The Power to Choose
The success or failure of everyday living depends upon your power of choice. Every day you are making decisions and your decisions form and build the network of your life and the structure of your personality and character. Not only do the choices that you make affect the direction of your life, but the decision that you make in this life about Jesus Christ will forever set your eternal destiny.
The question asked by Pilate, the Roman ruler who delivered Jesus into the hands of sinners to be crucified, is the question that every person must answer for himself: "What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" (Matthew 27:22). Perhaps you are asking, "What do you mean? What can I do with Jesus? Why should I have anything to do with Him? How can He affect my eternal destiny?"
It all comes down to the question of sin. You may not have thought of it in this way before, but the presence of death in the world is positive proof of the fact of sin. The Bible says, "The wages of [or payment for] sin is death" (Romans 6:23). Physical death (separation of the spirit from the body) and spiritual death (separation from God in the Lake of Fire) are both the result of sin. All of mankind is subject to death because "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). The Bible declares "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27).
Because sin must be judged, your sin has created a debt that you owe to God. If you were to spend more money than you had, you would go into debt. Even after you stopped overspending, your debt would remain until it was repaid. In the same way, even if you could stop sinning, your debt to God will remain until it is paid in full. Do you not see the precariousness of your position—your powerlessness? But listen to God's Word. "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly…. God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:6,8).
This, then, is the reason why the greatest question that you will ever have to answer, or the greatest choice you will ever have to make, is "What shall I do with Jesus which is called Christ?" You are a lost, helpless sinner. You are in desperate need of reconciliation with God, and God in His grace and love has provided it in His Son whom He has sent into the world to live the only sinless life that has ever been lived, and to sacrificially die for you—to pay your penalty for sin. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
The only way to be delivered from the power and guilt of sin, and its eternal penalty, is to believe in Jesus. The power of your choice will either become the power that destroys you, or the power that will give you eternal life and security. God promises, "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved…. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Romans 10:9,13).
Will you now answer this question? "What shall I do with Jesus which is called Christ?" The choice is yours to make; no one else can make it for you.
—Adapted from a tract
The Great Divide
Far up on the summit of the Rocky Mountains is a spot marked by a huge signboard as "The Great Divide," meaning that the spot indicated is the watershed of the North American Continent. All the waters on one side eventually flow into the Atlantic, and all the waters on the other side flow into the Pacific. Here each drop of rain as it descends determines its ultimate destiny! How small the beginning; how enormous the "divide" at the finish! Every individual stands, at some period in their life's history, at the commencement of the great and eternal divide. "Choose you this day whom ye will serve" (Joshua 24:15). "Choose life" (Deuteronomy 30:19).
—From Tales Worth Telling