Your Heart Choice

What is a heart choice? It is whatever your attitude happens to be about a circumstance, another person, yourself, God, or anything in your life. It is whatever motivates your action. It is whether you approach each day with dread or with anticipation. John Wesley believed that sin resides in the attitude of the heart. It is your heart choice—your motivation or your attitude—which speaks of life or of death. Heart choices speak of who is really in charge of your life—of who is in control.

Just before his death Moses spoke to the Israelites and instructed them to choose prosperity and life instead of destruction and death. They were poised on the brink of the Promised Land. “Love the Lord your God! Walk in His ways,” Moses pleaded. “Keep His command” (Deuteronomy 30:15)! Moses spoke from his own failure to obey God. He would not see that land flowing with milk and honey. 

The Lord sets before His children the same command today. Our promised land waits. In fact we can smell its fragrance and its promise, but it is just beyond our reach. “Choose life,” the Lord pleads, “the land is waiting for you to enter and possess it!” The ability to choose life rests within your heart.

“What I command you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach,” Moses instructed. “The Word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it! Choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:11-14)! The Word of God is meant to be alive and active. It is meant to reside within our hearts so that we might obey its instruction. Is it real in your heart? Do you know it?

“If your heart turns away and you are not obedient, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not receive what I have promised you” (Deuteronomy 30:18)! The Lord wishes His children to keep their hearts and minds upon Him. He yearns for us to reach our promised land! Often we don’t consider the fact that the motivations and attitudes of our hearts keep us from what God has promised us. 

“Now choose life,” Moses pleads, “so that you and your children may live, and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life” (Deuteronomy 30:19b-20a). Don't every forget that if the Lord is your life, He has promised you great and wonderful things (Jeremiah 33:3). But you can't enter your promised land without choosing a good attitude toward yourself and toward others.

Perhaps your promised land is His peace that passes your human understanding (Philippians 4:6-7).

“Believe in me instead of what you have always thought yourself to be!” the Lord proclaims. “Trade the positive for the negative and see blessing! You will have surrendered your life for mine. You will have given up curse for my blessing, death for my abundant life!