So fear the Lord and serve him
wholeheartedly. Put away forever the idols your ancestors worshiped when they
lived beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord alone. But if you refuse to serve the Lord, then
choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods your ancestors
served beyond the Euphrates? Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose
land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua
24:14-15
My five year old granddaughter is
something else! The other day, she had a
moment with my daughter asking why she did not come to her birthday party. My daughter explained that she had practice
the same day, and she could not miss it or else she would be fined. In her special way, my granddaughter
responds, “Well, you made a choice, and you need to make better choices.” It’s obvious that she is destined to be a
leader one day, and has already figured out where people are on the ‘Accountability
ladder.’ As funny as the story is, it
reminded me of the choices we must make as Christians each and every day. When we are rushed for time, do we skip our
morning prayer to do other things? Are
we missing Sunday service because of son’s soccer practice or daughter’s cheer tournament?
We must choose to serve God
wholeheartedly, and continue to make Him the priority in our lives. Reading the 24th chapter of Joshua
gives clarity to the conflict we face between serving our God and other ‘Gods.’ After all God had done to bring the
Israelites out from Egypt, they got to a point where they have turned to their
sinful ways, and Joshua made a bold statement to them in today’s verses. Like all great leaders, he ends his address asking
for Israel’s commitment saying, “I choose to serve God. Who’s coming with me?” Now we tend to think of Gods as spirits and
entities that live above the earth, but there are other ‘Gods’ that we serve and
do not really notice. For example, I
have the NFL ‘God’ that might ask me to watch the game instead of an event serving
others in need or spending time with family.
The ‘Cosmopolitan’ God obsesses over how you look above where you are
spiritually, and the adventurous ‘Thrill Seeking’ God would have us look for
greater adventures above a spending time with a God who loves you. Moderate doses of all these can be fun and in
some ways healthy. However, we must be
careful not to let these supersede our relationship with a God who is always there
for us. He is a God of abundance giving
us more than what we will ever need, and all we need to do is to choose to
serve Him decision by decision.
A choice for God is both simple
and yet difficult. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through
me.” (John 14:6b) Choosing to
serve Him is a simple one, but this decision requires life changes. Many of them will challenge our ways of
thinking and how we do things. Let us
renew ourselves to putting God at the top of our lives for He alone is
worthy. What false Gods are taking away
from you serving God? What must you
reprioritize to put God first in your life?
My prayer is that we are able to as my granddaughter put make better
choices. Amen.
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