Making the Choice: Guidelines

Drink that cafe latte or not--marry this mostly wonderful person or not?

Whom you marry is a much more difficult choice than whether you will keep your New Year's diet resolution. As hard as ou try to avoid it, you will make a choice.

Everyone uses a check list to make decisions: the source may be upbringing, friends, schooling, or perhaps religious teaching.

What is the principle you follow to make decisions? If it is a good guide, you make a good choice. If it is a bad one, you make a bad choice, and the consequences can be disastrous.

Some decisions have a cumulative effect. For example, if you drink cafe latte and then eat that brownie, you may gain a pound of losing it. Two or three similar choices and a whole new wardrobe will be in order. Conversely, your choices may add up to something good: choosing to date only someone who has a habit of being kind and loving to others means they will probably be kind and loving to you!

A mirror is a good guide to your eating habits, whether to cafe or not to cafe? Every life decision needs a reliable guide. I use the Bible. It is a mirror that accurately shows me where I need attention. It is also a light to show the way in dark places. David, the little shepherd boy who later became a king, said, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path." I follow the Scripture as God's guide for making good choices and, as a result, for success in life. There, we find God revealed as our creator and our world, and He knows how it runs best. To paraphrase what God said to Moses, "If you do what I say, You can't miss!" This is excellent advice.

I have never been harmed following God's advice. I have lived and worked in several countries on two continents and eaten food and drunk coffee that was less than sanitary. I never became sick when I chose to eat with those to whom God sent me. When I accidentally put my hand in the hiding place oa a spitting cobra, I was not bitten. The snake died! When bandits tried to break into my home, they were scared away.

You cannot go wrong when you choose to follow the Creator's advice found in the Bible. I made the best choice when I listened to God and married someone whith the same desire to follow His plans for a good life.

Choose a good mirror for your life, and it will be good for you. Choose a good light and you will not become lost. Choose God's word, the Bible The Apostle James says something like this: the man who looks intently into God's prerfect law, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has sen, but doing it --he will be blessed in what he does.