Choices Have Consequences!!

Choices Have Consequences!

The choices you have made in the past define who you are today.  Who you will be and where you will be in twenty years will depend on the decisions that you are making right now! No pressure right! I say this not to make you panic, but to hopefully wake you up to the reality that today’s choices matter.  They are shaping your future successes or failures.  No matter how mundane they may seem, they are important!

Everyone would like to know the future.  Millions are made by supposed psychics, palm readers, and card readers.  Thousands look to horoscopes each day hoping to know what is going to happen.  Obviously these things do not work, or the palm reader down the road would not be living in a falling down shack of a house.  However, there actually is a way that you can know something about your future.  How? By observing the quality of your daily choices.  What you choose to do at school, at home, on a date, who you date, what you do on the internet, who your friends, what you say, and even what you think is all combining to become the foundation of your future.   

Many people believe that they can make horrible choices routinely, and still have a great life.  As if their choices had no impact on their future.  However life just does not work that way.  Our choices have real consequences.  For instance if I stopped brushing my teeth then I would get cavities.  Or on a more serious note if a young person drinks alcohol before the age of 15 the odds of them becoming an alcoholic just went up 40 percent.  As well the almost 19 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases every year in the U.S. is also a consequence of people’s choices.

One of the clearest verses in the Bible to teach this point is:

“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked.  A man reaps what he sows.  The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” (Galatians 6: 7-8)

These terms “reaping and sowing” could easily be replaced with the terms “planting” and “harvesting.” The point is simple that if you plant corn you get more corn, and in life if you plant sinful choices, then it grows into more sin.  However, if we plant choices to that please God, then we will harvest the blessings of God.

As a teen you are in a very sensitive, life directing, foundational part of your life.  Live with the awareness that what you do is important and understand that every choice has a consequence.  As you plant choices that are obedient to God during your teen years your whole life will harvest the reward.