From the Desk of a Geek

From the Desk of a Geek:

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200.00

Choose you this day whom you will serve…  Joshua 24:15

When I was growing up we always played board games and I still enjoy playing them with my kids. My favorites are games like Boggle and Scrabble because I love words. Guess you can tell how much I like words by how much I write.

I think the game all my family likes to play the most is Monopoly.  We don’t do that one as much because the game usually lasts so long we end up taking breaks and then coming back to it. Sometimes we go back to it the next day.

Our board games are all stacked up in the corner of our living room and I was looking at that stack recently and thinking of all the strange names they all have.

Those words they use for game names have stuck around in my head for several days now and after thinking about them for a while, I decided we could learn a little about choices we make in our lives from some of them.

*Monopoly

What’s monopolizing your time?  What is monopolizing your thoughts?  What is monopolizing your life?

Do you take chances with your witness?Are you showing up in places or doing things that you know could tempt you? That can cause consequences.

*Sorry

Do you confess your sins so you keep your fellowship with the Lord?  Do you follow the biblical guidance on forgiving others

*Twister

Are you twisted up with sin?  Sin has a way of entangling you.  You can’t serve two masters.

*Trouble

Are you a troublemaker? Do your actions cause others to stumble 

*Chutes and Ladders

I noticed this game wasn’t in our stack of games in our living room, but as I was thinking about these game names, that one came to mind. 

My kids have outgrown it now but when they were little, they loved it.

Are you climbing higher in your Christian life or are you sliding down? Are you growing and moving forward

Like our Christian lives, here we are moving ahead and climbing higher, but when we don’t stay in the Word or start skipping church, and swish, we slide down that chute and have to pick ourselves back up and push forward again.

We play games as entertainment, to spend time with our kids, or just for the plain enjoyment of the game.  We think of games as lighthearted things, but everyday living isn’t quite so lighthearted.  We move space to space and hit high points and low points on the way.

The thing is that we don’t move around that great gameboard of life by taking some dice in our hands, rolling, and seeing what numbers come up before we move. Our spaces and directions we move in are all by our own choices.

Only we have the power to decide which way we are going to go, how many steps we are taking, and how long we will stay at a point.

We don’t go along and then have to stop and pick up a card that says, “Today you will spend time with the Lord in prayer” or “Today you will sin”.

It doesn’t work that way. We choose what we end up doing.  We have control of the board. Sure, circumstances and things come up in our lives but only we choose how we deal with them. Only we choose how we are going to live from day to day.

In Joshua chapter 24, it is talking about where Joshua brought all the tribes of Israel together and reminded them Who God was.  The people had gone off to serve other gods and Joshua gave them a powerful demand that day, “Choose you this day whom ye will serve”.

It’s what we’ve got to think about ourselves every day.  Are we going to serve the Lord today as we take on life step by step?

Lonnie