{"id":943,"date":"2014-12-04T07:30:23","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T07:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/?p=943"},"modified":"2014-12-04T07:31:06","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T07:31:06","slug":"one-mans-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/?p=943","title":{"rendered":"One Man’s Choice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/h1>\n
\n

The Lord said, “My Spirit will not always strive with man” (Genesis 6:3a. The following story illustrates this very clearly…..<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cHi Ozzie\u201d, Bob sang out as he drove up to the house, \u201cAre you coming out with me tonight to the church service?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAw, I can\u2019t make it tonight\u201d, Ozzie said, \u201cWe\u2019ve got a visitor coming for tea, so that cramps my style a bit. Maybe next Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOK, That\u2019s a pity\u201d, Bob said as he swung the car around.<\/p>\n

He went down the road in a thoughtful mood. He had been taking his cousin Ozzie to the church services for nearly twelve months, and he had noticed a big difference in him in that time. His language had cleaned up, and he seemed to be more cheerful and not so complaining.<\/p>\n

Bob hoped Ozzie had been really listening to the different preachers as they spoke each Sunday night, and not just been enjoying the singing and company of the other people there. After all, that was only part of it all. He thought of those verses in the New Testament where Jesus frequently said, \u201cHe who has ears to hear, let him hear\u201d.<\/p>\n

He knew it was one thing to hear what is being said, but quite another to let the words sink into one\u2019s mind and then down to the heart and then put them into practice .<\/p>\n

Bob knew what it had been like for himself\u2026.once he was faced with the facts, there was no turning back and now he couldn\u2019t have been happier. Now he really wanted his cousin Ozzie to know the same peace of mind and heart that he had found.<\/p>\n

But from that time on, Ozzie seemed to be making more and more excuses as to why he couldn\u2019t make it on Sunday nights. The day came when he told Bob that he wouldn\u2019t be going any more\u2026.it just wasn\u2019t convenient, he said.<\/p>\n

Bob was disappointed, but he knew that people have a free choice. He had made his mind up himself to continue going to the church services and as he did, his understanding grew. He wasn\u2019t going to let Ozzie\u2019s attitude change his mind.<\/p>\n

Over the intervening years, they met occasionally and still did certain jobs together (both were farming), but the old camaraderie was missing. More years went by, nearly twenty in fact.<\/p>\n

Bob was visiting his father one day. \u201cYou know, I had a visit from Ozzie the other day\u201d, his father said. \u201cHe said a very strange thing. He told me that he\u2019d had a very vivid dream one night recently\u2026. He dreamed he saw a big blind coming down from the sky and he knew that it was between him and God. And then he said, \u2018You know Unc, I couldn\u2019t come to God now, even if I wanted to!\u2019 I really didn\u2019t know what to say to him\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bob knew the verse in the Bible where God says He won\u2019t strive with people for ever, that there comes a day when He will take people at their word, and leave them alone. He was very sad to hear that, and yet he himself had been unable to pray for Ozzie for some time, and felt that this was indeed a message from the Lord concerning him.<\/p>\n

We do well to take heed to the consequences of Ozzie\u2019s choice and realise what a sad plight he was in. His attitude was still the same\u00a0when he eventually died\u2026.he couldn\u2019t call on God\u00a0even if he wanted to!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 The Lord said, “My Spirit will not always strive with man” (Genesis 6:3a. The following story illustrates this very clearly….. \u201cHi Ozzie\u201d, Bob sang out as he drove up to the house, \u201cAre you coming out with me tonight to the church service?\u201d \u201cAw, I can\u2019t make it tonight\u201d, Ozzie said, \u201cWe\u2019ve got a … Continue reading One Man’s Choice<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adult-testimonies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p69z0J-fd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":945,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions\/945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblestudies4you.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}