For nothing will be impossible with God.    Luke 1:37 HCSB

“I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without Me…”     John 15:5 HCSB

We face many choices in life. Many of those choices have to do with whether we want to go with something or without something. Some of them are simple choices like do you want your coffee with or without sugar? We make a lot of those kinds of choices in our day to day lives. Some seem like no brainers, right?

But the biggest choice we’ll ever make is one that has an eternal impact on our lives. That choice is whether we will live our lives with or without Jesus. For many of us, that too, seems like a no brainer. But, I will admit that for many years I fooled myself into thinking I was living a life with Jesus. Looking back on those times now, I realize that I was living without Him being first in my life. Jesus was there, I had just shoved Him to the back burner so to speak. I didn’t let Him or His rules get in the way of me having a good time. I didn’t let His commandments change the way I thought or spoke. I didn’t let His commandments govern how I treated other people. I was in the most dangerous situation possible. I was living without Him but thinking I was living with Him in my life. Simply put, I was faking Christianity. The saddest thing about this is that I didn’t even realize it. I thought that my little obligatory random church attendance and my tithe was sufficient. I didn’t realize that Jesus wanted and expected so much more of me. I didn’t realize if I was living with Him in my life I would eagerly try to do all He expected of me. I would put Him first in my life.

Our first scripture passage is where the angel is speaking to Mary and explaining how she is going to become pregnant even though she is a virgin. He is telling her that she will give birth to the Messiah. Naturally, she is wondering how this will happen. The angel tells her that nothing is impossible for God. He reminds her that her cousin Elizabeth had a baby even in her old age. You may also remember that God gave Abraham and Sarah a son in their old age. This is the same God that allowed a young shepherd boy to destroy a giant. This is the same God that allowed Daniel to spend the night in the lion’s den unharmed. This is the same God that allowed Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to walk through fire without even the smell of soot on their clothes. So you see, God does many things that we would consider to be impossible.

You may read those stories and think how great it is that God worked all those miracles back in the day, but I hope you realize that He does the same today. When the doctors tell a cancer patient that they have two weeks to live and 6 weeks later they can’t detect any cancer in their body, that’s God. When your marriage is falling apart and you give it to God and He puts it all back together, He’s worked a miracle.

Many of us don’t understand that each and every second we have on this planet is a gift from God. Without God we wouldn’t take our next breath. In our second Scripture passage, Jesus is using the analogy of the vine and branches. We all know that the branches sustain life from the vine. If the vine is cut away, the branches die. In the same way, we sustain life from God. Without God, we can do nothing, not even live.

The biggest question or decision we will ever face is to choose whether we will live our life with or without God? If we choose to live our life with God, we will experience a change in our attitude and behaviors. We will put Jesus first and treat others better than we have in the past. You may say that’s not possible, but we know that with God it is.

Have you decided? If not what are you waiting for? By not choosing, you are choosing to live without Him in your life. This decision is too important to delay. I pray that you choose a life with God today. You will never regret that decision, my friend.

Have a great day.