IllustrationFriday.com Challenge: Robot

The latest IllustrationFriday.com challenge was the word, ROBOT. It got me thinking about one of the charges I hear against God. Why would God allow sin to enter the world? It’s a deep question but part of the reason is because we’re not robots. We’re not pre-programed. God loves us and wants us to love Him, but love requires a choice. To have a choice, there has to be an alternative. There is an option, we can choose God or choose sin and because they are at opposite ends of the continuum to choose one is to choose against the other.

Moses set a choice to the Israelites, they could choose God or they could choose the gods of the people God drove out before them. He set before them blessings and curses and then he said choose live that you might live.

You have a choice, you’re not a ROBOT… Choose life… Choose Jesus.

A Great Quote from Dr. Seuss

I loved this quote when I heard it and to me it speaks to one of life’s great truths. Most of life is a choice. True we have God and true He has a plan and a purpose, but in a very real way the choice of whether or not we will follow, falls to us. We choose the path, and by our choices we choose our blessings and/or consequences.

When Moses was leading the Israelites, he laid the choice out for them.

Deuteronomy 30:¹¹ Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. ¹² It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” ¹³ Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” ¹⁴ No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

¹⁵ See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. ¹⁶ For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

¹⁷ But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, ¹⁸ I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

¹⁹ 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 ²⁰ and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.

The choices we make help to write our story. What kind of story are you living? You could live a better one. A Lot of it comes down to your choices.