Life's Choices - Phil Kauffman

Good morning, m glad to be here. Good to see

you all again, a little bit like coming home. Greet

you in Jesus name. This morning.

I have some thoughts this morning that that are my

are my uh my journey, maybe my battles. I'd like

to talk about them this this morning. We hit on

we hit on these things today this morning, and and

and all the discussion that has happened already, and so

it was kind of intrigued to hear this morning. I'd

like to talk about life's choices. And it's a simple,

a simple discussion in a sense. We hear a lot

about it, we know a lot of it. And and

for some of us it's easy, it seems like, to

make a choice. For some of us, it's not easy.

I overthink most of my choices, which makes it, which

makes it a lot of work, seems seems like sometimes.

And and maybe I'm a little hard on myself because

I don't want something to turn out wrong. I want

everything I do, every decision I make, to come out right.

And so while I'm while I'm in the middle of

deciding which way to go, let's figure.

This out right so I don't have to regret.

And I have to go back, and I don't have

to lose money, and I don't know all the things

that happen when.

You make their own choice.

So so so then there are ways that we that

we and we'll talk about them a little bit, but

there are ways that we go through life and how

we make choices that affect the long term of our life.

If you'll turn in.

Your bibles to to Genesis chapter thirteen, it's a story

of choices, which most of the stories are a lot

of the stories in the Bible are that talk about

the choices of people. Genesis chapter thirteen. This is the

story of Abraham and la Abram, Abram and Lot. As

we read down through here, I'd like you just to.

Put this in your mind. I think about it a

little bit.

Don't fall asleep as I read and and and think

about the interactions that happened in this story.

And the background from the interaction.

So so, when one person said one thing and another

person said another thing, they're making decisions and they're they're

saying what they're saying because of things that happened before.

And I think that's really crucial for us to think about.

There's it's so easy for us to make a choice

for someone else. But when we went to make our choice,

there's so many influences behind us.

Or in our past or in our.

In our family, or or in our culture or in

our church that make us turn one way or another.

Maybe maybe have more more influence over us.

Than the logical decision that we need to make.

So just think about this as we read through Genesis

chapter thirteen. And Abram went up out of Egypt, he

and his wife and all that he had a lot

with him, into the south. And Abram was very rich

in cattle and silver and in gold, and went on

his journeys from the south, even to Bethel, into the

place with a tent where his tent had been at

the beginning between Bethel and hai unto the place of

the altar, which he had made there at the first

And there Abram called in the name of the Lord.

And lot also which went with Abram, had flocks and

herds and tents, and the land was not able to

bear them that they might dwell together, for their substance

was so great, so they could not dwell together. And

there was strife between the herd men of Abram's cattle

and the herdman of Lot's cattle, and the Canaanite and

the Parasites dwelt then in the land. And Abram said,

until Lot, let there be no strife. I pray THEE

between me and THEE, and between my herd men and

thy herd men, For we be brethren. Is not the

whole land before THEE separate thyself. I pray THEE from me.

If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will

go to the right. Or if thou depart to the

right hand, then I.

Will go to the left.

And Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the

plane of Jordan, and it was well watered everywhere. Before

the Lord destroyed Sodom and de Moor, even as the

garden of the Lord liked the land of Egypt. As

thou comest into Zoar, then Lot chose him all the

plane of Jordan. And Lot journeyed east, and they separated themselves,

the one from the other. Abram dwelled in the land

of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain,

and pitched his tent towards Sodom. But the men of

Sodom were wicked and sinners. Before the Lord exceedingly, and

the Lord said it too, Abram, after that lot was

separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look

from the place where thereou art, northward and southward, and

eastward and westward. For all the land which thou'll seest

to THEE will I give it and to thy seed forever.

And I will make thy seed as a dust of

the earth, so that if a man can number the

dust of the earth, then shall thine.

Seed also be numbered.

Arise, walk through the land, in the length of it,

to the breadth of it, for I will give it

unto thee. Then Abram removed his tent, came and dwelled

in the land of Mamory, which is in Hebron, and

built there an altar into the Lord. That's the story.

