I never cease to be amazed at how the Bible is woven into every part of our every-day lives, many times unnoticed.

I spoke with a writer friend the other day and showed her last week’s blog about the “if” and “then” in the II Chronicles 7:14 scripture. (“If the people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.)

She is also a very smart computer programmer. “Oh,” she said, “that’s just like in programming. When you write a program you type in if such and such happens, then this will happen.”

That’s exactly what God says . . . 336 times in the New American Standard Bible! If you want to know exactly where these words appear in the Bible, click on this in the free blueletterbible.com site.

My friend says the third word in programming is “else.” God says that, too. Over and over through many of His prophets. In essence, He says, “Repent (shape up and quit walking in ungodly ways) or else I’ll have to ship you out.” This was basically the message of the Old Testament prophets and on into the New Testament with John the Baptist.

We have a choice. We can walk our own way and hope God will wink at our sin (which He won’t, by the way), or we can tell Him we’re sorry for the way we’ve lived our lives in our own strength, and ask Jesus to come in and be the Lord (absolute ruler) of our lives.

We can never be “good enough” in our own strength to meet His requirements to live forever in heaven with Him. We need to make the trade: His righteousness for our sin. If we choose not to do this, we will live in eternity apart from Him in absolute darkness and torment.

Which do you choose?