Choose Life or Choose Death – Episode #632

Podcast: Download (8.4MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Podcast (podcast-mp3): Download (2.9MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Choose Life or Choose Death
Episode #632
1-13-19

With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special guest: Joan Wentzel

In Deuteronomy, God calls on the Israelites to make a choice that day: Choose life or choose death. He didn’t say, “Choose God.” He said, “Choose LIFE.” Why?

John:
We’re coming to you from Suches, Georgia and it’s nice and chilly and yucky and wet outside. We are awaiting the spring to be sending the flowers.

But we have Joan Wentzel today here with us. Martha and I are needing to do a podcast and Martha’s got a burn on, on a subject and we really want to go into it. We’ve been talking about it a little bit earlier and all of a sudden we’re like, “Wow, let’s do a podcast on this.” So tell me, Martha, what’s your burn on?

Martha:
I started with a prayer. I had four people on my heart. Four people who are failing, crashing in their spiritual life and I was so troubled about it. I said, “God, what is the problem?” And He answered me very clearly, “They have never chosen.” And so I assumed that He meant they’d never chosen Him. And I was telling Joan about it today and Joan…  I said, “I, I suddenly think it may not be a choice of Him.” And Joan said…

Joan:
I said, “Well, according to Deuteronomy we have to choose life. It doesn’t say choose God. It just says choose life that you may live.”

Martha:
So it’s far more primal, the choice is far more primal than to choose God. But there has to be some choices made before you choose God, I think.

This is Deuteronomy where Moses is giving that challenge. And first he is, in chapter 28, he has listed the blessings of obedience to His voice. Chapter 29 is the consequences of failing to hear His voice. Then in 30 he’s gone to both sides. “If you obey, you have all these wonderful things. Everything you do will prosper.”

John:
And the stark reality. It’s really a stark reality!

Martha:
It’s stark! Yes, that’s true. So then in chapter 30 He says, “Okay,” before all these people, “This command I’m giving you today is not too difficult for you and not beyond your reach. Now listen, today I’m giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. For I command you this day to love the Lord your God, keep His ways. But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen and you’re drawn to serve and worship other gods, then I warn you that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long good life in the land you’re crossing. Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessing and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you made. Oh that you would choose life so that you and your descendants might live. You can make this choice by loving the Lord.”

So the best thing that you can do as a heritage for your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and the descendants that follow you is to choose life. And I think you’re so right, Joan. The chose is between life or death.

Joan:
And I’ll be very honest and say I have lived as a victim and believed that God was not good to me. My life was hard, too hard. And as the Lord is bringing me out what I realize is as a victim, you really don’t believe in choice. You don’t even want to choose. What you really want is for the situation to change and you want control and power over the controller of the situation, which, of course, ultimately is God.

Martha:
And to want control is Satan.

Joan:
Yes.

Martha:
So the primal issue of our choice is life or death.

Joan:
And I think only when you’re willing to make the choice to live, I’ll say this for me personally, do you want to live. As a victim you truly don’t want to live. Death is very comfortable; it feels normal. But the truth is until you choose life, you won’t live to make other choices.

Martha:
Every choice is predicated on that very one. Is that what you’re saying?

Joan:
Yes, yes!

Martha:
Everything comes from that primal choice.

You reminded me that today, I hadn’t gone to it, John, to read the devotional of the day. (ReadMK.com, The Power of Obedience devotional series, #132 What Delights God?)

“Obedience is consent of the will. I will do Your will, Lord, even if I don’t want to. This satisfies God. Surrender is agreement of the heart. ‘Whatever pleases You, Lord, pleases me.’”

So the issue is choice. It doesn’t matter…  Your will is not what you want to do or would rather do. Your choice is what you will do and what you will choose. You choose life then you can choose all the other choices that relate to life. If you choose not to choose, you’ve chosen death.

I know I’ve told a little bit about this before a number of times. But when I came to the Lord I didn’t have any leadership or any guidance. I didn’t know what books were there. I knew that I didn’t know the Bible very well. I didn’t even know the Spirit. But what God did for me He taught me how to live life, and I didn’t even know He was doing it.

So if you follow the Spirit, He will take you to the issue of choice and He will guide you to make the choice. The scripture says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Very interesting way to put it! You have to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. “For He works in you to will, choose, and then to do His good pleasure.” He is working to get you and I’ve seen this dramatically lately in different people’s lives that God really worked to get their will in the right place, because He will not violate our choice.