Now just a side note. And south of Yellowston Park

about forty miles as the crowd as the Crow flies

about eight thousand feet up in the mountains of Wyoming

and a Tee Town Wilderness is a creek that is

called Two Ocean Creek. GE's situated right on the Continental Divide.

From its source, it flows about two miles to the

to a place where there's several paths have released resistance.

It comes down through a meadow and it just kind

of flows, And if you're up in the mountains sometimes

you'll see places like that. It feels like the creek

is about one hundred yards wide, and it just kind of.

Flows down through the meadow.

But as it comes together, then it comes to a juncture,

which is called coincidentally parting of the waters. And this

creek splits right there. It becomes two creeks, and the

one is called Atlantic Creek and the other is called

Pacific Creek.

And these.

These two creeks end up five thousand miles apart. The tree,

the tree that sets right there at the fort. When

it rains or when the dude comes off, and the

droplets come down off those leaves, some of them go

in one creek and some of them go in another,

and there that tree is completely separated. The droplets that

come off end up in different places. And I thought

of this as as our choices in life. It's life

is full of tiny droplets or tiny choices. They can

seem significant, insignificant, They can seem small, minute, but the

outcomes of the choices are usually pretty significant, fairly large.

These choices the choices we make.

And there are a lot of ways or the thought

processes and making choices, but several different ways we make choices.

And one would be more proactive, more positive choices, kind

of like I'm going to Albany type of choice. But

some of them are made reactively. I'll go to any town,

but I'm not going to Eugene. And then some choices

are made by default. We just don't make a choice,

which incidentally becomes a choice. And as you dissect those things,

and I would venture to guess that all of us

here have made all of those types of choices. But

why do those choices, why do they have to be

so grueling? Are so intense? And I know some of them, aren't.

You get up in the morning and go back to

work and or you know, pull on some clothes, or

you eat some breakfast and you can eat egg or oatmeal,

or you know, those things are in a sense incidental,

not not huge things. But there are so many choices

that are seem incidental but are bigger and are more significant.

And this story, in this story, well maybe back up again.

I was thinking about I was thinking about this when

we were having Sunday school.

How that the choices some of those.

Men made in a sense, some of them were some

of the choices they made were proactive, but then some

of them were little reactive. You know, Martin Luther did this.

You know, the reactive choices aren't always aren't always necessarily wrong.

But but it's really hard to look forward when you're

looking backward.

So think about that. But in this story here, it's

a progression.

And if you look back in the chapter before, there

was some choices made that that Abram had made that

was really some bad choices, and he got in trouble

over it. In fact, he got he got deported. Essentially,

he told a lie. I told the king that you know,

that's my sister. And he the king took her and

and found out that it was his wife actually, and

and he kind of got upset and he hauled Abram

him in and said, you know, why do you lie

to me like that, that's your wife, and kind of

made a big deal about it, and said, you get

out of the country.

You you get out.

And I don't know as Abram come into the next

country like this, if if that was in the back

of his mind, like I need to do the right thing.

I need to do the right thing. I need to

make the right decision. I can't be reactive. I can't

be I have to do what's right. I don't know

if those those things were in the background. But another

thing I noticed is in the journey that Abram did

when he was called to leave his country and moved

to the next to where God has taking him. In

all the decisions that were made along the way, it

would appear like Lot didn't make many of them.

Abram made the decisions.

I don't know if that's true, but that, but lots

name didn't come up necessarily a Lot when they were

deciding what they're to do next. Obviously something happened in

the in the process, because a Lot created his own

his own business, his own farm, and his own.

Empire. So he obviously made some decisions.

But along the way it seemed like all the spiritual

decisions were made by Abram more than by law. So

the progression of the story as we as we think

through this a little bit, they both had increased in

wealth verse two, Abram was rich verse five. A Lot also,

which which went with Abram, had flocks and herds, and

so both of them were growing their their stuff.

They had lots of things that this wealth.

Obviously led to some increased strife because there wasn't enough

land for all their cattle.

There wasn't enough room for these farmers.

So the increased wealth led to strife, which led to

increased responsibilities for choices.

When I was.

Studying through this, I was thinking about my choices and

my struggle with choices.

And as I read through this, I realized it's talking

a lot about wealth.

