Choosing your journey as you walk through life

Through everything we experience in life, we have a choice in how we see the journey we walk through.

We face difficulties and joys, mountains and valleys, these are not choices but inevitabilities, but it is a choice how we view those times. We can look at the hard times and decide to be downtrodden, broken, and dejected, and we can face good times and be haughty, selfish, or unthankful. As I often speak of, circumstance is not what holds value in our walk with Christ, but rather the heart, the spirit that we have in the midst of all things. We can choose humility or pride, we can choose dejectedness or reliance, it is our choice to take a stance from the kingdom viewpoint and see our life from a place of eternity. 

We have a choice to say. It is well with my soul. This statement is not a statement of how I feel but a statement of being. For I can have the worst day ever, face trials, pains, emptiness, and yet I choose to say “It is well with my soul.” Not because I pretend the giant I face is not there, but rather, a recognition that my God is greater. 

We see this in the story of David and Goliath. A young boy faces the Philistine giant Goliath with a sling and stone and emerges victorious. But he is clear that this is not his own doing, but that he walks with the LORD almighty. So I take this stance against financial struggles. Against feelings of depression or anxiety, against loneliness and anger, and I declare over your lives and mine that my God is greater so, therefore, it is well with my soul.

And so easily too we can find ourselves on mountaintops, and suddenly we may put stock in what I have done, what I have built, in my great wisdom and strength, but nay, we certainly cannot take the credit, for it is by His hand, that all good things come. The apostle Paul so beautifully states, “I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.” (‭‭Philippians‬ ‭4‬:‭12‬-‭13‬ ‭NLT‬‬)

It is in this truth that we can make the choice of it being well with our souls. The truth that He will never leave nor forsake you. The truth is that He walks with you in all things, in the greatest and the worst, in the sunshine and in the storm. And so today I ask: Is it well with your soul? Have you made the choice to allow His presence in your life to be the permeating factor in who you are, and how you are? These are the questions we must ask ourselves daily so that we would be transformed into His marvelous image.

Justin Gardner pastors at River of Life Fellowship, 702 Church St., Sandpoint. The church can be reached at 208-255-7111.