Psalm 90:12
“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

Have you ever considered that the seemingly simple choices you make today will eventually add up to the sum total of your life?

If you spend time with the Lord every morning, or hit snooze for a few more minutes. If you work-out regularly, or choose to get in just a little more TV time. If you consistently eat healthy meals, or grab fast food or treats more than you would like to admit. If you work hard in your career or education, or choose to simply get by. If you tithe from and save part of every check, or decide that can wait just one more month.

Whether we like it or not, these choices, and so many others, matter – and they matter a lot. Why? Because time has a funny way of amplifying the choices we make today – for better or worse.

In his book The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy puts it this way:

Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = Radical Difference

Hardy goes on to brilliantly illustrate how while we often can’t see the impact of these choices in the immediate future…or possibly even a few years down the road, eventually our spiritual maturity, health, careers, relationships, and bank accounts will tell the story of our seemingly small choices.

Think with me for a minute about your current habits in the areas of faith, family, friends, future, and finances. Where are your current habits taking you? Go ahead and play the movie of your life forward and consider how the choices you are making in these areas today are going to affect you not only tomorrow, but 5 years, 10 years, even 20 years down the road. Do you like what you see? Why or why not? What would need to change for you to like the movie of your life?

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that your not so good habits will change on their own, they won’t. Changing bad habits requires deliberate intentionality on our part. Oswald Chambers said it this way, “God will not give us good habits or character, and He will not force us to walk correctly before Him. We have to do all that ourselves.”

Psalm 90:12 says, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

I absolutely love this verse! None of us know how many days we will have on this earth. Therefore, we need to be wise with each of them. We need to make small, smart choices day in and day out so in the end the sum total of our lives will be ones that were lived to the full and glorified God in all areas.

What habit, or habits do you need to work on today? Don’t be overwhelmed, remember, it is the seemingly small choices that add up. Make a plan to improve in these areas one step at a time by making small, smart choices that will add up over time… While it may take effort now, your future self will thank you!

As John Maxwell said, “Success is gained in inches at a time, not miles.”

What small, smart choices will you make this week?