Decisions
When I was a freshman and sophomore, I hung out with the jocks at my high school because I was a big kid who had made the football team. I chose them over my honor roll friends, because life with them seemed exciting to me at the time. I usually rode around with a group that included David, Joe, Davey, and some others. Many times I was a passenger in the car of Davey when he had been drinking. We would speed through the country side and sometimes drag race others. We often mocked Davey’s cousin Leroy who was a Christian and vigorously and persistently witnessed to us.
About three weeks after my 16th birthday, I was convicted by the Holy Spirit of my sinfulness, repented, and expressed faith in the saving work of Jesus on the cross. By God’s grace, I was genuinely converted. Immediately, I had a new circle of Christian friends and we spent time together. Several of my “old friends” also pulled away from our former group and gravitated toward this new circle of believers.
A few months later in May of 1972, Davey was critically injured in a drunken driving accident. He ran into a big old oak tree just up the road from our high school. Davey was badly hurt and his passenger was killed. Because of that accident, Davey spent the next 15 years of his life in a wheelchair, before dying of complications from his condition.
Had I not been saved and made a decision to change my group of friends, I well could have been in the passenger seat of that car and perhaps in the grave today, dead, not ever having become a pastor, not ever having married, and not ever having had children.
We make our choices and then our choices make us.
Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24:15 ESV)
