The Choice to be Chosen: A Guide to an Ongoing Relationship with God

By Alissa Harris

A step by step discipleship guide to grow a deeper, more meaningful relationship with God. Alissa Harris exemplifies the concept that our relationship with God is one by choice filled with love, respect and learning. She takes her own life events and discusses the Biblical principles with comparative and competing conversations we have with ourselves and God. This demonstrates to the reader applicable solutions to everyday struggles that affect our daily lives and our walk with God.

The book opens by exploring hearing God, both from His written Word and in the other ways He speaks to us. God’s desire for a relationship with each of us is brought out as a key theme in our Christian walk. The book continues expanding the alignment of personal choices to our relationship with God. Alissa brings in her own experiences to support key points often with fully transparent emotionally charged details we can feel in our own lives. Building on each step, Alissa leads us through trusting in challenging circumstances, and our earthly relationships, to the realization we ultimately choose God’s path because His plans are for our good.

Her heartwarming passion and unbridled transparency showcase how every struggle or situation we can find ourselves in, has an answer from God. These answers can draw us closer to God by allowing us to see how God is always longing for a relationship with us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Jan 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781400308576

Alissa Harris

Alissa Harris is from the Deep South and was brought up under the Old Testament law in a Sabbath keeping church. That experience shaped her passionate acceptance and vision of God’s grace in a way that is uniquely faith focused with genuine compassion. She is an alumna of Florida International University and is married to her college sweetheart. She makes her home in Florida and enjoys spending time with her family and friends.

Book preview

Prologue

Did

God just answer with the word author?

That’s how this whole journey started. With a one word answer to my inquisitive prayer to God, my plans changed dramatically and a new path was laid out before me. This was not the answer I was looking for or the one I wanted to hear.

I had recently finished my bachelor’s degree which was a big deal and a huge achievement not only because it required a lot of dedication and determination, but also because I was forty years old. I had finally accomplished this great, big, wonderful goal I had set for myself decades earlier, and I was looking forward to the amazing career I was about to have by reaching it. My future looked bright and it seemed that all the years of struggling to have the time and money to attend classes, the years of moving to four different states while following my husband’s career goals, the years of having babies and raising three boys who need consistent and constant parenting, and the years of changing my college major—more than once—were now over. I had finished. I had my degree. I had something that was my own. I was ready for the job, the career, the position, and the paycheck that would follow.

I prayed and asked God for guidance in my job search. I asked that He make His plan for me clear and allow just the right position to open up for me. I wanted His plan for me to be easy and unmistakable. I didn’t want to have to second guess myself or consider anything other than His will for me.

I always want the easy, straightforward plan from God. I always think that His plans are going to be easy even though they never are. They aren’t complicated by design, but they aren’t easy to follow because I’m not a great follower. I like to lead, to think, to plan, and to do things in a way that makes sense to me. God’s plans rarely make sense to me, but I know they are the best because Jeremiah 29:11 NLT states, ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’I prayed and asked God to tell me what He had for me, what job He had specially designed for me. I asked Him to give me a word. I wanted to know what amazing title He had chosen for me. God answered with the word author and then He gave me a vision where I was speaking to hundreds of thousands of people. I was overcome with amazement and thought, Wow, an author! I was so humbled and grateful that God would not only consider such a position, but that He would proclaim it.

And then, all of that joy faded as I thought about the life I have envisioned for myself. The fancy job title, the big salary, the savings, the vacations, the nice things I wanted, and how none of those things would happen if I followed God’s plan.

Sure, I should have been thrilled, happy, and ecstatic that God would not only answer me, but give me a glimpse of my future through a vision. And, of course I should have felt secure and optimistic because that future was designed by God, so I knew I couldn’t fail, but I also knew that success in God’s plan doesn’t always look like success in our plans. He will not leave us or set us up for disappointment, but our own expectations can create desires and timelines that can leave us feeling empty or misguided. I knew I would have to listen and wait and endure, which were all things I really didn’t want to do. I wanted to be in charge.

Every career path I could see myself in, it involved me being in charge, making decisions, having a voice, feeling proud, and knowing that I was independent. That word, independent, sounds so good, but it is often a lie because almost everyone depends or depended on someone to get where they are. Parents, teachers, professors, coaches, pastors, friends, counselors, family, bosses, managers, coworkers, just to name a few, are often the support system that we all have to help us reach our goals. There are countless more in the form of other people who do a job that helps you like road construction crews, bus drivers, waiters, property managers, etc. In a society, no one is truly ever independent. One would need to leave society and live solely on their own with no contact from others, but that person would still depend on the land and the animals to provide food and materials, so truly, there is no truth in the notion of independence.

