Life is full of choices. Some hard, some easy. Somtimes you get to choose between the better of two good things, and sometimes it’s between bad and worse.

You can choose vanilla or chocolate, although in my mind there is no choice there. Chocolate wins everytime, especially when peanut butter is involved.

You can choose Coke or Pepsi, or be like me and like ’em both. Or just be healthy and drink water.

In 2012, I think there are some choices we must make that will determine how those around us view our faith and how much or little it means to us.

You can choose to walk away from someone who’s struggling, or you can choose to walk the extra mile with them. You can choose to bail when the friendship takes work, or you can be like Jesus, the Friend who sticks closer than a brother or sister.

You can choose bitterness and anger, or you can choose to forgive. You can hold on to hurt until it consumes you alive, or you can release it and live the freedom God meant for you to live.

You can choose the safe and the known and the comfortable, or you can choose the road less traveled. You can seek out familiar friends and places and stay exactly like you are, or you can find Jesus in the hurting and broken and lonely and friendless and walk away changed and more like Christ.

You can choose to seek approval and affection and attention and always be striving to make people like you, or you can choose to seek first God’s kingdom and His approval and find out that people will be drawn to the difference they see in someone who is content with who they are and what they have.

You can choose to serve the gods of power and success and prosperity and fame and the in-crowd. You can choose to worship at the altar of money, sex, food, consumerism, and self. Or you can say, “As for me and my house, we will serve only Yahweh.”

To not choose is itself a choice. So choose life. Choose the narrow road that leads to life in the fullest sense, and not the broad road that leads to the death of your own identity at the hands of what you think everyone wants you to be. Choose Jesus, because He first chose you.