You Have the Power to Choose!

You have the power to choose. Did you know that? Have you thought about that recently? Just a quick moment ago you chose to open this blog and start reading. From the moment you awoke this morning you have been exerting your power to choose. You chose when to get up. You chose what you consumed for breakfast and how much. Almost all of us chose what clothes to wear today, how to fix our hair, and literally thousands of decisions already today. In 2018 researchers at Cornell University estimated the average adult makes about 35,000 remotely conscious decisions each day. That is over 6.5 million decisions in an average lifetime. It is estimated that 1.4 million of those you will come to regret. They say we make about 227 decisions each day on food alone (Science.unctv.org Feb. 2018). I bet those count for many of the regrets.  It can be said that all choices, whether you make them, someone else makes them, or a group makes them have a cost associated with them.  Economists call this an Opportunity Cost. We might call this consequences (Foundation for Teaching Economics 2021). One way to look at this is that “choosing is refusing;” one choice can only be chosen by refusing the other choices. Every choice will have a consequence, either negative or positive. You are responsible for every choice you make. That is not a popular belief in today’s culture, but if you have read anything of mine, you know that I believe in absolute truth.

I know that you are now chewing on these ideas, determining the validity, and thinking about consequences for choices that were seeming made for you by someone else, or a group of others, for instance, the government. In English, the word “victim” exists to describe a person harmed, injured, or even killed by an event or action, typically outside of one’s own control. You could say that you are a victim of a tax increase. However, we have come to use the word to even describe the results of actions we literally cause ourselves. An example is “He was a victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.” By saying it that way, we actually minimize the responsibility of that person for their actions, whether we realize it or not. Here again, I remind you that I believe we are responsible for our choices.

Another conclusion you may have reached regarding consequences for choices that were made for you involve the idea of addiction. Merriam-Webster.com defines being addicted as “having an addiction: a: exhibiting a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity. This definition leads us to understand it in terms of the physiological and psychological makeup of a person. It has been said that at least half of one’s susceptibility to drug addiction can be linked to genetic factors. “Studies have shown that genetic predisposition and family history play a large part in the addiction or addictive

behaviors. According to Addictions and Recovery.org, addiction is due 50% to genetic predisposition and 50% to poor coping skills. Both genetic and environmental variables contribute to the initiation of use of addictive agents and to the transition from use to addiction” (luminusdiagnostics.com 2019). While this research is extremely important to helping addicts recover and find peace, hope, and a better life, some would use studies such as this to abdicate responsibility for many types of addictions.

That leads me to look at still other consequences of choices made for you resulting even more obviously and directly by genetics. You’ve heard people talk about their chronic struggles in life because they are short, not pretty enough, “large-boned,” and the list goes on. Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the direct manipulation of an organism's genes using biotechnology. As well as inserting genes, the process can be used to remove genes. Just Google the subject and you’ll find fascinating information, including an article titled “Technology Will Soon Give Us Precise Control Over Our Brains and

Genes.” Author Ariel Bleicher asserts that “The citizens of this future will learn early in life – through some combination of next-next-next-generation genetic testing and intelligence gleaned from their smart accessories – whether they are heading toward disease: depression, dementia, diabetes, what have you. More importantly, they will be offered an exit strategy” (UCSF.edu/magazine/control-brains-genes 2021). The ramifications of the manipulation of genetic influences are profound. At this point, most of us really only have the ability to react to the consequences of our genetics.

You have the power to choose. After all of the above commentary, I still believe in my initial assertion wholeheartedly. In fact, only you can move past the influences in your life and master your life. Christians for years have misunderstood this idea, believing it is somehow less “spiritual” to master a negative influence than to pray and ask God to turn it into “the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28 NIV). That verse has been used to relieve us of the responsibility and the consequences of things we refuse to master or are seemingly unable to master on our own. It’s been used as a copout for far too long.

Clear back in Genesis, soon after the creation of the world, after Adam and Eve passed off responsibility for their actions and felt the consequences of their poor choices, God is really direct about the fact that we need to master our act of decision-making. We need to be in control of our choices. The story of the Garden of Eden shows us that God has given us the ability to make choices. In fact, we need to recognize that true love demands freedom to choose or it isn’t really love at all. God exemplifies that in His decision to give us the freedom of choice. He could have made us robots that automatically obey Him, but where is the love in that? Now look at Gen. 4:6-7 NIV, “Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” The New Living Translation says that sin is “eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be its master.” That sure sounds to me like God is telling Cain and telling you and me that we have some action that we need to take, some responsibility we have to own, some power over our choices.

