I Choose Jesus

I've shared with you before about one of the hardest choices a parent face: letting our children go and allowing them to decide how they want to live.

Our youngest daughter was over twenty-one and almost done with her nursing course. During a family cruise, which became a spiritual retreat for us, we talked about our relationship with Jesus. One morning, I strongly felt that I needed to tell my daughters that, as adults, they would make choices I might not understand or agree with, and that I could not make those decisions for them.

We prayed together, and I remember feeling afraid. As parents, we can no longer decide for our daughters how they should live.

Letting go did not mean giving up on them or stopping our prayers. Instead, it meant praying even more, asking God to help them make the right choices and fulfill His purpose. Looking back, I realized that letting them go was an act of trust. We were putting them in God’s hands and allowing them to seek His will for themselves, not just follow what we wanted.

God’s plan for us includes the freedom to make our own choices. The Bible encourages us to decide whom we will serve: "Choose this day for yourselves whom you will serve" (Joshua 24:15). Love cannot be forced. God wants us to respond to His love freely.

What an amazing invitation this is! Romans 5:8 says, "God showed his love for us because, although we were still sinners, Christ died for us." He chose to love us before we ever chose Him.

Jesus invites each of us to make the choice to follow Him. Being a disciple is not just a one-time decision, but a daily commitment to trust Jesus and give our lives to His will.

Baptism is the outward sign of that decision. It is a public way of saying we have chosen Jesus as our Savior. Through baptism, we identify with Christ, dying to our old life and rising to live a new one (Romans 6:3–4).

The most important decision we can ever make is to choose Jesus.

-Pastor Lim