It's a Choice.

Deuteronomy is one of those books that offer boundless challenges to the reader. As I read through Deuteronomy, I found that each and every chapter had some important challenge or truth to offer me. However, I think all of the things I learned have one common theme: choosing to be 100% sold out for Christ everyday and in everything that I do. This is really the basic theme of the entire book. God presents the people of Israel with a choice: follow Him and be blessed, or reject Him and be cursed. We are all presented with this same choice every day of our lives. Every morning when we get up, we decide if we are going to choose to serve the Lord that day or our self.
Deuteronomy 11:18-20 commands us, “Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
Thus, the question is: are God’s commands this important to you? Do you allow them to control and change the way that you choose to live your life? What you and I choose to do with the things the Lord tells us is going to affect your entire life. Further on, in chapter 30 of Deuteronomy, it says, “But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it. See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments.” Granted, it isn’t always easy—in fact, it is never easy. Each day it is a battle, but a battle well worth fighting!
I think that much of what Deuteronomy has taught me personally can be summed up by the lyrics from John Waller’s popular song “The Blessing.” It says:
Let it be said of us,
while we walked among the living,
Let it be said of us,
by the ones we leave behind,
Let it be said of us,
that we lived to be a blessing for life…
…This day,
you set life, you set death right before us, this day
every blessing and curse is a choice now;
and we will
choose to be a blessing for life.
Let it be said of us,
that our hearts belonged to Jesus,
Let it be said of us,
that we spoke the words of life,
Let it be said of us,
that our heritage is blessing for life.
This day,
you set life, you set death right before us, this day
every blessing and curse is a choice now;
and we will
choose to be a blessing for life:
for Your Kingdom,
for our Children,
for the sake of every nation!

I want to be a blessing! Every day I want to get up and choose to live that day for Jesus Christ in everything I say and do. Just as God offered the Israelites the choice between life and death and blessing and cursing, He offers us that same choice everyday! I want to choose blessing!