December 2, 2022

You Are Chosen

By Skip Heitzig

Did you know there's a psychology to being chosen? Whether it's for a team or for an award, being chosen floods the pleasure centers of your brain with chemicals that leave you feeling good. To be chosen is to be valued, appreciated, and regarded as important by someone.

To be chosen by the God of the universe, then, is the ultimate experience you could have. In John 15, we see that God has made three choices concerning those of us who are saved:

1. We are chosen for friendship. "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you" (vv. 13-16).

Friendship normally isn't one-sided. But it is here—Jesus said, "I have chosen you." Now, the Bible teaches you must also make a choice, and God will cooperate with that choice (see John 6:37). But that doesn't make this truth any less true (or astonishing): before you were born, before the foundations of the world were laid, God sovereignly chose you (see Ephesians 1:4).

2. We are chosen for fullness. "As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full" (vv. 9-11).

This fullness of joy is something much deeper and more profound than happiness. It permeates your life and controls your outlook. This is what God has in mind for you: a full life, not just existence—thriving, not just surviving.

3. We are chosen for following. "You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another" (vv. 16-17).

We have been chosen so that we may follow Jesus and be active, growing, fruit-bearing disciples who bless other people. This is the natural outcome of the Christian life: when the life of God is in you, the life of God will flow through you.

God has chosen you, His beloved, for all these things. I want you to think about that for a minute, because it's truly an incredible thought: you have been chosen by the living God. That's one of the greatest titles you could ever bear. Are you living in the light of that title today?

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For more from Skip Heitzig, visit ConnectwithSkip.com, and listen to today's broadcast of Connect with Skip Heitzig at OnePlace.com.