Choose Your Hard
📖Daily Reading
Deuteronomy 33-34
🎥 Video
Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.
Click on the image below to watch the day's video reflection:
📝 Reflection
Deuteronomy 34:10
There has never been another prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.
You might be wondering why the scripture above reminded me of a quote that has been very popular lately; “choose your hard”. This quote hit me like a lighting bolt ⚡️a few years ago. Life is hard.period. We can’t avoid hard things, some things are literally our choice other things are not, but what is always a choice is our perspective, thoughts and how we respond. All the choices we make, conscious or unconscious are meant to serve us. Some of us get some ‘mal’ware installed in our brains with maladaptive coping strategies. Over-eating, over-tv watching, over-scrolling, over-drinking, over-working etc…. When we wake up and realize that it isn’t working for us anymore, and then we begin to consider the work it will take to change we can find ourselves thinking it is too hard, too big, too much…
Back to Moses, as I was reading the end of Deuteronomy I found myself thinking how ‘unfair’ it was for Moses not be able to go into the promised land. This is a very human way to look at it. So unfair, Moses dedicated his life to serving God and serving and leading God’s people. He earned and deserved to go to the Promised land. Then the reader is reminded, I think very intentionally, that Moses was in a unique and very privileged, unearned and underserved position - he knew God face to face!! God was not going with another prophet face to face in the promised land. Joshua who is appointed to lead the people into the promised land receives the spirit of wisdom from Moses laying his hands on him, but he does not know God face to face.
I can’t help but read between the lines. If God gives us free will then he also gave Moses free will. He probably did have the choice to go into the promised land, but he would have to give up his special relationship that he had with God. He chose God. Moses did get to see the promised land from the top of the mountain, he went up with God and God allowed him to see it with his eyes before dying and being buried by the Lord himself. Heck of a way to go out! Legendary! Moses knew better than anyone that there was no avoiding hard in the life of a human on earth. Even choosing to walk with God and live his mission and purpose in God’s will was hard, but he knew living without God and without His perspective, and presence was even harder.
Back to you and ‘choosing your hard’. You cannot avoid hard. If you are living with hangovers and consequences of habits like the ones listed above, or even your perspective about circumstances maybe you haven’t chosen, you always have a hard choice to make. You can choose to do the hard work of changing, or suffering consequences. You can choose to work on changing your thoughts about a circumstance you find yourself in that may not be your choice or you can choose to suffer with a victim mentality. Did you know even negative thinking is a habit that can be changed? There is always a choice and none are easy, some just seem easy at the time… but often reap huge consequences and make things so much worse later on. “..the sweeter the first fruit of a habit, the more bitter are its later fruits.”-Frédéric Bastiat
Moses chose wisely by choosing to live a life with God in His specific mission and purpose for his life and it was hard, but he knew it was the better hard choice of living without God even in a place that from our human perspective is as tempting as the promised land. I imagine it would have been hell on earth if it meant going without God and His personal and unique face to face relationship with him. On the surface in my initial reading of Moses story I was reading it wrong - I was seeing it from my human perspective thinking that Moses was getting something bitter by not getting to go into the promised land, not fair. He chose the ultimate fully ripe and developed balanced fruit of a life lived with God and in God’s plan and his assignment, which required patience, discernment and wisdom. Moses knew he would experience hell on earth by being enticed by the ‘sweet fruit’ of the promised land because for him personally that meant choosing to go out of God’s presence.
✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt
God loved Moses and He loves you and He loves me. He wants the best for me and for you but that involves hard choices and that is different for each of us. What are you thinking is hard in your life right now and what do you think you are avoiding that might seem ‘too hard’? Thinking about the bigger picture, if you were to do the ‘too hard’ thing how might your life be better overall and maybe less hard overall? Are you trading momentary ‘sweet fruit’ but inviting ‘bitterness’ later?
📖Tomorrows Reading
Joshua 1-7
Coaching Opportunity
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