Transparent Christian Magazine

Let’s see… should I wear jeans or khakis today? Dress shoes or flip flops? Should I eat breakfast or skip it? Go for a run or sit down and watch TV? Sleep in or get up early? Lend a helping hand or go on about my business? Pray or read the paper? Share my faith or keep my mouth shut? Hmm, decisions… decisions.

Every day we each wake up with dozens of opportunities to make certain choices. Some choices are obviously more important than others, but we all have choices to make. Many times we do not even recognize certain circumstances as “opportunities” until we look back on our day and understand the impact that a particular decision ended up having. We often even have the chance to have an effect on someone else’s life in some capacity or another based on our willingness to participate (or not) in certain situations. So what am I getting at? Ultimately our “choices” in life are based on the things that are most important to us. Our choices like it or not, have played a large role in how our lives have turned out so far. Did we choose to do things God’s way or our way?

I have made some good choices in my life; I have also made some pretty bad ones. The cool thing about a loving God is that no matter how bad the choices we might have made last year, last week, or earlier today, in Christ we have a Savior who made a choice that supersedes all of our bad decisions and this gives us all hope. Jesus chose to love us more than his own well being, He chose to take the blame for our sins. He chose to give us countless opportunities to “get it right”.

There have been many days where I chose NOT to love Him, NOT to serve Him, and NOT to consider the price He paid. However, Christ chose to love me regardless…constantly and consistently with no guarantees that I would love him in return. As a matter of fact, our human nature gaurantees much of the opposite, that we would choose our own desires over Him on many occassions, that we will sometimes continue to choose poorly “in the moment”. But we have a Savior. Jesus said “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go bear fruit – fruit that will last” – Matthew 15:16 – A choice has been made. He chose us. He chose to lay down His life so that we can have eternal life, and He wants us to share that transforming power with others.

May we all remember this as we begin the decision making process on this very day. My prayer and prayer request is that we will all choose to live holy and acceptable lives before God in every moment of our day, repenting when we fail and giving Him praise in our successes.

Thanks for your continued prayers and support –

In Christ,

Brad

www.bradreynolds.com
You can support Brad’s music mission immensely by voting OFTEN (once per day) in the following 5 categories in which he has been nominated for the 2008 Christian Independent Alliance Momentum Award…

*Song of the Year “Anyway”
*Album of the Year “In The Real World”
*Male Vocalist of the Year
*Contemporary Artist of the Year
*Acoustic Artist of the Year

Here is the link…cast away – http://www.indieheaven.com/momentum_awards.php