What if?

Seek God while he’s here to be found, pray to him while he’s close at hand. Let the wicked abandon their way of life and the evil their way of thinking. Let them come back to God, who is merciful, come back to our God, who is lavish with forgiveness. (Isaiah 55:6)

"When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice." (William James) We are all broken people - all of us have our weaknesses and we all make mistakes. We all need to make the one supreme choice - will we serve self or Jesus? Seek God while he's here to be found - while he is close at hand, cry out. If we want healing in this world, we all need to abandon our desire to live by our own set of rules. Seek - go in search of; question so as to obtain; go to that place where you can meet a holy God. Where is that place? At the feet of Jesus. There is no other way to God except through trust in the one and only Son of God - Jesus.

Lavish with forgiveness - think about the immense love of God and you will be brought to your knees time and time again. His love is unending and undeserved. It seeks even when we don't. His power is greater than any of what we deem to be our enemies. His grace is deeper than any depth of the pit we can dig for ourselves in pursuit of selfish ambition. Our deepest pain is not beyond his healing touch. But...we must seek him - seek his grace, be open to his healing, and be willing to be lifted from that pit. When something is 'lavished', it is given in great amounts - without limit. God's forgiveness is without limits - it is given and given and given again. The seeker finds unrelenting grace at the foot of the cross.

You have a choice to make - accept the love and grace of God or reject it - you must choose wisely. To walk away from the lavish grace and love of God is kind of foolish, isn't it? Given without measure to those who don't even know how desperately they are in need of it. Making a choice is simple, but we complicate it with our 'what if' scenarios. What if God asks me to leave...? What if he asks me to give up...? What if God says I need to...? What if the path takes me a different way than...? What if...the two most dangerous words in our vocabulary that we could utter when faced with the choice to say 'yes' to Jesus. I have one more 'what if' I'd like you to consider today: What if you don't say "yes"? Just askin?