You Get To Choose Life

“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 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life….” Deuteronomy 30:19-20a

I made my profession of faith when I was eight years old and was baptized a few weeks later. It was a genuine commitment as much as a boy my age is able to make. Nevertheless, I more or less floundered in my spiritual progress throughout my late elementary years in addition to all of junior high school.

Although I was in church most every Sunday, that was about the extent of my spiritual engagement. I think I prayed every once in a while, usually about a test or something. But as for reading the Bible and learning to orient my life to Christ, it just didn’t happen. I was never an overtly rebellious boy; I just didn’t give much thought to being a Christ follower.

However, during the early months of my junior year in high school, I experienced a spiritual renewal. It began during a youth retreat with my church. Almost overnight, I went from being someone who reluctantly attended church on Sunday morning to a teenager who was at church whenever the doors were open. I found myself really listening to sermons and taking in their implications for my life. I dropped some bad habits and made new friends. I was making major strides in my spiritual development.

Each spring our church held its annual youth week emphasis. I had participated in the past at a minimal level. Since my dad was an usher, that’s what I did during youth week each year which well expressed the extent of my interest and involvement.

I don’t really remember having any expectations for the upcoming youth week in the spring of my junior year. I knew I would probably be upgraded from being an usher, but beyond that I had no clue. That’s when a phone call came to my house that radically changed the entire trajectory of my life. Our pastor was calling which wasn’t something I remember ever happening before. More surprising was the fact that he was calling to speak to me.

I came to the phone and after a few pleasantries, he wanted to know if I would be willing to serve as the youth pastor for this year’s youth week emphasis. The position would require me to attend a deacons’ meeting, read scripture during morning worship, and preach a sermon during evening worship. Without hesitancy I accepted his invitation. I was going to be the youth week pastor, and I was going to preach a sermon.

The event was about a month away, so I began to diligently plan my sermon. Neither my parents nor my pastor gave me any direction as to what my subject matter should be or how to go about preparing for it. The sermon would be the product of the workings of the Holy Spirit in the heart and soul of a seventeen year old boy.

About a week before the big Sunday, I preached my sermon to my parents. When I finished, they affirmed my efforts, so I was set to go. I barely remember attending the deacons’ meeting. I have no recollection at all of reading the scripture during morning worship. But I can close my eyes and almost relive the experience of preaching my first sermon. Even if I say so myself, it went very well – amazingly well in fact. My delivery while not polished was confident and demonstrated that I had prepared well.

At the end of the service a dad of a teenager in our youth group made a public commitment to Christ, and then many of the members of the church began to come forward to affirm me and express how thankful they were for my message. Somehow in that moment I knew that my usher days had come to an end. God was doing something in my heart, and I needed to pay attention to it.

As my junior year came to an end, I increasingly began to ponder the possibility that God might be calling me to full-time Christian service. For some reason, I never shared this with anyone. And no one tried to prompt me to consider it. I simply kept it quietly in my heart.

That summer I took a job at the home office of a large insurance company. My job was to move all of the paper records of the company from one side of the basement of the building to the other side. There were thousands of records to be moved. So for eight hours a day, five days a week, I loaded records into a large box on a cart, rolled it to the other side of the building, and unloaded the records onto shelves in the new area. I did this alone.

As an introvert, I did alone fairly well. But by the end of the first week, my alone needs had been met. I still had a good two and half months to go. I discovered that there’s a lot of time for thinking about things when you’re alone. Guess what I was thinking about? Ministry. Was God calling me or not?

My struggle was fueled by testimonies I had heard in the past by people who had “surrendered” to the ministry. As they described it, God practically had to break their arms trying to get them to yield to it. Like a wrestler in an inescapable hold, they held out as long as they could before finally surrendering. They didn’t want to go into full-time ministry, but they were essentially forced into accepting God’s call. It didn’t help matters that some of the stories I remembered from Sunday School reflected the same reluctance to respond positively to God’s call. Moses tried to pawn off his call onto his brother. Jonah ran from God. Jeremiah tried to keep it shut up inside him.

My problem was that I wanted to go into the ministry. Certainly, I was naive as to the challenges of being in the minister. But I still wanted to do it, and that seemed wrong. So I struggled, and I struggled. I eventually told God that if He didn’t want me in the ministry, He was going to have to stop me, because I was doing it.

At the end of that summer just before my senior year in high school, I told my parents of my decision. They weren’t surprised and expressed their full support. My pastor and other church leaders did the same. In fact, a couple of them told me that they wondered how long it would take before I accepted God’s call. My church also gave their enthusiastic support.

I’ve often thought about those days and my struggle concerning God’s call on my life. I wondered why others were so resistant when God called them and why I thought that was the how it was supposed to be. Then I stumbled across a passage in the book of Deuteronomy which open my eyes to better understand not only what was going on during those critical days in my teen years but also what’s really happening whenever God reveals His will and ways to us.

It’s found near the end of the book of Deuteronomy. Moses had been preaching to God’s people, calling them to faithfulness. Then he issued them an invitation.

“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 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life….”

The phrase that struck me was “choose life.” When God was calling His people to obedience – to the faithful following of His guidance, He was inviting them to life. For that is where life is found by aligning your life to God’s call whatever that is. Those who resisted it simply didn’t understand that they were resisting an invitation to life. In their distorted thinking, they assumed that following God was anything but life-giving. It was only after they said “yes” that they understood just how wrong they were.

Somehow as a teenager, I got it right. When I said “yes” to God’s call, I was choosing life. Certainly, there have been challenges, disappointments, and heartbreaks throughout my over four decades of ministry. But it has still been life. The same is true for any of us. This truth isn’t limited to issues associated with full-time Christian service. Even in the everyday opportunities God brings to us, they are invitations to life.

So when you sense God’s call to follow Him, to be obedient to Him, to reorient your life to His ways, remember this fact. You get to choose life.