Every decision we make will either empower us, or dis-empower us. There is no such thing as a benign decision. Either we re-enforce positive healthy habits with our decisions, or negative, unhealthy patterns. We may give our power away inappropriately or hoard it in selfish ways. We may give someone too much influence over our lives and how we feel and the way we act, or we may not give a rip about anyone but our own lives. We may give to others to the point of losing ourselves....to the point of exhaustion that goes beyond legitimate sacrificial love. Or...we may have a balance in our lives of making decisions that feed others but also feed ourselves; that respond to our own barometer of where we are and what we need in order to maintain our ways with the Lord.
"I set before you," the Lord said in Deuteronomy, "both blessing and curse....Choose blessing that you may live." This scriptures speaks to the power of decisions and their capacity for life and death in our own souls. We choose whom - or what - we serve, and that makes all the difference in whether we live empowered, or impoverished, lives. It is the power God gives us through the decisions we make. It is also the right of son-ship. "To as many as believe, to Him gave He the power (the "legal right" as well as power) to become sons of God." John 1:12. In Joshua, God gave the same type of right to the children of Israel to go in and possess the land He had given them to possess. About a year and a half after they had crossed into the Promised Land, the Lord asked Joshua why there were seven tribes that had not yet possessed the land He had given them to possess. Their decisions not to claim what God had given them to claim was an act of disobedience. In giving us the legal right to go in and possess the land of our soul as His children, God holds us to the same standard. The degree to which we fail to possess our spiritual terrain as His sons is the degree to which we live a dis-empowered life; it is also the degree to which we live in disobedience to His plan for us.
"In your patience, possess ye your souls." Luke 21:19. The Spirit of God longs to take over our souls with the life of Christ in us. To do that, we must yield our woundedness to Him for its healing. We must yield our ways to Him for correction. We must yield our minds to Him for transformation. We must yield our lives to Him - over and over - for its possession.
Every decision we make will either empower or dis-empower us. God has given us power to use. It is up to us how - or if - we use it.