I Renewed Once Already And I Am Not Sure Why

You signed again five years ago and you cannot tell anybody why.

Not because it was a bad decision. It may have been a very good one. That is not the problem.

The problem is that there was no decision. There was a date, and paperwork arrived, and there were reasons on both sides, and you were busy, and then there was an afternoon where you signed it because signing it was what happened next.

You remember the pen. You do not remember choosing.

And here you are again, and the same shape is forming. Paperwork will arrive. There will be reasons on both sides. You will be busy.

Here is what actually bothers you about it, and it is not the arrangement.

It is that five years of a life went past on something you drifted into.

Five good years, mostly. You are not complaining about the years. But a man of forty-eight who has just noticed that the last five were entered by default starts to wonder how many other things in his life got in the same way.

That is the real question, and it is bigger than the paperwork, and it can actually be answered.

There is a moment in Joshua where a whole nation is stopped and made to choose, and the way it is done is the thing to see.

Choose you this day

Joshua gathers everybody at the end of his life and does something forceful.

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve. (Joshua 24:15, King James Version)

Choose you this day. He puts a date on it.

He does not say think about it. He does not say let it become clear. He stops a nation on a particular day and requires an act.

You have been given a day to choose on rather than a process to wait out, and the Holy Spirit is the one who works that way. Joshua 24:15 puts the choosing on this day rather than eventually, and He is the one who made you notice the shape forming again.

Now notice what Joshua is actually correcting, because these people were not rebels.

They were drifting. They had a bit of the old gods in the back of the tent and a bit of the LORD out front, and nobody had ever made them say which. It had never come to a moment.

That is not wickedness. That is exactly what happens to anybody when nothing forces an act.

You have been doing what a whole nation did rather than something unusual, and it is written that Joshua had to stop them and make them choose. The Spirit of God is the one who arranges those stops, and Joshua 24 is one of them.

And here is the part that will lift the weight off the five years.

Joshua does not spend one sentence on the drifting. He does not review it, itemize it, or ask anybody how long it has been going on.

He goes straight to this day. The whole correction is forward.

You are not going to be asked to account for the drifting, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does it that way. Scripture puts the whole weight on this day rather than on the last five years, and Joshua 24:15 spends nothing at all on the past.

What choosing actually requires

Let me be practical, because the paperwork is coming and this has to work in an ordinary week.

Choosing does not require certainty. That is the thing people get wrong and it is why they wait.

Joshua does not ask anybody to be sure. He asks them to say which one. A person can say which one with plenty of doubt still in them, and it is still a choice rather than a drift.

You are able to choose without being certain, and it is written choose you this day rather than be sure you this day. The Spirit of God is the one who honors a choice made with doubt in it, and Joshua 24 does not require anybody to have resolved anything first.

And what choosing does require is an act. Something said or done at a particular moment, in the open, that a man can point back to.

Joshua makes them answer out loud. The whole scene is verbal. He says his own line first, as for me and my house, and then he makes them say theirs.

You have a spoken act available rather than a state of mind to reach, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives it. Scripture makes the whole of that scene out loud, and Joshua 24:15 is where the requirement is a saying rather than a feeling.

And nothing here is telling you which way to go. Whether you sign again or you do not is a decision with facts in it that belong to you and to whoever advises you, and nobody writing an article knows those facts.

You are not being pushed in either direction, and the written word puts the choosing in the hands of the people standing there rather than in Joshua's. The Spirit of God is the one who leaves the content of it entirely with you, and Joshua 24 has a whole nation answering for itself.

Say what you want, and say you have chosen it

So here is the thing to do, and it is before the paperwork arrives, and it is out loud.

Get on your own and say what you actually want this time. Plainly. Either version.

Then say: and I have chosen that.

You are making an act rather than reaching a state, and Joshua 24:15 says choose you this day. The Spirit of God is the one present for it, and He is not going to comment on which one you say.

The reason it has to be before the paperwork is that once the forms are on the table the drift takes over, because the forms have their own momentum and a man who has not chosen will do what the forms suggest.

Say it first and the forms become what they are, which is administration for a decision that has already been made.

You have a moment available before the momentum starts, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a man to what he said on his own in a yard. It is written that a day gets set aside for the choosing rather than a process, and Joshua 24:15 is why the saying counts.

Then open in the morning, and handle the paperwork when it comes.