That wasn't my subject, and so I wasn't gonna tread

lightly on that. But wealth is here, so you can

think about it. But wealth, obviously, like a lot of

other things, creates its own disadvantages. The crews out there

were fighting over over water, We're fighting over grass, We're

fighting over availability to good land. The decisions that Lot

and Abram needed to make were decisions that would affect

not only their own pocketbook, but it would affect their servants,

their crews, their people. You would affect their families. You

would accrect cur it would affect the uh families of

the people that worked with them. Like this was this

was broad. This was this was not incidentally, it was

something that was effective to a lot of people. Much

like our lives, our little decisions actually affect more than

we think. Luke twelve says to whom much is given,

much shall be required. Obviously Abram and Lot were thinking

about that. But all these choices of eternal uh eternal

we've seen in this story had eternal consequences, just like

a lot of the choices that we have have eternal consequences.

Too much is given, much shall be acquired.

Or in other words, when your income increases, so does

your responsibility. Someone said that every doll for every dollar

you're responsible, the more dollars, the more responsibility. How much

responsibility do you want? Like I said, I wasn't gonna

talk about wealth, That's not what I was thinking about.

But how do we make good choices in whatever we're in?

What? How do we do that?

How do we how do we when we get into

that tight spot and have to make a decision?

What guides us, what drives us?

How do we not just look back and make a

decision on the fly by looking back and reacting to

something back There.

A couple of things I thought of just going to

go over a bit in this story.

Here we see the Abraham made choices which valued his relationship.

Over his rights.

Verse eight, It says, please let there be no strife

between you and me, because we are brothers. We all

know how much strife goes on between brothers, and when

you're growing up with your little brother, the fistfights and

the wrestling and the yelling at each.

Other and things that what happened in our home anyway

when I was young.

But as adults, as people that follow a peace loving God,

when there's strife between us, it doesn't really portray Christ.

How can we bear witness of God? Or how can

we show God when we're fighting. Abram, hearing the story,

was the oldest, or the older one of the two.

He was the chief of the klan. He was the

one in charge, and so God had promised all this

to Abraham, not to a lot. He said, Abram, you

get this. I'm bringing you out, so this is yours.

But Abram said, we can fit here.

What are we going to do? He graciously yields his

rights to Lot. How well are we at doing that?

Trusted God to take care of it. What mattered to

Abram more was we are brothers. His relationship was more

important than his rights. Of all the things he could

have done. Why did he give him the best? And

and and like Abram, so much strife could be avoided

in our families, in our churches if we'd put a

premium on our relationships instead of set of rights.

Just let God take care of us.

And I know sometimes you need to confront sin and

stand for truth and all the things we say and

things happen.

From that, But we need to be careful.

It's easy to justify selfishness by calling it righteous.

And ends up being just anger.

Romans has let us follow after the things which make

for peace and the building up of one another. Another

thing Abram did here is he made choices which valued

Godliness over his greed.

And we talked about this a bit.

The wealth, the things that were laying out before these

two men. Abram had demonstrated his walk of faith by

following God all the way from his homeland. He was

choosing by faith. Abram was choosing, He was making decisions

by faith. He was saying, I don't know what all

this ground is going to do for me. I don't

know what all I'm gonna get. I don't know what

all how this is all turned out, But I'm following

an unseen hand.

A lot.

On the other hand, was choosing by sight. It says

he looked out across that well watered plain like the

senses were saying, we're yelling at him, we're inside of him.

Just make the decision. That's what you need to do.

That's the only smart thing to do.

He says.

He lifted up his eyes and chose the land which

looked best to him. I mean, Abram gave him a choice,

right it was h might as well take it. Abram said,

you could have it. Was he just being a nice guy.

M interesting how this works. I've watched this over and over.

Two specific incidents is that that stick out to me?

Mm hm.

One of them was doing some doing some.

Work for a man that was a churchman, men a

night man. This has been years ago, but one thing

the man told us is that whatever happens, I want

to get some.

Benefit out of this.

And we're working across one man to the next man,

trying to work these two together.

We had to connect some lines.

And the man that we're working across from the men

of night man, he said, you know, I got to

get some advantage out of this.

I'm not just going to let him have this easement

and they worked it out. But it was interesting.

