So here’s what I’ve been musing about lately…
We often hear it said: Love is a choice. Increasingly, this message is gaining traction among my generation. We’re moving away from the idea that love is just a feeling. I think we now know better that it’s not the butterfly-infused infatuation we grew up watching on TV. Sure, feelings kick things off. You’re drawn to someone, you click with a friend, you enjoy being around them. But staying in love? Staying connected? That requires a daily, deliberate choice.
You wake up and realise you haven’t spoken to someone you love in a while. You could carry on with your day and let the silence stretch further. Or you could make the effort. Reach out. Send that message. Because love means choosing to show up for your people, even when it’s inconvenient, even when your instinct is to retreat and choose yourself, or be selfish and think “why didn’t they write me first?”.
Sometimes the choice is easy: you miss them, you’re craving intimacy, they’re giving you what you want. But other times? It’s messy. Sometimes love requires you to give something up, do something uncomfortable, or hold space for hard conversations. Whether it’s your partner, your children, your friends—love is wiping snotty noses, waking up early, showing up when you’d rather stay in bed. It’s joining parent WhatsApp groups and making small talk with other adults when you’d rather be doing literally anything else. Love is action. It’s an effort. It’s a decision.
Now, what prompted all this reflection wasn’t just romantic or familial love; it was a conviction. A spiritual one. A reminder of the fact that I made a choice a few years ago and how it’s one I need to recommit to in this season.
That reminder came through a whispered statement: ‘Love is a choice, and the same applies to faith.’ Like, yes, if loving people whom you can see is a choice, how much more is loving a God you can’t see a choice?
To love God is to wake up each morning and choose to believe. To believe He’s good, even when the world doesn’t look like it. To choose to trust in a Bible that, let’s be honest, raises many questions. A Bible, we know, wasn’t lowered from heaven in one clean piece, but written and compiled by men, shaped by councils and omissions ( who knows that the books hidden in vaults, sidelined by institutions like the Vatican, said, books no one ever told us how or why they were excluded).
And yet.
This same Bible has spoken to my spirit in a way that nothing else has. Its words do something. Not always immediately. Not always conveniently. But deeply. They manifest differently. They hold power. They’ve comforted me, corrected me, and carried me through seasons where no one else’s words could.
Even with all its human fingerprints, all the baggage it carries from being used to justify slavery, colonisation, patriarchy, racism and more, it also carries something sacred. Something that can’t quite be explained but can be felt. It tells the story of a God who has pursued humanity with relentless grace. A God who loved us enough to become one of us. A God who laid Himself down for us.
You see, it’s not a once-and-done thing. Choosing God isn’t something you do once when you “give your life to Christ.” It’s not a one-time conversion. It’s daily. It’s every moment.
One of my favourite C.S. Lewis quotes goes: Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.
Yes, the Holy Spirit is a helper. A counsellor. A transformer. He’s all those things. But let’s be honest, you still have to make a choice. You choose whether to heed His conviction. You choose whether to seek Him. You choose whether to be comforted by Him or by food, sex, shopping, work, etc.
And choosing Him isn’t always convenient. It’s like choosing your spouse even when they annoy you, or when they’re no longer exciting. You made a vow. So when you stop choosing them, you’re breaking your vow.
Same with God.
If we framed it like that—like not choosing Him is breaking your vow—I think some of us would rethink the way we move. We’d check ourselves. We’d understand what this walk actually requires.
Because listen, there are parts of this faith that are uncomfortable. Things that don’t make sense. Things you’ll never be able to explain or reconcile. That’s why it’s called faith. It’s not logic. If it were logical, we wouldn’t need faith.
Some days, the only thing I can say for sure is that I’m choosing. Like how kids believe in Santa Claus. I’m just choosing. And today, as the Holy Spirit convicted me and reminded me of this, I’m saying it out loud:
You made a choice, Monique. Are you going to keep choosing?
You made that choice because you’ve experienced God. You’ve had encounters. You’ve seen His works. And though you’ve overthought this (because you always do), you landed here rationally—you’ve examined other religions, you’ve done the mental work, and this is the faith that makes the most sense to your spirit, that speaks love and grace the way no other one does.
So yeah. That’s what I’m reminding myself today: It’s a choice.
May the Holy Spirit help us to keep choosing Him.
That’s all I’ve got for now.
