gling with doubts.  I did final­ly begin to pray about the mat­ter.  Though I am some­times way too slow to ask, I did final­ly did ask God for guid­ance and when I prayed I quot­ed two scrip­tures (Psalm 18:29 and Philip­pi­ans 4:13).  My quote was not to remind or help God, but to build my faith.   And true to God’s word (Isa­iah 55:11) and just as he said, “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accom­plish that which I please, and it shall pros­per in the thing where­to I sent it.”

In answer­ing my prayers, it soon came to me that I could over­come this chal­lenge [prove it false] by find­ing an indi­vid­ual capa­ble of such work and pay them by job or by the hour instead of a con­trac­tor which would cost much more.  By this time I was becom­ing encour­aged and grow­ing in faith so that I could see my shop build­ing roof repaired and glis­ten­ing in bright white, the col­or of the spe­cial sealant.   So then I prayed, giv­ing thanks for answered prayer and again for help in find­ing such a per­son that I could afford finan­cial­ly.  As I have aged I have learned, more and more, to rely on God’s help.  So as I began my search I would pray again, “I can do all things through Christ which strength­ens me.”  And again, very soon, it came to me to go into the Amish com­mu­ni­ty which is near­by and seek out some help.  I did so.  And every time rea­son brought on doubt I would dis­miss it with anoth­er prayer.

I very soon found a man.  Not only was he capa­ble, but he was expe­ri­enced in such roof work.  I then found a sup­pli­er of a spe­cial roof sealant and esti­mat­ed the quan­ti­ty need­ed along with an esti­mate of time required to do the work.   My wife agreed we could bud­get these repairs at huge­ly sub­stan­tial sav­ings so I chose to act on this chal­lenge as my own con­trac­tor.  I pur­chased the mate­ri­als and hired the man and his son. Then, I did in fact get the repairs done for a frac­tion the exor­bi­tant bids.  Thank God.  Thank God for giv­ing me the will to choose and to ask for the guid­ance. Through answered prayers I received guid­ance and was able to make the right choic­es.  I mar­vel at and love that “I can do all things through Christ which strength­en me.” (Philip­pi­ans 4:13)

Chal­lenges are oppor­tu­ni­ties to over­come using our God giv­en free will.

OUR FREE WILL:

As I wrote pre­vi­ous­ly:  Through­out the ages man has been in search for pur­pose.  Philoso­phers such as Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Augus­tine, Aquinas, Descartes, and many oth­ers spent their entire lives in pur­suit of, sought after, and wrote about their visions of the mean­ing of life and it’s free will.  Books crowd library shelves with man’s philoso­phies of life.  Some authors acknowl­edge that choos­ing, what IS OUR WILL TO CHOOSE is a pow­er­ful gift from God.  I found the KJV of the Bible God uses choice 23 times, and the word choose 63 times, and the word chose 145 times.  All are ref­er­ences to the gift from God that is our free will.  I am now remind­ed of a pro­found truth of just how lit­tle known and scarce­ly under­stood are the truths in God’s word.

High­ly sig­nif­i­cant to all life’s choic­es for man and woman appears in Deuteron­o­my 30:19 when God says, “This day I call the heav­ens and the earth as wit­ness­es against you that I have set before you life and death, bless­ings and curs­es. Now choose life, so that you and your chil­dren may live.”  This is just one of many exam­ples of God’s illus­tra­tion of the pow­er of choice-our free will.  Now choose life:  We must all seek out and learn the real mean­ing; the broad all encom­pass­ing pow­er God offers each us in our spe­cif­ic cre­ation when He said, “…choose life.” 

If you were to look up choice, choose, and chose in any dic­tio­nary you will only find man’s def­i­n­i­tion which is so lack­ing in what God intend­ed when He cre­at­ed man and instilled into him the pow­er of will, the pow­er of choice:  Anoth­er unique gift from God.   “Now choose life” as God wills for us.  A Notable Choice:  A good name is rather to be cho­sen than great rich­es, and lov­ing favour rather than sil­ver and gold. (Proverbs 22:1 KJV)

As I post this writ­ing, I pray that each of you read­ing this will find the truth in the mat­ter of Our Choic­es Deter­mine Our Suc­cess.  Join me next time as I con­tin­ue to explore how our Our Choic­es Deter­mine Our Suc­cess, in Part Two to keep your life jour­ney suc­cess­ful.

This study includ­ed ref­er­ences of 242 vers­es relat­ed to chal­lenge and choice in KJV of Bible.  You can see detail list of these bib­li­cal ref­er­ences here with option to save and/or print.