The Careful Choice

March 12, 2015

The Careful Choice

Choose today whom you will serve.

Joshua 24:15b

The High Priest Caiaphas made his decision: “It’s better that one man should die for the people” (John 18:14). There was much Caiaphas had to consider, but in the end he chose the ways of appeasement, expediency and traditionalism. Caiaphas, a very religious man, fooled most of the people. Most of the people thought he was right and picked Barabbas when offered the choice by Pilate.

Life is hard, but it is not complicated. All human interaction is a matter of contending ideas and points of view. The vast majority of decisions are made in favor of the one who presses the hardest, the one who refuses to compromise, the one whose will to be right exceeds the others with whom he contends. Life becomes hard, not complicated, but hard, for the followers of Jesus when we have to decide whether we will stay in the arena and contend for our ideas.

Most of the time we can easily come to the decision that the issue isn’t that important, we don’t need to be seen as in the right; we can walk away. Or, instead of walking away we can exercise Godly wisdom and apply Covey’s Seven Habits and take a win/win stance. We can model listening to understand and graceful synergy to find answers that were hidden while all were contending to be right.

There will be other times when we cannot walk away. There will be times when we will stand shoulder to shoulder with Joshua and say, “But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15c). Caiaphas may have thought he was serving the Lord, but he compromised his mission to work out the meaning of his life with a secular agenda to maintain power and influence.

This is where life is hard, not complicated, but hard. We all struggle with the meaning of our existence. Let us take care with our choices and choose not to follow after Caiaphas and miss life from God.

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms is available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ  is available as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.