Choose Life.  Choose Happiness.  Choose Obedience.

I have the joy of meeting monthly with a group of married couples for mutual encouragement and challenge.  Last month we discussed the fact that joy and happiness are a choice.  We can choose happiness because we can choose obedience.  God calls us to be obedient not because he wants us to be burdened, but because he wants us to be blessed.  When God commands a husband to love and serve his wife it is not to make life hard, but to bring us happiness.  When God commands a wife to submit to and serve her husband, again it is not to make life hard, but to make marriage happy.  God desires happiness for us, and thus he desires obedience to him.

This has always been the case.  It was true with Adam and Eve.  It was true with the nation of Israel.  It is true for us as well.  In fact, God’s words to Israel can serve as an encouragement to us as we seek to walk in obedience to Christ (1Pet. 1:2).

In Deut. 30:11-20 we find the words of God to Israel letting them know that always set before them was blessing and curse, life and death, happiness and misery.  God tells them to choose life, blessing, and happiness by choosing obedience.

“For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.  It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’  Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’  But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.  ”See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.  If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.  But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them,  I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

In these words we find the wonderful love and grace of God.  Even more than OT Israel we have every reason to choose life and happiness and obedience because we have been given life and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.  We have been loved by God in Christ forever!

God wants us to have marriages that are alive, walking and rejoicing in his blessings.  Yet he also reminds us that this joy and happiness comes through obedience to Christ.  When we choose obedience, we choose Christ.  When we choose Christ, we choose happiness.