Because then a few years later, working for some man

up north here not Christians, they didn't have anything in

him about Christianity. And I remember them two old men

standing there and saying they were arguing, saying, you know,

you can bring your stuff across my land and it's okay,

he said. The other one said, no, I'm going to

pay for what I do across your land.

And they were arguing completely backwards.

And I've never figured quite what all that was about.

But but our rights, our rights that we get a

hold of, we hold on to them dearly.

It's so easy to we don't want to be taken

advantage of. So we know what happened here. Locke took it.

And then in verse fourteen you kind of see Abram

standing there, maybe wondering if he did the right thing.

He looked around, man, how wise was that? That was

probably the dumbest thing he ever did. Let my nephew

have that best land.

It was mine his.

And his. Probably his little wife was sitting there saying,

I don't know, why do you do that? That wasn't

really smart, was it. But you see and on the

chapter Further down on the chapter, it says God came

to him and said, look, look at the dust you're

standing on and all around you. You see this dusty land.

Your descendants will be as much as that dust is

in number you're gonna have.

Yeah, I will pay you for this. I have your back.

Don't worry. I got you.

And the story goes on that he chose by sight,

chose by sight what he could see, he got. He

ended up spiritually and financially bankrupt. He escapes Sodom with

the clothes on his back. Fades out of the story

in the back of a cave. Abram chose by faith,

not by sight. He ended up spiritually and financially blessed.

Lot lived for greed, came up empty. Abram lived for

God and came up full. But as you think about

what happened here, back to the decision they were making,

you can almost see Lot standing there and the mental images.

Flipping through his head.

You know, you can think of easier place to live,

close to town, better parts stores, better shopping, nice place

for my children, better parks, better education.

You know, all the things that are normal just like us.

And we can be a lot like Lot trying to

make decision with a lot of background noise going on,

things going on in our heads distracting us. Sometimes it's

a matter of our will, but sometimes it's just indication

that something's not resolved back there in the background. It's

a little bit like our phones having too many tabs open.

When you open your phone up, you go to make

a call, some uncomfortable conversation you got to make, and

you open up your phone and there's a tab open,

and you start flipswiping off the tabs and you get

distracted by one, and then pretty soon you're looking through

your tabs and you're looking through the phone. Then you

forgot why did I get on the phone? The original

choice to make a call to fix that problem is lost.

Vision, completely uncompleted.

When in life and in life, when they're a hard

choice to make, we tend to get distracted easily. Also,

the tabs are open, there's things going on, or's something

we got a mental image of.

This, and that.

We can't make a decision, a clear decision. But when

we have a clear head and everything resolved in the

background and resolved in the background, I think about the

tabs opening the phone, but I think about things biases,

and I think about something that you're not sure about.

Your not sure if it's resolved. But when it's resolved,

we're able to face things head on and make the call.

Do the decision that's tough, make the uncomfortable step of faith.

Someone said, decision become Decision making becomes easier when your

values are clear. But think about there's a couple of

verses in the Old Testament. I'll read a couple of them.

But this is to Moses and to Joshua. This is

about them. Deuteronomy thirty says, this day, I call the

heavens and earth as a witness against you that I've

set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Now

choose life so that you and your children may live,

and you may love the Lord your God. Listen to

his voice and hold fast to him. This is Moses talking,

trying to get the Israelites get clear headed and make

right choices. And the same thing happened in the time

of Joshua. He says, no. Therefore, fear the Lord and

serve him in sincerity and truth, and put away the

gods which your father served. He's saying, get rid of

those tabs, get rid of those the background noise, make

a clear decision.

Choices.

Isaiah thirty has an interesting verse. You've probably read it,

but I've always been intrigued with it. So I was

looking through it, reading about it. It says Isaiah thirty,

verse twenty one and nine years and dine years. Shall

I hear a word behind these saying this is the

way walkie in it when you turn to the right

hand or when you turn to the left. And I

thought about that verse a lot, like, what's this meaning?

Doesn't matter which way I go? But I think what

the verse is saying is God is saying, is I'm

behind you a little bit, the imagery of a teacher

behind the desk in the student and saying.

No, that's not the answer. You're gonna have to think

through this here.

