Why Your Choices Shape Your Calling

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the podcast. The Branches is a podcast where we're on a mission to help you live a life of purpose and to walk out the callings of God for your life. And if you're not sure what all that means, let me encourage you to go back and listen to the first two episodes where we spent some time, we took some time talking in detail about what your purpose is.

And we talked about what a calling from God is for your life. And it'll be worth you going back and listening to those episodes again. Because as we listen to a teaching like that over and over, those truths, they start to get down into your spirit.

And those words that are being taught, they'll start to influence your thoughts. And eventually, you can really start to embrace what it means to live a life of purpose. As you hear that over and over, you'll start to embrace what your purpose is.

And you'll be able to start answering God's calling during this season of your journey. And so again, let me encourage you, go back, re-listen or listen to those episodes. And if you're anything like me, it takes you hearing something multiple times before it really starts to sink in.

And so it's good to hear these things more than just once. Now today, I want to talk to you about the power of your choices. If you've made the decision that you want to live a life of purpose and that you want to have a relationship with God and grow in that relationship, and you want to answer the callings that God has on your life, and you desire to respond and to walk in the greater things of God for your life, if you've made that decision, then that's the starting point.

And I want to congratulate you. Congratulations on making that decision. That's a great decision.

It may require you changing your eating habits, and it will require you choosing to do something different than what you're currently doing if you want to lose weight. And not only will it require you making those choices, it'll require you choosing those consistently, day after day, week after week, month after month, not just one time and quitting. What if there's a topic that you want to learn something about?

Let's talk about that. Maybe you want to learn a new language. Now you could decide right now, you could make the decision right now in this moment that you want to learn Spanish.

But just making that decision, that's not going to be enough for you to learn the language. You got to make some choices that support that decision you made. You may have to go take a college class, or use some of these online tools that they have available now.

This reminds me of the scripture in the Book of James that says, faith without works is dead faith. Just believing in something isn't enough to see the results. You must believe and take action.

If you're going to live a life of purpose, if you're going to embrace the callings of God on your life, you will have both faith and action working. And your choices will directly influence whether you grow in your purpose, and whether or not you walk in God's callings during this season. It's not all up to God.

Just because God has a plan for your life, that doesn't mean you're going to experience the fullness of it. God is not controlling every single thing that happens in your life. And to teach that He is, this is one of the most harmful teachings you could ever hear.

This belief that everything that happens is God's will has caused more damage to people's faith than any other teaching on the planet. Because for me to tell you that everything that happens is God's will, is for me to say that it's God's will for an adult to molest a child. Come on, man.

Or to say that it's God's will for a mother to miscarry a child. If I'm saying God's controlling everything, everything that happens is his plan. So it was God's plan for a mother to miscarry?

Or it's God's will for somebody to go in and shoot up a movie theater and kill a bunch of innocent people? No. No.

And if that were actually true, who would want to serve a God like that? I mean, let's just get real. Let's talk real talk.

Who would want to serve a God whose best plan for a child's life was for them to die young in some terrible tragedy? No, friends, God's will is not being totally done in every person's life or in every place on the earth. We know that's true that God's will is not being done in every person's life and in every situation on the earth right now because not every person is a born again believer.

It's God's will that every person on the planet would put their faith in Jesus and be saved, be born again. It's God's will that every person would live a life of purpose and have a relationship with him through his son Jesus Christ and through the work of the Holy Spirit. But that isn't happening.

There are millions who have died and are dying and have never put their faith in Jesus as their Savior. They've never had a relationship with God or the Holy Spirit. Why not?

Because they chose, they made a decision, they made a choice to not believe. It wasn't God's predetermined plan, his predetermined will that Uncle Joe would refuse to believe in him. You have a free will.

You and every other person in the world has a free will. You have the ability to make choices, and your choices matter. And your choices have consequences, not only for your life, but for those around about you too.

And if you want to experience a life of purpose and calling, you can do that. God desires for you to experience that, but it will require you making a choice. You must make choices that prove this is what you want.

Your choices have consequences. Our middle son, over the last couple of years, he's always kind of been pretty heavy-footed driving. He's got a heavy foot, man.

You know, we've got that Life 360 app, and I'll watch him on there. And this dude, he gets to moving on the interstate. He would consistently be running 85, 88.

And a lot of times, if his brother was with him, I would call him and I'd say, tell him to slow down. That is a ticket waiting to happen. Well, not too long ago, he moved out of our house.

He's graduated and out of school. And so he moved out. And I told him, I said, listen, man, you've got to watch your speed on the interstate.

