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You know what I miss? Choose Your Own Adventure books. How great are those? You get, like, 4 different stories in one... if not more! As you read through them, you run into different options to choose from. Do you follow the stranger into the woods, or do you just wait outside of them? Do you accept the knight's challenge, or try to find another way through the maze? There are always different occurences that come up, and you have to take the risk of what might happen. Each decision takes you to a different section of the book. "If you choose to follow the stranger into the forest, go to page 42. If you choose to not follow him, go to page 19." You get the chance to control the outcome of the book, rather than just going along with whatever the author wants. You're in control.
The nice thing about CYOA books is the ability to go back. Say you turn to page 42, and while in the forest you get attacked by a wolf and die. No problem, just turn back to page 9, and instead go to page 19 and choose to not enter the forest. Boom, you get to keep going. Any bad thing can quickly be undone simply by flipping back to the page where you made your choice, and making the other choice. Through this, we are able to avoid unhappy outcomes and can allow us to keep reading into our adventure.

Our life is a Choose Your Own Adventure book, only it's not a book. It's real. We all come to points where we have to make a choice, and deal with the consequence. We all have to choose if we're going to wake up on Sunday morning and go to Church, or if we're going to go to that party, or if we're going to serve a mission. We always have a choice to make. But, unlike in the books, when we make a mistake that doesn't end well, we can't just flip back a couple pages and choose the other choice. We have to deal with the choice we've made, and to try to fix the mistake we made. Our life is full of choices, and each choice takes us to a different section of our life. While we can go back and correct what we've done, we can't just erase what's been done and have it not happen. It's up to us to make the right choices, and get the best results out of it.

Make your Choice

Life is all about choices. Big or small, they have an impact. Each day, we are faced with hundreds, even thousands of choices to make. Often times, they may not seem like that big of a deal, and it may seem like they won't have any long term consequences. And often, that's true. What you eat for breakfast today probably won't effect who you marry. But, there are many choices that we make that will effect the long term, and many of those are ones we don't expect. Obviously, there are big glaring choices that should be made. Should I follow Jesus Christ? Should I obey the commandments? Should I always be setting a good example? Those are pretty easy ones to answer "yes" to, because those will effect you today, tomorrow, and forever, into the eternity. As the Lord says in Luke 16:13, "No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Mammon is the material, the worldly, the temporal. If we serve mammon, let our own selfish desires take precedence, then we are letting that take us away from our Heavenly Father. We can only hold to one, the other we have to despise. So, hold to the One that brings life eternal.
Our choices stretch far beyond what we can even comprehend. In Helaman, Samuel the Lamanite preaches to the people, and he tells them, "and now remember, remember, my brethren, that whosoever perisheth, perisheth unto himself; and whosoever doeth iniquity, doeth it unto himself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free." We are able to act for ourselves, and choose whether we will follow our God and be righteous, or be wicked and perish. Nephi reaffirms this in 2 Nephi 2:27: "Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself."
We must choose for ourselves: eternal life or death. The only way to eternal life is through Christ our Savior. It is through his Atonement that we can repent and be forgiven, and it is only through that that we can return to our Heavenly Father and have eternal life. So, in the words of the great prophet of old, Joshua, "choose you this day whom ye will serve...", and keep in mind the eternal significance of your choices.