There is an amazing song I sang years ago. The lyrics are almost pure scripture taken from a famous Psalm of David, Psalm 121 NIV, “I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” Lord, I Run to You David knew that left to himself, he didn’t have the power necessary to be the man he was called to be. He didn’t have the power to live out his purpose and his calling. He didn’t have the power to make the best choices when faced with temptation. We see that in his vulnerability to share with us his choices of adultery and murder, to name a few.

But accessing God’s power doesn’t relieve you and me of ownership or responsibility for our choices. It doesn’t give us the permission to blame others for consequences or to pass on the responsibility for our decisions. God says I have the responsibility so I have the power from God to make the right choices if I master the ability to rely on His power to choose. Ruling over the human desire to make bad choices is mastering the ability to connect with the power Christ wants you to have. We too often turn to God at the wrong time.

Our tendency is to make bad choices, do the wrong thing, and then try to involve God in our consequences. Why wouldn’t we rather involve God in your choices and skip the whole negative consequence drama? That is what David is trying to encourage us to do when he shares where his help comes from. What we learn is that David accessed the very power of the Creator of heaven and the earth. The Apostle Paul in Romans 8:11 NLT tells us that “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.” Now THAT is some power. That is enough power to make the right choices rather than wrong ones.

The creators of Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 Steps of Recovery understood this idea that left to our own devices we are prone to make bad choices, decisions that will have negative consequences, choices that we will regret. They went so far as to say that our lives are unmanageable (Step 1). They also knew that you and I matter to God and they knew that God has more than enough power to help us (Step 2). In fact, life without God, to them, equaled insanity and there is only one way to gain sanity back. They logically concluded that one must “make a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God” (Step 3). In other words, let God give us the power by giving ourselves to Him. These are the first 3 steps to recovery and to mastering the decision-making process and begin making good choices.

As we begin to recover from the poor choices we have made, we recognize the impact of the actions and influences of other people and other things in our lives as well. As we recognize those things, we are able to see that which we are to take responsibility for, that which we need to master, and that which we have the power to change. Instead of blaming others, we see that we did have a choice in how we reacted and responded.

When we come to the healing place of forgiveness, we are growing in our ability to take responsibility for our actions to whatever circumstances have hurt us or caused a hang-up we haven’t been able to get over. In fact, our responses shape our future. They always have. The power of God is not magic fixing the consequences of every bad decision. The power of God is healing and it is mastering our lives in ways we may have never imagined. Imagine what healing could do for your future.

You have the power to choose. You have the power to overcome the circumstances and consequences of the past. You have the power to receive things that you may find lacking in your life; hope, clarity, acceptance, compassion, accountability, gratitude, humility, community, mercy, honesty, and joy.

The Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book states “If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them” (p.83-84).

Who among us would not what all of the gifts talked about above? Having the power to choose truly begins when we take responsibility for our actions, for our reactions, for our choices, and our responses to whatever circumstances we encounter. Whether you are held back by dishonesty, sexual impurity, alcohol, intimacy issues, drugs, emotional abuse, anxiety and depression, pride, cowardice, smoking, fear, co-dependency, low self-esteem, physical abuse, financial dysfunction, a poor relationship with food, any hurt, habit or hang-up, you have the power to choose. In fact, you have a wonder-working power available to you through the Son of the Living God. I know that from experience, as I have overcome

poor choices in several of the areas listed above, most recently, my relationship with food. I have relied on God’s power to help me lose 18 pounds since January. Better yet is the fact that for far too long I have known that I have been in the Diabetes range and was needing to address that consequence of being overweight and eating poorly. I’m thrilled to say my a1c numbers are now below the Diabetic range and that correction was completely due to new choices I have been successfully making.

You have the power to choose. My “just one voice” blog is full of insights on having the power to choose. You’ve made a good choice to read this entry to the end. I encourage you to read my other entries and you might gain additional insights into choices and consequences and decisions you might need to consider.

Thanks for reading,