CHOICE & DECISION-MAKING

1. God didn't stop Adam & Eve in the Garden when they made the wrong choice. He had to let them do it. But He punished them, He rewarded them accordingly, according to their works & lies & evil doings & disobedience!

2. A lot of people are not neutral, they simply haven't yet made a final decision because they haven't had the full benefit of all the Truth. They haven't had a real chance to know the Truth, so therefore they can't yet be held responsible by God. So God gives them a chance to hear the good thing, the right thing, the real thing, & from then on they have a choice & are compelled to make a decision.

3. Sometimes when you are trying to make a decision, the Devil fights extra hard & the Lord allows him to make it that way to test you, to see if you're going to give up even before you get started! Sometimes you think something the Lord may be asking of you is going to be complete Hell & that you're not going to be able to take it. It may seem like it's going to be that way, but things are rarely as hard in reality as you think they're going to be beforehand.

4. Whenever you have a decision to make, you've got to decide whether it's going to bear good fruit or bad fruit. Maybe it's going to bear both good fruit & bad fruit, maybe it's going to help one person but it's going to hurt someone else, so you've got to decide what's going to bear the best fruit. Is it going to bear more good fruit than bad fruit? Most decisions aren't all that clear cut; it's not either going to be all bad or all good, it's usually a little of both. But all things will work together for good in the end for those who love the Lord.

5. When there is a difficult choice you have to decide on the basis of what will bring the best results. If it's a clear black-&-white question, then you don't have any problem, you pretty much know what to decide. But it's difficult to make decisions where you have to weigh the consequences & see that maybe it's good in this respect, but it's not so good in that respect, it's good in one thing, but it's not so good in another. Then we have to balance them & decide which is best & what's going to bear the best fruit.

6. Life is a learning process!--And you don't learn it by snapping your fingers or suddenly getting an injection!--Or like you've seen in some of these sci-fis where they put a skull cap on one guy & drain his brain & put all of his knowledge in somebody else's head. Wouldn't that be nice? It would be so easy! But look what you would miss!--This trial-&-error process, this trying-&-learning process!

7. When you insist on wilfully going your own way like Israel did, God has drawn the line. He has committed Himself to not stopping you & to letting you have your own way, just like He did Adam & Eve in the Garden & as He will to the very end: He'll let man have his way until he nearly wrecks the World!

8. He has to let man go his own way & make his own choice. It's the only way He can work out His purpose! It's like His great experiment & His great demonstration--His great skit, if you will--His illustrated message of the results of good & the results of evil as an everlasting example to the Universe.

9. If you didn't have that human frailty, that human weakness to make wrong decisions & to fail, then there would not be the freedom of choice, the majesty of free will that God implanted in every heart, including, apparently, in the hearts of the Angels, to make a choice, to voluntarily love & serve Him. He wanted you as friends, He wanted you as His Beloved, not only friends, but His Bride!

10. To every man there openeth
A Way, and Ways, and a Way.
And the High Soul climbs the High Way,
And the Low soul gropes the Low,
And in between, on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.
But to every man there openeth
A High Way and a Low,
And every man decideth
The way his soul shall go.
--John Oxenham

11. The evil spirits are allowed to influence & try to persuade us with doubts & fears & thoughts, but we physical human beings still have the choice to either obey them or not obey them, to obey the voice of the Lord or obey the voice of the Enemy, & they are the voice of the Enemy! They're influences. They influence us. They can't make us do anything, but they try to affect us to make choices that are wrong. They can't actually physically or violently intervene or interfere at all. But their influence affects the physical according to our choice & God's permission. We can either accept their evil thoughts, or we can reject them.

12. There's a certain leeway & allowance for variation of choice in the will of God as long as it doesn't go too far right or too far left. He may let you wander around quite a bit according to your own personal choice, here or there, as long as you stay in the correct general area. As long as you stay within the tunnel of God's will, He'll give you your choice. Of course, there's always the best even within the tunnel & the worst, so He leaves that choice up to you.

13. It's a very fascinating game to watch what a child will do within certain boundaries of safety & health & what's good for them, & I imagine that must be a little bit the way God feels! He puts us here on Earth & He gives us a choice--a lot of choices! Adam & Eve probably could have eaten from 1,999 different trees in the Garden besides that one! They didn't have to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil. They had a lot of choice, a lot of variety to choose from, right? So the Lord is not unreasonable & I don't think He's too narrow-minded or too strict. He's been awful good to us!

14. God has to bring an end soon, it just can't go on much longer or man would destroy himself. God has to come & put a stop to it, & then the age of voluntary, willing, peaceful acceptance of the Love of God & His Kingdom in hearts is going to come to an end in a certain way, in that man is going to then be ruled by us & forced to obey the Kingdom of God & the rule of God & the Law of God. He is going to be forced to do so & God is going to enforce peace on Earth & enforce equality & enforce justice, to show what a wonderful world it should have been & would have been if men had followed the Lord.

15. Always take plenty of time to make a snap decision.

16. Choice, not chance, determines human destiny.

17. There are no born decision-makers. The most successful decision-makers follow a set of rules that help them select the best alternative under the circumstances. The basic rules of decision-making involve six steps:
a) State the apparent problem or situation you face.
b) Gather the facts.
c) Organise and interpret the facts.
d) State the real problem or situation.
e) Develop alternative solutions.
f) Select the most appropriate alternative.

18. In darkness there is no choice. It is light that enables us to see the differences between things; & it is Christ Who gives us light.

19. The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides never decides.