Coaching guiding promises to guide us, providing clear direction. Whenever

we're not sure which way to go, He's there. We

disregard him, sometimes, we get biased, we get all these

things going in our heads, but he's there waiting for

us to ask for some direction. So positive directions, positive choices,

thinking a little bit about reactive decisions. And I think

all of us probably have made the reactive decisions. But

in two Timothy one seven it says, for God has

not given us the spirit of fear, but of power

and of love and of a son mind. I think

of all the things that are so easily done because

of fear, and we can do that even though the

bear's not chasing us, or or somebody's after us, or

things going wrong. We can make decisions out of fear.

We make decisions sometimes in church because if we do that,

that's what they did and it went bad. If we

do that, that's what they did and went bad, and

we forget to just say, God, what are we going

to do here? Reactive decisions? How do we get out

of that rut? How do we how do we how

do we pull back from those biases and the reactions

and the things that happened, and the things we've seen.

Somebody made a wrong turn somewhere.

How do we pull back from that and say I

need to go forward and allow God to drive the boat.

So many times I believe we have voices, We have

voices that are talking to us. Just last week or so,

a couple of boys in our church are talking about

buying properties, and I am you know, they're talking to me,

what do you think about going to the bank and

we finance it like this?

And what's the value worth?

Is it gonna and all these things And now my experience,

you know, I walked the same path and and and

I WinCE because I made some foolish smooths myself. You know,

you buy a place and then economy drops and wow,

that was a dumb idea, and it you know, we

all had our turn, probably, But now to help those boys,

be encouraging to buy a property, but don't go broke

doing it.

How do you say that? How do you tell them that?

I I told one of them. He was asking me,

He said, do you think it's a good idea? I said, well,

I think it could be. I think it probably is,

But just remember you will make the payments. Just because

I think it's a good idea doesn't mean I'm going

to make your payments. And I think we need to

be responsible when we make our decision. We are going

to take care of this. This is our deal We're

going to have to walk through and with help from others,

and advice is really good because you know somebody's somebody

probably has your back and they'll support you and they'll do.

What they can.

But at the end of the day, we have to

make the payment. We have to follow through, we have

to make the next step, the choice. A little story

here I found. I read it here a long time ago,

and then I ran into it again.

I've really been fascinated. It's about.

Maybe somewhere between a reactive and default choice. But it's

the story of an old carpenter. I'm just going to

read through it. An elderly carpenter was ready to retire.

He told his employer contractor of his plans to leave

the house building business and live a more leisurely life

with his wife, enjoying his extended family. He would miss

the paycheck, but he needed to retire.

He'd get by.

The contractor was sorry to see a good worker go

asked if he could build him just one more house

as a personal favor, and the carpenter said yes. But

in time it was easy to see that his heart

was not in the work.

He was tired.

He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials to

build a house. It was kind of an unfortunate way

to end a dedicated career. When the carpenter finished his work.

The employer came to inspect the house, and he handed

the front door key to the carpenter and said, this

is your house.

This is my gift to you. He was shocked. What

a shame.

If he had only known he was building his own house,

he'd done it all differently. We're building our own house.

How are we doing it? What kind of materials are

we using? How much time will be spending? Our personal

choices that we do. C. S. Lewis said, good and

evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the

little decisions you and I make every day are of

such infinite importance. Good and evil both increase at compound interest.

That's why the little decisions you and I make every

day are of such infinite importance. Okay, a couple things

to do when we have a choice, and we have

to make a choice, when we're faced with choices, prayer.

You think about Jesus six Jesus. Jesus needed some help,

and you know the story as well as I do.

Had these people following in, but he needed to pick

out a few guys that just help him do his job,

his disciples, his students. He wanted he wanted twelve of them.

How was he going to get this done? But it

says he he.

Headed up into the mountain, he prayed.

He spent all night praying so he could find and

select the right help.

He needed God's insight.

He needed to know which is the right thing to do,

who was the right person, how to know how to

find the right person? And the story, you know how

the story goes. He prayed and he found slowly picked

these twelve. And I've always been fascinated with the fact

that he dedicated his next three years to training them, them,

them twelve people, and talking with them and teaching them

and sitting with them, and how many campfires they sat

around and discussed life and future and.

Belief.

But then when he left, when he left, it was

like he was gone, and he just kind of slingshot

at him out into the world.

