In fact, he promises you freedom from all gods, all responsibilities. “Keep your options open,” he whispers. “Worship me, and you don’t have to serve anything or anyone. No commitment necessary. Total freedom.”

God Who Commits

The living God, the loving, triune God, didn’t create us to keep our options open. He didn’t create us to live in fear of making a choice. He didn’t create us to be like Robert De Niro’s character in the 1995 movie Heat, a man who vows never to get involved in a relationship he can’t walk away from in 30 seconds. God created us to commit: to him, and to others. He created us to choose. It’s right to be careful in our decision-making, of course: to pray, to seek counsel from Scripture and from wise Christians. The bigger the decision, the more careful we should be.

But there comes a point when pausing becomes procrastination, when waiting is no longer wise. There comes a point when not choosing becomes idolatry. It becomes a lack of trust in the God who ordains the decisions we will make, gathers up the frayed ends, and works all things for our good and his glory.

Choose the God who closed off all other alternatives so that he could pursue for himself one bride. Choose the God who chose not to come down from the cross until she was won.

Be wise, but then rest in God’s total sovereignty and goodness—and choose. Commit. Make a decision. Be wholehearted and single-minded. James 1:6–8 puts it like this: “Believe and do not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. . . . Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.”

Trust that God is good and sovereign, and redeems our choices. If even the choices of those who murdered his own Son were ordained for our own infinite good (Acts 4:27–28), then how can we doubt that he intends good to come from even our ill-advised choices?

Another reason for rejecting the god of open options is because the living God himself is a God who chooses. And he made us in his image.

“He chose us in him before the creation of the world” (Eph. 1:4).

“God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise” (1 Cor. 1:27).

“God chose you . . . to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit” (2 Thess. 2:13).

If the living God were as fond of keeping his options open as we are, we’d have nothing to look forward to except eternal torment.

Commit to the Living God

So let me ask you, in what area of your life are you still flirting with the god of open options? Where are you refusing to choose? Maybe you’re refusing to commit to a particular relationship. Maybe you’re not truly committed at work—you have Facebook open in one of your browser tabs, half hoping to be interrupted. Maybe you still haven’t joined a healthy church. Maybe your restless eyes are on constant alert for something or someone better.

Maybe you’re keeping your options open with God himself, not allowing yourself to become too committed. Elijah is speaking to you in 1 Kings, and he’s saying, “Make a choice.” You have all the information about God you need. Enough of this noncommittal, risk-averse, weak-willed, God-forgetting immaturity. Or, as it probably says in some of the more modern translations, “Grow up.”

You have all the information about God you need. Enough of this noncommittal, risk-averse, weak-willed, God-forgetting immaturity. Or, as it probably says in some of the more modern translations, ‘Grow up.’

I write this with tears. As I look back over the past 20 years of my Christian life, I’ve repeatedly worshiped and served the god of open options, and I’ve seen many do the same. How many, for example, have been afraid to commit to marriage because the god of open options hates the marriage service? He knows that during it, we must promise to “forsake all others,” and that means forsaking all other options.

The god of open options is cruel and vindictive. He will break your heart. He will not let anyone get too close. But at the same time, because he’s so spiteful, he won’t let anyone get too far away because that would mean they’re no longer an option. On and on it continues, exhausting and frustrating and confusing and endless, pulling toward and then pushing away, like the tide on a beach, never finally committing one way or the other. We’ve been like the starving man sitting in front of an all-you-can-eat buffet, dying simply because he wouldn’t choose between the chicken and the shrimp.