Choices & Chains (2)

Good morning! My name is Thomas and I am the Pastor of Allons Baptist Church. I am honored to be here with you this morning, and I want to thank you for coming out.

I felt led to speak to you today on choices. Does anyone have a guess on how many choices the average individual makes in a single day? Some have offered that we make roughly 100 - 150 conscience choices every day. Others have said that if you consider all of the choices that we make subconsciously, that the number would be well into the thousands. If someone made 100 choices a day, that’s 36,500 choices a year.

That is a lot of choices, right? If you think about it, over the course of your lifetime, you will make millions of choices. Some of those choices will be very profound, having major, immediate implications on your life. Other choices will be viewed as trivial because they seem to have little, or no immediate impact at all. With that being said, I want to read Proverbs 3:5-6

Proverbs 3:5–6 NKJV

5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; 6 In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.

I want to try and explain to you that all choices matter… even the little ones. We might even say that the little choices we make have just as much impact on our lives as the big ones do. To do that, I want to use an acronym to help us understand this, and I could use some help. Is there a volunteer, who is willing to help me out? Perfect, thank you!

Now I am going to give you five words. You will write the first word straight across, just like you would write any word. The second word will be written directly underneath that word, and so on. Okay?

Now in full disclosure, this is not something that I came up with. This has been around a long time. Matter of fact, I heard this for the first time when I was your age, and it just stuck with me. And I want to share it with you today.

Choice

Every choice is just that. It is a choice. It is a single moment when you have to make a decision about a single thing that is immediately in front of you or ahead of you. It is a single act. But here is the thing, when you are faced with the same set of circumstances enough times, and you make the same choice within that set of circumstances enough times, those individual choices form a habit.

Habit

A habit is formed when we do the same thing over and over. There are good habits, and there are bad habits. But all habits are the result of making the same choice so many times that we now are used to doing that thing a certain way. It is still a choice, but that choice has already been made so many times before, that we now lean that direction almost every time. A habit is not without flaw. You will do it most of the time, but there are random moments where the you will choose to do something different. But when we continue a habit long enough, it becomes automatic.

Automatic

Once something becomes automatic, it becomes our default. We have made the choice so many times to do this thing the same way, that now it’s no longer a choice. Instead of us choosing it, it’s choosing us. It becomes our automatic response. We just do it, because that’s what we do. We don’t question it anymore. We don’t ponder it anymore. We just do it. Have you ever asked someone why they do something a certain way, and they respond by saying, “I don’t know. It’s just the way I’ve always done it.” It’s automatic. But when something stays your automatic response for long enough, it moves from being your automatic response to being your identity.

Identity

Once something becomes my identity, it is no longer what I do.....it is who I am. It defines me as a person. I am no longer someone who gets angry, I am an angry person. I am no longer someone who tells a lie, I am a liar. See, it is my identity. It becomes who I am. Have you ever heard someone say, “I can’t help it. It’s just who I am.” They have allowed their individual choices of life to follow the same path long enough, to where it is no longer a choice, it is an identifying characteristic of their life. It’s who they are. Now it is important to note that you can be identified by some horrible things and still feel bad about it. At this point in the process, it may be what defines you, but you don’t have to feel good about it. But if you allow this identifying characteristic to continue with you long enough, you will move beyond just being identified by it......it will become natural.

Natural

When something becomes natural, it means that you have allowed this thing to identify you for so long, that you no longer even feel bad about it. Have you ever met someone who can be so ugly to other people, and not even care. Have ever met someone who can be so prideful of themselves, and not even realize it. They have allowed this wrong thing to continue for so long in their life, that they no longer even see it as being wrong. It is now natural to them. They don’t even feel bad about it anymore. It just comes natural. And because it feels natural to them, they assume it should feel natural to everyone around them as well.

Now that we have all five words, I want you to start with the first letter of the first word and draw a box going straight down that boxes in all of the first letters of each word. Now, can you read to me the word inside that box? “Chain”

What you see is that when choices go unchecked for long enough, they can become the chains of your life. They will hold you captive to the very things that are holding you back. It becomes a stronghold in your life. This stronghold is a mental prison that holds your thoughts captive. The worst part is, it is a prison that you built yourself and then checked yourself into by the choices that you made over a long period of time.

You chose anger so much that it became a habit in your life. Then not long after, it wasn’t just a habit, it was your automatic response. You respond out of anger without even thinking about it. Then, after a little while longer, it becomes more than just something you do, but now it defines you. You don’t just respond out of anger, you are anger. It defines who you are. And after you were defined by that anger for so long, it now even feels natural, as if that’s what your supposed to do.

The problem is, though it feels natural to you, everyone around you is hurt by it. They are afraid to talk to you, because they know if they say or do the wrong the thing, you are going to blow a gasket. So instead, they just avoid you. They stay away. So this thing that feels perfectly normal to you is actually something that is pushing everyone else in your life away.

Furthermore, God says that anger is a sin. Even if everyone else gets used to it and says nothing to you about it, God says that its not okay. I wish I had time to tell you some stories of how bad decisions ruined good people’s lives. I’ve seen it far more than I would like to admit. Your choices matter.

But I am thankful this morning, that I serve a chain-breaking God. God loves me enough to not only redeem me from my sin, but also to equip me to overcome these spiritual strongholds that are in my life.

2 Corinthians 10:3–5 NKJV

3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,

If you really want to tear down some strongholds in your life, I want you to know first that it is possible. It can be done. There are people all over the world who have been delivered from different types of spiritual strongholds in their lives.

Secondly, you need to know that if you need strongholds broken down in your life, you need God. It just old us right there in the text that the battles we fight are not physical battles, but spiritual, and the weapons of our warfare are not carnal (fleshly, physical) but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.

When we place our faith in Jesus Christ, we are born again as a new creation in His name. And as a new creation, we have something that we did not have before. The Bible says that we now have the Spirit of God dwelling in us. Isn’t that amazing? The very presence of God Himself takes up residence in our hearts and He wages war against our flesh, our worldly nature.

Galatians 5:16–17 NKJV

16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. 17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.

So as a Christian, you now have this tug of war going on inside of you. The Spirit is trying to pull your thoughts towards God and the flesh is trying to pull your thoughts towards the world, and you have to decide which of those two you are going to follow. “If you walk in the Spirit,” he said, “you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.”

If you will allow Him to, the Holy Spirit will bring “every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ”.

Do you know how you break these chains? The same way you built them… with choices. The Holy Spirit will open your eyes to the fact that you are making the wrong choices. If you choose to be obedient to the Holy Spirit, you will start making different choices.

Just as bad choices turn into bad habits and so on. Good choices turn into good habits which turn into good automatic responses, which turn into good identifying characteristics, which turn into good natural outcomes.

We have all made some bad choices in our lives. But if there is one choice that I would encourage you to make above all else, it would be to choose Christ. That choice will truly change your life forever!!