John:
That’s what I saw earlier that that’s the reason why He requires you…  You were saying, Joan, earlier that Derek Prince says He will not do it for you. You have…  There’s a, there’s a pattern of thinking that the renewing of your mind that you have to do and that you’re required to do. And I saw clearly that it’s because He won’t violate our will. We have a free will and we have to activate that. We don’t particularly have to activate the action. But we do have to activate the choice. We have to set the rudder to the direction that we’re gonna go. And, and unless we’ve set that rudder by choice…  It, it’s a dichotomy. It’s, it’s another paradox that’s laid side by side. You’re not gonna be doing the performance but you are gonna be doing the choice.

Martha:
Exactly. And that has to be separated so that, they’re two different works.

John:
He says, “Choose this day!” It not a, you know…  I know that in the Old Testament that, you know, they had to DO. There was tons of do’s. But the New Testament is Christ’s life doing, my life choosing.

Martha:
My life is choosing life. So when He, when He led me to walk with Him, He…  I didn’t understand that I was working in the realm of the will. And just… The Holy Spirit would show me what God wanted and I would say, I would pray the choice. That’s very powerful. I didn’t know that I was doing something life-changing. But I would pray the choice. “Lord, You want me to be this. I want, I choose to be that. So give it to me. Work it out in my life.”

And then…  So everything you choose, you really choose before God and take to God and I was actually praying my decisions and declaring my decisions. I didn’t even know that. I was just moving by inspiration.

John:
But don’t you feel like, that it’s truly a natural movement, that you’ll be going through your life, you’ll be driving… Okay, I have it happen on a regular basis. I’ll be driving to the pool to go swim and something will pop and quicken in my mind and I’ll make choices according to that. And I know it’s the Spirit talking. It’s like He’s, He’s giving me the choices to make.

Martha:
Absolutely.

John:
And He… It’s natural though.

Martha:
Yes!

John:
It’s not like some, you know…

Martha:
It’s not a method.

John:
It’s not a method.

Martha:
It’s following the Spirit.

John:
Yes. And it, and it comes to your… He quickens your mind and He quickens your heart and He shows you the path. Like today I was driving back and I said, you know, I saw a choice and I said, “This is my utter choice. This is my… I know that this will never, ever happen again. It’s done. That’s over. It’s finished. This will never happen again.” That’s my choice but it’s also my reality because I’m choosing it right now and I see it. But it wasn’t like I was thinking about that whole, the whole scenario. He brought it there. And it was like bzzzz. And He lit it up and then I could make that choice.

Martha:
It’s a work of the Spirit you’re describing, and the fact of its natural-ness.

John:
It’s relational. And if you’re not in the relationship with the Spirit it’s going to be very difficult to have this whole deal.

Martha:
And it’s primal, Joan. It’s the Garden. There was a choice. Life or death. And according to what you listen to, you determined your life or death. So it’s, it‘s absolutely primal to God’s creation and to God’s ways and to the enormous gift of free will. We don’t, we don’t really get that we have the freedom to choose.

And I wrote a booklet out of, out of all these things. It’s called Decision. And I put in here,

“When I speak about the power of choice I often hear this: ‘I don’t know how to make the choices.’”

But we make choices constantly. Everything we do is preceded by a choice. Every word and every act of life is, comes from a choice.

“The question, ‘HOW do I choose’ is often the indication that I’ve already refused to choose Christ. I don’t WANT to follow Him, so I have to make it hard, confusing, and obscure…”

“So I don’t, I just don’t understand!” But the issue is not how but what. What we want to do we manage to do. But even if you don’t have the desire, you can still choose against yourself.

John:
Well, going with the primal thing, you, Joan was mentioning earlier about the fact that of what, what the real choice is. It’s the original choice. It’s the problem that, that Eve had with that temptation which said…

Joan:
I want control. I want power over my husband. I want power over God and let me be in charge.

John:
I want to be God!

Joan:
I want to be God!

John:
And that was, that was what he said. What was, what was the temptation? He said…

Martha:
You will be as God. Eat from the tree of…

John:
Come on, eat it!

Martha:
…good and evil you will be as God.

John:
Num, num. Eat it! You can be God. You’ll be God. Don’t worry about it. Just eat!

(Laughter)

Choose Life or Choose Death – Episode #632 – Shulamite Podcast

In Deuteronomy, God calls on the Israelites to make a choice that day: Choose life or choose death. He didn’t say, “Choose God.” He said, “Choose LIFE.” Why? What is in this very primal choice of life or death that sets in motion a path of blessing or curse?