My friend and I were relaxing on our camping chairs as I witnessed about how good God has been to us. I had to stop myself from taking over the conversation, because I had so many stories to tell about God’s faithfulness and how He provides for us every month.

Out of the blue he asked why things weren’t going well in some places. Was it because God had withdrawn His blessing, my friend asked. Reading between the lines, I realised he was referring to a Christian organisation of which he was a member, where guidance from above had been growing less and less recently.

I recognised the organisation immediately. I had contacted them before to offer our services to them. Free of charge. We wanted to cooperate, making both ministries stronger to increase our impact for the Kingdom.

They weren’t willing to that, however, and rather wanted to develop their own platform. At a cost of many thousands of rands, which they didn’t have. Maybe their vision got stuck in the past or maybe they were hampered by exclusivity, I don’t know. But what I do know, is that the choices they were making now would be the whole organisation’s downfall.

It is not God who has withdrawn His blessing from the organisation, but rather the decisions the people were making. People make certain decisions, maybe from ignorance or from I don’t know what, and then the result is not so fresh.

It’s the same in our lives. Look back at your own life. Financial decisions that were a bit crooked and cost us a lot. Maybe one day you were no longer prepared to work in such circumstances and resigned and ended up still being without a job today. Maybe you walked out on a relationship or said or did something that you regret so much.

Many of the poor decisions brought us where we are today and it is then that we start asking a lot of questions, and usually these questions end with: “Has God now withdrawn His blessing from us?”

Maybe we should pray for wisdom that we can start with ourselves, because most of the time the place where we find ourselves can be ascribed to our own decisions and actions. This is what verse 14 says: The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us.

Our desires. Our will. Like a magnet sticking to the fridge. Like our hunger that calls to us like a voice from the fridge, and before we know it, the fridge light is shining in our eyes.

Our choices are motivated by our own human desires. Most often they drag and pull and push us in the wrong direction. For sure, God doesn’t motivate it. It is sponsored, supported and driven by our own desires.

Let’s protect ourselves against it. Let’s get to know about this pushing and pulling and driving so that we can brace ourselves against it. Let’s rather take hands with God so that He can protect us against ourselves and our poor choices. God’s blessing surely still covers us.

Scripture
James 1:12-18

Reflection
What choices have you made that have a bad smell?
Do you understand where those choices started?
How can you withstand your own choices?

Prayer
Father, I realise that choices I’ve made and will still make don’t smell that fresh. I know I’m often motivated by my own desires. Help me stand against myself and my own choices. Give me wisdom. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.