For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light!
— Ephesians 5:8 (NLT)
We don’t always get what we want, but we always get what we choose.
Once we have received Jesus as Savior and Lord, we leave darkness and God’s Light becomes available to us. Here again, walking in His Light is your choice. God will not force you to walk in His Light.
We learn what that Light is by reading scripture and trading the world’s darkness (its thoughts and way of doing things) for God’s way of being – living. This is called renewing your mind. If we don’t read the Word to learn who God is and who we are as a new creation, we will not know how to walk in His Light.
Let’s take fear. All of us have faced fear in some form or another. You feel overwhelmed even panicky, like there is no way out. What do you do when those feelings come?
You want help and relief so you start begging and pleading with God to fix the problem. You know He is able so you cry out in desperation. You want to be free of this fear. Yet you don’t take the time to let the Light direct you. You become angry and disappointed in God because He didn’t take it away or fix it the way you wanted.
You chose anger and disappointment; you got what you chose, not what you wanted.
To respond differently, you have to find out what God says about fear and choose to live by His words instead of your feelings. Jesus tells us many times not to fear and why we should not be afraid.
You must intentionally meditate, imagine or ponder on one or more verses about fear until you believe what He says in your heart. One of the last words of advice Jesus gave to His disciples before leaving earth was, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14:27 .
You are the one to “let not”. As you choose to imagine yourself covered in that peace and walking in it, your feelings begin to change. You will have to do this again and again until peace becomes bigger than fear.
Jesus never makes you receive anything He gives, but He offers. The choice to receive is yours. You choose to put on peace and throw out fear. Then you will have peace.
“What you choose is what you get”
I Choose . . .