The Choice is Ours

God’s Word is filled with God’s life and power. His Word is the foundation of all we are and will be as Christians. All the success and victory for the believer comes from God’s Word. In the same way, all our failures and defeats as Christians come from a lack of applying God’s Word.

Joshua 1:7-8 highlights this fact when God tells Joshua to “only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”

In these two powerful verses, the Lord gives His guarantee of success and victory for Joshua — and for us, the Joshua Generation. Three times in these two verses the Lord promises us “success” and “prosperity.” He tells us that to the degree we receive and obey His Word, we will live in His success. Victory and success do not happen by accident. They happen by choice. God’s Word cannot fail. It will never pass away.

Hebrews 4:12 tells us that “the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a Discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

So many Christians have been taught that life and victory and answered prayers were the sole responsibility of God. They have been taught that God, in His sovereign will, chooses to bless, heal and help some, while at the same time, He chooses to afflict and ignore others. Many times I have heard believers say, with religious smugness, “It must be God’s will” when things go bad and victory is lost. But that is not the case! God’s Word is God’s will. The choice is ours.

God has set before us life and death, blessing and cursing. His Word brings life and blessing, but to reject or ignore His Word is to choose death and cursing. 

“But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it. ‘See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply; and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess.

“But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess. I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.’” (Deuteronomy 30:14-20)