The Choice To Make a Choice -- Conclusion

 

    There are no secrets, no methods, and no final answers to the living of a godly life in a fallen world.  We will find walking with God a great challenge until we are glorified with Him in Heaven.  No less than the Apostle Paul confessed as much:

 

    "Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14).

    "But now we see through a glass darkly" (I Corinthians 13:12).

 

    Nevertheless, as we "press toward the mark" with Paul, we can "grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" to the degree that significant progress is made (II Peter 3:18).  The clearer our understanding of God and of ourselves as spiritually constituted in Christ, the more likely we will find that "the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day" (Proverbs 4:18).  Or, in terms of our present consideration, the more likely we will arise to choose to make the choice to trust and submit ourselves unto the leading and power of the Holy Spirit.

 

    We began this series with the old-timer's admission that "sin comes natural," contrasted with the Truth that "obedience comes supernatural."  In times of conscious temptation, we must choose to walk in the Spirit by trusting and submitting ourselves to God rather than merely drifting into unbelief and its carnal expressions.  We must know our Lord well enough to trust Him accordingly, and we must know ourselves well enough to believe that it is the delight of our redeemed spiritual selfhood in Christ to choose to make the choice (regardless of fleshly sensibilities that conflict).  "God is faithful... Reckon ye also yourselves to be... alive unto God" (I Corinthians 1:9; Romans 6:11).  Our confidence must be in Him, and in His promised working in us "both to will and to do of His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13).

 

    Whatever our past experience, or our present sensibilities, or our prospects of the future, born again believers in the Lord Jesus are presently enabled and inclined to choose to make the choice to trust and obey.  Our Lord dwells in us by His Spirit, and it is His sublime gift of grace to us that the Holy Spirit infuses the delight of Christ within our innermost being.  "I delight in the law of God after the inward man" (Romans 7:22).  We must believe this Truth to be true regardless of how often our ship seems to have drifted into troubled and unfaithful waters.  The Lord Jesus is our Helmsman, we are His stewards, and through Him we can choose to make the choice to decisively navigate our vessel on the river of faith and faithfulness.  Let no devil, no man and no evidence to the contrary convince us otherwise, and let us...

 

"Awake to righteousness and sin not."

(I Corinthians 15:34)