4.4 Make the right long-range choice

All too often, people choose Christ for primarily short- sighted and selfish reasons. Because of this, God in his love must awaken us to repentance by letting trials and perhaps even persecutions come to us. In this way the motives of our heart are exposed. God's desire is that we obey him out of love, and not out of fear of punishment, or in order to receive gifts from him.

Therefore, we will be placed in situations of conflicting goals, where we must choose between:

a short-sighted advantage, or that which is right from an eternal perspective.

An example of this is the Apostle Peter. In his first testing, he lied and denied Jesus, but he came back and developed into a courageous leader, who even became willing to suffer martyrdom.
To strengthen the possibility of our choosing rightly, we should learn from the experiences of others. In this respect, an in-depth knowledge of the Bible has great value. However, we must also pray for the help of the Holy Spirit, who is called The Helper. Otherwise we will not succeed in making right application of this knowledge.

If we do not succeed, we should correct our attempts and make a new try until we do succeed.