And those men changed the world, changed the course.

Of history because somebody spent some time and chose them

carefully and helped them and coach them. So prayer, godly

advice is another one.

You know, the story of Ria Boom.

After Solomon's death, he was trying to figure out how

he's going to rule it, and the people came to

him and said, can you can you loosen up a little,

pull those taxes back just a little. It's been kind

of tough these last few years. And so he said, well,

let me think about this. And so he went and

talked to the old men, and the old men, the

old elders of his of his people said you better

listen to him. They got a point. It was, it's

been a little tough. You need to back off. And

then he said, well, I'm gonna go talk to my buddies.

So he went to talk to the people that he

thought like that told him what he wanted to hear.

And we know the story. The decision that he made

there cost him dearly. I mean, he lost about eighty

percent of his people. Good advice, don't go to the

people that you know they'll tell you what you want

to hear. Go to the people that tell you correctly,

and then trust God. Prayer and advice and then trust God.

And we know the story was read this morning and devotion.

It's about Abraham choosing or to obey God and sacrifice

his son. I thought of that, the grueling or the

brutal choice making going on. I don't know he probably

stayed up all night. Really, God, I have to kill

him now. But he moved forward. He trusted God. Trusting God.

His critical faith is critical. Closing up a story about

my uncles that some of you might have heard before.

Great uncles, great uncles. Actually this was back in nineteen

forty two, forty three.

I'm not sure.

These boys were young seventeen and nineteen. World War two

was in the in its throws right then and going

wide open.

And these boys.

Were for for all I I don't know all the reasons.

But they were Christian, grew up Christian boys, baptized in

the Christian.

Midday Night Church.

And but they were angry and they wanted to get

onto this bandwagon. And so these boys are gonna run

away and join.

The American forces.

These uh, their dad was a quiet man, short little guy,

five foot tall, didn't talk much, and he got wind

of this, these boys wanted to run away and join

the army. And he went to them and said, listen,

I know you want to do this. I don't want

to know. I don't want to have to wonder what

happened where you went. So he said, I'll take you

to the train station. And this is This is an

old story, so I don't know if I got all

the facts correctly. But when he got to the train,

when he when he got to the train station, they

got out to get on the train.

And he he.

Said goodbye to them, and then he told him that

I never never planned to see you again on earth

or in heaven, because going off to war in Europe

was usually not a very good outcome. These boys started

to think pretty clearly, and one of them, the youngest one,

changed changed his mind. He came back home with his dad,

and the other one got on the train, went down

to the south somewhere I'm not sure, southern States, and

trained as a a ranger and joined the Rangers. And

he was a fifth Ranger Battalion. He uh, he he was.

I I've been I've been doing some research, but I'm

not sure.

But he was.

I think he was in D Day in June sixth,

nineteen forty four. But then in August twenty ninth, up

in France, he was wounded, and then a couple of

days later he died. And the other one, Harold. By

the way, these boys name was Ezra and Harold.

Harold.

He I'm not sure what all happened between then and later.

But grew up and got married and headed to Guatemala,

and he ended up spending most of his life there.

He helped start emmy emissions.

And I think about the I think about the choices

these men made.

They were young, and how the outcomes were so different,

how one helped save souls and the other one destroyed souls.

And I don't know that this is the old story,

so I don't know all the things that happened, how

they got here, and what happened. And someone said that

Ez there when he was wounded, he had time to

repent and find God.

I don't know all those things, but.

I think about those little choices we make, how they

change the course of history, the course of our history,

and the course of other people's history.

On this there's a.

Song I've found. I don't remember the name of it anymore,

but it was read. It was written by a man

in Europe somewhere. He was eighteen when he wrote the song,

and I think he died within a couple of years

after that. It was back in the seventh hundreds. But

the song I think is called Oh Happy is the

man who hears instructions warning voice, And I've thought about

how that, how that when you're young and making those

decisions and they're so incidental, like we like we started

out with, they're so incidental. Yet yet the changes that

happen for my look, for the person's life that's making it,

but also for everyone around it.

Is a big deal. One more quote.

Saying no is like saving money, saying yes is spending it.

Most of us already are an overdraft. Thank you is

that song?

Mm hm