Making the Right Choices

The message can be summarized in what was written in the learn focus section; "A discerning heart is better than power or riches." You may ask what's the connection between this and the title of the lesson. Well, I'll try to come up with it through the following sections...

Section 1: Grasping God's Plan
I think most of us know that we are persons created by God with reason, emotion and freewill (from Bok Su's message in camp). Although there are extreme people who would rather use only reason or emotion, I think we agree that normally we rely on both to make our decisions hence using our freewill. It is evident in the Bible about the freewill of man. In the Book of Genesis, we see the man and the woman refusing to obey God's command of not eating of the fruit of the tree of good and evil. And we all know of the consequences that came after that.

Question, if God knew that the results would be disastrous, why would He give us freewill? Or another way around it would be asking, if God gave us freewill, why does He have to give us standards to follow like the 10 Commandments or the Beautitudes, etc.? The answer is simple. He wants us to choose the good and not the evil. God created us in His likeness and image and not as controlled robots that does eveything that its inventor commands it to do. God created us for the purpose of glorifying Him and we do this by choosing what is good and pleasing to Him. This means that if we truly love Him and want to glorify Him in our life, we must choose to live by His standards. (1 Kings 3:3a "Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according the statutes of his father David...")

Section 2: Upholding God's Standard
As what we have read in the Bible study material, we are not like most politicians who choose to show an outward "upright" appearance just to win the favor of other people. On the contrary, the Bible tells us that our heart is more important to God than what the human eyes can see. (1 Samuel 16:7b "...man looks at outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.") His objective standards are different from people's relative standards. And yet most of the time, we tend to people please or codepend or give in to peer pressure because we fear men more than we fear God.

In the end, it is God who we should fear because no one else compares to Him, no one else deserves our praise and devotion. No one else, nothing else. This is should be a good reason enough to follow Him. And yet people like us don't get satisfied with statements like these. We demand a clearer explanation from God and He answers us in Job 28:28 "Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom and to depart from evil is understanding." Only when we fear Him do we truly choose to shun evil. I feel that this is the time when we exercise true discernment.

Section 3: Following God's Command
What do you mean by making the right choices and why should discernment enter into these choices? In the Bible study material, Solomon was at still young when He became the King of Israel yet he chose discernment over power and riches. As we talked about earlier and in Proverbs 3:7 God warns and commands us, "Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the Lord and depart from evil." Solomon feared and loved God during his early years and followed the statutes that his father upholded. He was humble enough to admit that he doesn't know and therefore needs help from God. He knew what was important for the glory of God and for His kingdom and chose to be given what could help him govern God's people effectively.

Let us ask also for discernment especially now when all apear to be good and beneficial to us. Contrary to the saying, "All that glitters is NOT gold." Some things of the world may seem to be pretty and eye catching but inside they are rotten and ugly. Some ways of the world may achieve "worldly" success, but it doesn't mean God approves of it. It all boils down to what we prioritize and what we give value to. If we think that the worldly things are more important than God, it would be natural to choose the ways of the world. If we indeed love God, it should also follow that we choose to submit ourselves to His teachings.

I believe this small group is the perfect for planting the seed of desiring more after God. After all, if we want to follow God's standard, we must know what are His standards right? Let us learn to obey and devote ourselves to Him! (which is the name of our blog. hehehe)