Creating one's own character

2 John 6
 
“To love is to live as God has ordained. As you’ve heard from the beginning, let love control your life.”
 
         We have said it before, but once again it calls for our attention – We are to carry out the will of God in our lives. We are to do what he has commanded. That sounds a bit severe, but the truth is that God’s laws are warnings against acts and attitudes that, should we follow them, would lead to solitude and misery. How infinitely kind of God to say, “Don’t put your finger on that “hot stove.” The hot stove is anything and everything that, should we touch it, would burn us sometimes fatally. God is our sovereign guardian keeping watch lest we damage ourselves with sin.
         In one sense life is 70 plus years of decision-making. Many of the decisions have no moral or ethical element but more than you would think do. Someone crosses the street outside a pedestrian zone bringing you to a screeching stop and you let him know in no uncertain terms what he has put you through. You made two decisions simultaneously: slam on the brakes and let the other know your opinion of him (and the last was ethical.) No big deal, you say. Well, let’s see. You are 65 now and you started making ethical decisions when you were . . let’s say 2 and that means that you have made about 12,345,678 (obviously a rough number) moral decisions in which you knew on the basis of custom and conscience were either right or wrong. What has happened is that you yourself have created your own character because who you really are (that part of you that goes one place or the other at death) was being developed all along the way. In a very real sense we determine by our life choices who we want to be.
         This is where God enters the picture. God created us in his image so we could have fellowship with him. To do his he gave us freedom, and with that comes the prospect of failure. This calls for some coaching from the sidelines. Here is what you should do in this situation (commandment #1):  here is what you should not do (commandment #2). And so it goes. God tells us where the landmines of life are laid. There are places where you shouldn’t put your feet and other places where you can tramp around all you want. It is all defined in scripture and what isn’t there are either those non-secular items that don’t amount to anything of lasting value or decisions that call for nothing but common sense.
         In summary, we create who we are by the decisions we make and God’s involvement has to do with helping us do the right things.