Reminders: Who Are You?
by Ardith Hoff
A thought-provoking plaque in a gift shop reads: “Learning changes your mind. Exercise changes your body. Who you choose to love changes who you are.” Think about that!
We didn’t have a choice about who brought us into this world, but at some point in our lives, we do have a choice about who we hang out with and who we choose to allow to influence our lives. Parents worry when they see their children gravitate toward people with a reputation for being, “up to no good”, and try to point them toward more wholesome friendships.
We take our children to church and encourage them to love God and to find friends who will keep them on the right path. We encourage them to date people who will help them live a good life, but eventually, it is beyond a parent’s ability to choose their children’s friends and whom they choose to love. If we have done our job in bringing our children up to love God and follow Jesus’ example, we have given them the basis for choosing good influences. The ability to resist harmful influences has to be learned, sometimes the hard way. Ultimately, everyone has to make his or her own choices.
When Joshua of the Bible said, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord,” Joshua 24:15. He was speaking for the household he had control over. What we have to realize is that, at some point, children leave the household, and have to choose for themselves whom they will serve. Those of us who had opportunities to make our own choices – good and bad, and have lived with the consequences of our poor decisions, learned some valuable lessons.
“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” 2 Corinthians 6:11. “The commandments…are summed up in the one command, ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ If you love others, you will never do them wrong, to love, then, is to obey the whole law.” Romans 13:9-10. Choose who you will love, and decide who you will be. If we choose to love the Lord, He will put the right people in our lives.