It's Your Decision!

7/17/1986

Think about your life, about your history, about your relationships, about all the things you've destroyed in your life. Think about the hatred, and the bitterness, the unforgiveness, the jealousy, the competitiveness, and the lust and pride; think about all those things and tell me you don't deserve to be totally devastated and annihilated. You do. God said it was so. Satan wants to tickle us and say, “No, it couldn't be so.” And yet, it is so. It's a fact. Denying that fact won't change that fact. Jesus could have come down with great fury and like Elijah called down fire from heaven to consume planet earth. But do you know what He did instead? He came down full of Love, full of Compassion, and He walked around in the crowds of people who were hurting and who were torn up inside. Their homes were ripped up. Their lives were destroyed with drugs and immorality and bitterness—all those things. Their health was bad and their emotions were devastated. Their dependencies and their crutches were innumerable. He walked out to those people and He had compassion. He walked out and He touched the physical lepers and the social lepers and the emotional lepers. The unlovable people—He loved them anyway. He could have come down with fury and destroyed us all. Instead, He came down with love, tenderness, compassion and great patience with His hands full of gifts and said, “I want you to be my friend. You have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. But now the Glory of God has come to you and is reaching out to you.”

What I want you to realize is that no matter what your situation is, the things we are talking about right now are life and death for you. And, you will make a decision to hate the things that God hates, to love the things that God loves, and to walk with Him. To get on that chair and lean back and push off. And, decide that if God is big enough to create the universe, then He is big enough to take care of my life and I can trust Him with it. If God would give His only Son (Rom. 8), how much more will He love to protect us and to give us good gifts. And, we can trust Him. He has proven His power, and He has proven His love. And, the only thing that stands between us and the Glory of God is the decision to sit in that chair and push off, no matter what we think it might cost us to trust God.

I want to give you something practical to think about. If that's your commitment, if you want to take that chance right now—it's a decision you make, like every human being on the face of this earth. You make that decision. You can go on from here with the Holy Spirit dwelling inside of you in Power, or you can go back to your old life and think about it and take a chance that your heart will be hardened. That's a very practical challenge. If you want to do something about it, you can go on from here forgiven of everything that you have ever done in your whole life with an expectation of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, and that is the time that we walk up into the arms of God and share in all of His Glory. The choice that you are making as you are sitting there is whether you are going to go on with your heart as a harlot, or go on with your heart as a virgin—with your life as dead in your transgressions, or alive to Christ Jesus; enslaved to satan and a child of wrath; or a child of God and co-heir with Christ of all the riches of God. That's as practical as I can give it to you. I don't think you will have another chance that will be any more simple or straightforward. God doesn't strike us with lightning bolts. He allows us to make a simple decision. You think about it.