Personal Life: Choices

(Missionary Linton Smith sent this on his mailing list yesterday evening which I thought I would share with my faithful blog readers. Our choices do reveal much about our character..... as well as where the desires of our heart are focused.)

Psalm 119:30-31 I have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments have I laid before me. I have stuck unto thy testimonies: O LORD, put me not to shame.

The important thing about a man is not where he goes when he is compelled to go, but where he goes when he is free to go where he will....

A man is absent from church Sunday morning. Where is he? If he is in a hospital having his appendix removed his absence tells us nothing about him except that he is ill; but if he is out on the golf course, that tells us a lot. To go to the hospital is compulsory; to go to the golf course, voluntary. The man is free to choose and he chooses to play instead of to pray. His choice reveals what kind of man he is. Choices always do....

I think it might be well for us to check our spiritual condition occasionally by the simple test of compatibility. When we are free to go, where do we go? In what company do we feel most at home? Where do our thoughts turn when they are free to turn where they will? When the pressure of work or business or school has temporarily lifted and we are able to think of what we will instead of what we must, what do we think of then?

The answer to these questions may tell us more about ourselves than we can comfortably accept. But we had better face up to things. We haven't too much time at the most.

From A.W. Tozer’s: Man: The Dwelling Place of God, pp. 158-161