Chapter 4 - Choices and Decisions

We are standing here, and we are the sum total of all the choices and decisions we have made in our lives. They have all registered, and this, is the composition of our character. We live in our wills.

We forget, when speaking about heaven, that so many of the things which are for us in the ages yet to come, after this life has been lived, and we as a conscious entity,—a spirit released from the body, and moving in the new resurrection body—in a new spiritual realm, most of the things that we have on that other shore—over there in the ages—are DETERMINED HERE.

Now don’t think that we can just live a Christian life as happy as bumble bees, and, when we go to heaven, everything is going to be so wonderful, l am sorry to disillusion some people. It isn’t going to be that way! Right here and now, we are making the decisions; the choices; the surrenders; the outpourings of life. We are doing that HERE, and THAT WILL DETERMINE what we will have over there. That is not built up all of a sudden over there; not at all. We determine all that right here and now.

Life is too short for us to put into manifestation much that we would choose. Even with a good choice, life is too short for it. But I tell you one thing, life is long enough so that when Truth is presented, and there is an occasion for us to make a decision; or a surrender; or die a death; or accept a Truth—right here is where we do it, but the fruitage—the real fruitage—of it, won’t always be seen here. We aren’t here long enough; the real fruitage will be projected in the things yet to come.

Remember when Jesus was talking about the talents? He said the same thing to all three men; (two were faithful and one wasn’t) He said, “Thou hast been faithful over a few things . . . I will now give you a gold house to live in, a pair of wings to fly with, and also an harp!” No, all of those things hadn’t anything to do with what He was talking about. He said, “Thou hast been faithful over a few things.” What was the reward? A gold crown? An harp? No, the reward was the lifting up of a quality of faithfulness, which the two men earned here, and projecting it upon a new plane over there—multiplied!

The reward was not the material things which most hymn writers put in singing books. The reward for those men was the faithfulness which they had acquired HERE, multiplied and projected upon a new level; on a new plane. Jesus Said “Thou hast been faithful over a few things—you will also now be faithful over many things.”

People think that, when we die, God is going to give us all presents; that He is going around with a big clothes basket full of crowns and saying, “Here’s a crown . . . and I won’t give you any, you missed chapel twice. . .?” He doesn’t do any such fantastic things that in the world. CROWNS ARE WON! We EARN THEM—they are not souvenirs. Crowns are symbolic of certain authority and power which we merit and earn while we are here. It is here that we make our decisions, and certain surrenders. We have to die to a lot of things that nearly kill us—they SHOULD kill Us! The trouble is we don’t die. We say, “It nearly killed me.” It is supposed to kill us . . . so we will learn.