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OUR PRIVATE CHOICES AFFECT EVERYONE WE KNOW
Every moral decision that we make is like a brick in a wall that is forming our character. The difficulty is that as we put each individual brick into place we can fail to see how our individual choices affect those around us.
Our lives are so interconnected that the choices we make have drastic effects on everyone that we are in communication with, and we can either be a source of security and love to the ones whom we care about, or we can be wrecking balls of total disaster.
Either way, it’s utterly naïve to think that our private decisions only affect our own personal lives.
1000 LITTLE COMPROMISES
It’s also important to understand that we’re faced with 1,000 little decisions every day, and even one small compromise can change everything:
– The person who drives drunk and kills someone because of a car accident made one little choice to drive that night, but it was 1,000 moral compromises that got him to the place of being drunk in public.
– The person who commits adultery may have made one little choice to contact someone over Facebook, but it was 1,000 moral compromises that led to finally engaging with him or her.
What was at first just a private decision between you and God all of a sudden wreaks havoc in the lives of other people, and it all happens so subtly through 1,000 little compromises. But there is redemption in our subtle choices, and God works powerfully within them.
LONG OBEDIENCE IN THE SAME DIRECTION
Our long obedience in the same direction toward God can be a source of trust and security for those who love us because it provides a sense of consistency, security, and love; and more importantly it can serve as the means by which God uses us in order to fulfill his will.
It’s difficult to see how our consistency is important because there is no immediate pay-off. Our small choices and habits don’t immediately feel significant, and these changes in our lives can be so subtle that they’re imperceptible, so we tend to ask ourselves, “Why bother?”
But it’s exactly in our consistency that God enters into our story to make even our smallest acts of integrity something significant to someone else’s life. It’s through the seemingly unimportant events that God weaves the story of redemption together for all of humanity. This is how he brought about the birth of the Savior of the world, through random small events of life, and through the faithfulness of his followers.
So . . .
every decision we are faced with
every conversation we do or do not engage in
every relationship we are in
every day we wake up
Know that these all present a chance for God to use us to bring about His redemption to others. So just at that 1,001stdecision that we make, He weaves in an event that can change someone else’s life forever.
We never know when we might serve someone who needs us through an act of kindness, and sew a seed of salvation.
We never know when we could lead someone to Christ.
But we do know that it is in our consistent obedience in the same direction that God will use us and that he will surely work.
It is in our consistency that there is great power and opportunity for His hand to move and for us to be used.
This is why we are saved: for God to work through us to accomplish his will on earth. The greatest thing we can do, even though it might not feel like it, is to be consistently treading in the same direction making 1,000 little decisions that honor him.
And eventually God will use that to accomplish something greater than you ever could have imagined.
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