This route that you're traveling, there's always cops there. And it's one of the worst things in the world. It's one of the worst feelings to get a ticket.

And I told him, you know, driving in the 80s like that is a speeding ticket waiting to happen. Well, guess what? He chose, he made the choice to not listen to me.

And he kept driving fast, and you already know what happened. I got a call from his mama, Tara, last week, and she said, he got a ticket doing 87 and a 70. And do I love my boy?

Love him. I love him. I tried to give him instructions to spare him, but he chose not to listen.

And hey, I'm not hating on him. Guess how I learned most of the lessons I've learned in life? By making wrong choices.

I learned a lot of lessons from doing stuff the wrong way and not taking advice. And I'm not saying that's good. I'm saying this boy is kind of like his daddy.

He has to learn by his own experience. And that's not God's best either. It's a lot easier to learn from somebody else's mistakes, right?

Their choices and their consequences. The scriptures tell us that the Old Testament is there as an example for us to learn from. None of us have fully arrived.

My boy hasn't fully arrived, and I haven't, and how about you? Have you made good choices every day of your life? Have you always listened to when somebody gave you advice?

Or did you have to get out there and kind of figure it out sometimes? And so, like I said, no judgment. I love him.

If he would have listened, could it have spared him some of the consequences? Yes, but I still love him. I want to give you a similar example from the scriptures about how not listening can cause you some problems.

And a lot of times, the reason we make bad choices, we make wrong choices, is just a lack of knowledge. We make a decision, and we don't know what we need to know to make a good choice sometimes. And we see this in the scriptures.

God's chosen people, there was a period of time that they were just getting their tails kicked by the enemy. By other kingdoms, they were just wearing God's people out. And that was not His will.

His will was for them to be successful in everything that they put their hand to. But in this season, they were not. They were not successful.

And so God, He had a meeting. He had a conversation with the leaders, the priest of that day. And He was angry with them.

He was angry because His will wasn't being done. He wanted to see His people prosper and be successful. And instead, they are struggling.

They are being oppressed and poverty and being defeated and sickness and disease is wiping them out. And God goes to His leaders and He said, look, part of the problem is you, the leaders, because you're not teaching the people. They're being destroyed from a lack of knowledge because they don't know.

Now, that's later on in the scripture, in that chapter, it goes on to tell us one of the reasons they were being destroyed is because they despised the knowledge. They did, the people didn't want to hear. They didn't want to know.

They didn't want to listen. But their choices, whether it was based on a lack of knowledge or just rebellion, their choices had consequences. And the same is true in our life.

God has a plan for you. But for God's will to be done in your life, we must choose. God told his old covenant people, he said, I place before you life and death, if you would just choose life.

Friends, the same is true for us. The Lord could be saying the same thing to you right now. He's saying, look, I place before you a life of purpose.

I have callings for you. If you would just choose me. It's one thing to make a decision that you will.

It's another thing to take action, to make choices that support your decision. Now, thankfully, if you're here in this message, you're still alive. You're still breathing.

And despite maybe past mistakes that you've made, you can move forward in a new direction. You know, one thing that happened when my boy got that speeding ticket, he got woke up real quick that he didn't want that to happen again. And he made a correction.

He made a quick correction, and now he sets his cruise control at the speed limit. You can make a decision despite mistakes you've made in the past, just like I still love my son despite that speeding ticket. He's gonna have to pay for it.

There are some consequences to his choice, but he can make a quick correction. You know, the word repent means to turn in a new direction. You make the adjustment.

He repented for his speeding. He's made an adjustment. He's made a change.

So despite any mistakes you've made, the word tells us there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. God's not up there just mad at you, angry at you because you've made a mistake or you've chose wrong. But what he is doing, he's letting you hear this message, and he's shouting from the rooftop to you that your choices matter.

And they will influence how you walk in your purpose and how you answer and experience the callings of God in your life. So listen, no reason to beat yourself up. Get determined right now to make decisions that line up with God's best for you.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for patience. We thank you that you love us and that you care about us.

And Father, we repent right now. We come to you and we ask for forgiveness of the wrong choices that we've made in the past. And we make a decision right now.

We decide to live a life of purpose in relationship with you, and we're going to grow in that relationship, because we know that's your will for us. We know that's what you desire. So we make a decision to do that, and we decide to answer the callings that you have for us.

And we ask that you would help us see the choices that we need to make in order to walk this out. Thank you, Lord, that from this day forward, I can take one step at a time, one good choice at a time, and I can get to my promised land with you by my side, with you leading the way. May it all be to your glory.

In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.