Even though I knew it is true that independence didn’t really exist, that was a lie I wanted to tell myself—a lie I wanted to believe. I know it is silly, but for the past twenty-one years of my life, I have been told that I am very much dependent upon my husband. My husband doesn’t tell me this, but other people do. I believe it is a way for them to make me appear lesser in their own eyes because, somehow, if I am smaller, that will make them bigger. I don’t know their logic, I just know what they do. I wanted to earn everything and be above or be too big for anyone to ever say any degrading word to me. Above reproach or ridicule or judgment sounded great and for the first time in my life, it sounded achievable. Clearly, this is an impossible feat because even Jesus Christ didn’t earn that distinction amongst people and He was Jesus Christ.

So now, having to swallow the newly acquired pride that I was so eager to embrace in my new career, I found myself trying to write this book. I felt inadequate and unsure I would actually be able to do it. It is always ironic to me that in one moment, I see myself as in charge and on top of everything, and then in the next as small, feeble, not knowing if I can do anything well at all. It illustrates to me that pride is absolutely a lie. That none of the emotions of how pride makes me feel are lasting or good and that pride makes my feelings of inadequacy somehow come true. Pride is like a trick; it deceives us into believing we are great, but then leaves us feeling worse than when we started. We would be better off if we never let pride in to whisper its lies and puff us up because we always get our inflated self-images popped like a balloon and land on the floor as a useless piece of latex bound for the garbage can. And when you really think about it, do any of us actually think so little of ourselves that we need to be puffed up to feel better? No. It is the process of being puffed up that makes us feel bad and worthless because it distorts who we are and makes us look like someone we aren’t and that is where the bad feelings start.

Once I got past all of fears and desires for pride and power, it was time to write. God had given a scripture in Matthew 22 about the Parable of the Wedding Banquet. A brief summary of this parable is a king has invited guests to his home and prepared a grand feast. The guests, however, declined his invitation because they are busy doing something else. So the king sends out his servants to find people on the street who will come to his feast. I will get into more details later about it, but I wanted you to have some understanding before we progressed any further.

Needless to say, this scripture has been written about before and been used to create ministry guides, small group lessons, and weekend events—all in an attempt to teach people about the relationship they have with God. I was unsure what I would ever need to say on the topic of this scripture, but God revealed that to me as well. He pointed out the word chosen. In Matthew 22: 14, the people are told they were chosen. I thought that was strange given that the king has chosen a different guest list at the beginning of the story and was now down to inviting people from the streets. How could those people have been chosen? They were the bottom of the barrel, all that was left, a last ditch effort to make this feast at least seem successful. They certainly were not chosen for who they were or their merit. They weren’t even known to the king. They were just in the right place at the right time, certainly not chosen. So why would the Bible say something that could logically be disproven? Because the word chosen actually meant choosy, as in these people had made a choice to accept the invitation. The adjective of chosen was describing the action the guests had taken in accepting the invitation and showing up to the feast, not the action that the king has made when inviting them.

At that moment, I realized I was not only going to write this book, but I was going to live this book. I saw the parallel between the guests accepting the invitation to the feast and me accepting the title of author and accepting to write a book about a well-known scripture that outlines a well-known parable. And this constant parallel has been accepted and rejected by me over and over again during the years it has taken me to write this book. I would love to say that I never looked back, never questioned God, never listened to the lie that I wasn’t good enough to write this book, but I did, and often.

This book details the journey of writing this book; details the journey of my testimony in each area that I explain and give insight on; details the events that took place while I was writing this book that were mountains I had to overcome; and details the lessons I learned along the way. This book is a full, transparent look into the struggles in my life, both past and present, with honesty, humility, and humor that I hope breaks down perceived falsehoods and reveals the true love and joy in following Christ. Be blessed.

CHAPTER 1

Choose to Hear God

Ask me and I will tell you remarkable secrets you do not know about things to come.

Jeremiah 33:3 NLT

Anyone who belongs to God listens gladly to the words of God. But you don’t listen because you don’t belong to God.

John 8:47 NLT

The Lord says, ‘I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you.’

Psalm 32:8 NLT

Hearing is being aware that one of the many voices, thoughts, or feelings you may be having at any given time is the voice of God. We often have lots of conflicting thoughts running through our minds most of the time, day, or night. We can get confused when two or more thoughts don’t agree and seem in opposition to each other. We can get overwhelmed when we have multiple thoughts