Joel: What a great book!Nobody really knows when it was written. So we will put it here in our study.
I am changing as I write. I find I need to take a break sometimes from the work of writing this series (hence the little side blogs which pop up now and again). My heart has to process all the Word is saying to me. The study has sparked some great conversations I might blog on later. Let’s just say by the end of this study I will not be the same man I was at the beginning. After all isn’t that the point of “Reinventing the We’ll”? We reinvent by making new decisions and choices for our lives!
That brings me to my topic for the day, decision! In Joel Chapter four the prophet writes, “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision.” Joel 4:13 NIV
Now my life coach has a favorite line he is oft prone to quote. “You can do anything but you can’t do everything.”
It is so true. Life requires decisions and each decision limits us.
God and I were talking the other day and He spoke into the silences of my heart, “Son prayer is the most important part of your day for in it you are led to decide the things I would have you do. There is much in the world to be done. But I don’t want you to do it all. I am infinite but you are finite. So you must find out from me where I would have you invest your finite resources. It will be this way for all eternity.”
Now that last bit of the word hit me hard. Maybe it caught you off guard too. I guess I never thought about still being limited in Heaven before, but it makes sense. We are not God now and we won’t be then. For those of you who might have been thinking when you get to Heaven you will be all-knowing or all-powerful I am about to burst your bubble of unbiblical belief. The word never says omniscience or omnipotence become the state of men. Those things are reserved, it seems, for God.
Then as now we will have to make decisions about how we use the good things the Lord gives to us. Then as now the good things the Lord gives us will be enough to accomplish His purposes. Then we will just be free from the impetus of sin which is now putting so many of us in the Valley of Decision against the Lord.
Now though we have to make a choice continually against that unsanctified part of us which says “You don’t have to pray about this. Do what you feel is right.”
Listening to that voice never ends well for me. It’s not ending well for many of our fellow-men either. For so many the Valley of Decision is a place where men choose not to follow God. Instead they listen to the voice of the flesh which tells them they are more than qualified to captain their own souls.
Even some of us who at one time bent our knees before the Cross of Christ are returning to the Valley and making a decision to live life out of our own desires rather than those of Jesus. I don’t know what that choice says about salvation. But I do know what it says about the place brothers and sister who choose this way will stand in a coming judgment. Such folks are out from under protection. They are in the line of fire!
There’s a subtle lie we have come to believe though: “We can do everything!”.
Somehow we have come to believe we can live for Jesus and live in sin. This is a perfect example of “You can do anything but you can’t do everything.” If we have chosen to live for Jesus that decision excludes sin. A life for Jesus means I have committed to continually working to shut out sin. I may not always be successful. I may have trouble. But I will always work at it. My decision to be a Christian limits me to an ever-increasing holiness. I cannot just go on sinning wantonly. This is where so many are stuck in the Valley of Decision. That valley is a place open to the judgment of God.
We have to come to the decision and move past it out of the Valley into God’s protective holiness. That is where I am journeying to! How about you?
Remember Indecision is a decision!
Reinventing the We'll 