Choose This Day

“Choose,” Joshua declared.*

“Choose this day,” Joshua announced.

“Choose this day whom you will serve,” Joshua proclaimed.

The choice: the gods of this world created by mortals, or the Lord, the Creator of mortals.

Joshua declared his choice, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

The pastor’s heart in me would like to tell you that if you choose to serve the Lord your troubles will be over, and your problems will all be solved. Some people make that promise. They are misleading you.

The prophetic voice within me must tell you that serving the Lord does not bring our troubles to an end, and serving the Lord can create problems for us.

“Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness,” Joshua admonished.

“Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods…”

Joshua declared to them, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him.” If the people had truly chosen to serve the Lord, Joshua admonished them to “put away the foreign gods (the human made) that are among you.”

We cannot serve the Lord, and serve the gods of this world at the same time. Jesus put this way, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.” (See Matthew 6:24a)

Too often, we are guilty of making people into gods. We do so when we idolize them, follow them without question, and allow them to blindly lead us onto a destructive path.

It was our Lord who declared, “It is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,

and serve only him.’” (Luke 4:8)

And sometimes we create our own gods. Things become so important to us that having them becomes the focus of our lives. We have then made them our gods. We hold on to them. Cherish them. “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” (Deuteronomy 5:8)

We can choose to not believe there is God. More and more people are making this choice. They see no need for God. They have no proof there is God. We are here by chance. We live on our own. We die. The end. It is, of course, a choice we can make.

Choose!

If we don’t make a choice, we live in a spiritual limbo, unsure of what we believe, and without a foundation for life. Without a foundation, we will find it hard to stand when the storms of life come…and they will come. If you haven’t faced a storm in your life yet, hang on, it is coming. One can argue that I’m being pessimistic, but a quick look at life will tell you that I’m being realistic. Smiling faces and bombastic voices are often disguising hidden pain.

Choose!

We can choose to live in fear. There are a lot of voices declaring fear—the fear of change, the fear of the unknown, the fear of others, the fear of those who are not like us. They use our fears to create anger, hate, and bitterness. Fear is used to keep us from following the biblical admonition to “love our neighbor.” Some would have us forget the biblical counsel:

“For I, the Lord your God,

hold your right hand;

it is I who say to you, ‘Do not fear,

I will keep you.’” (Isaiah 41:13)

Do you need more?

“Do not fear, for I am with you,

do not be afraid, for I am your God.”

Choose!

Life is full of choices, but no choice is more important than the one Joshua lays out before us; for this choice determines the foundation of our lives—the solid foundation of faith, or the wavering foundation of wandering from one thing to another. When we are faced with the storms of life—and we will be—we need a solid foundation to hold us together and give us the strength and the courage we need to withstand the storms. I’d like to promise you that if you have faith every storm will end with a pleasant ending, but that is not a promise I can make; for that’s not how life works. What I can tell you is that faith will guide you through the storms of life.

Choose!

Hear now the promise of the Lord our God:

“He gives power to the faint,

and strengthens the powerless.

Even youths will faint and be weary,

and the young will fall exhausted;

but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength,

they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,

they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:29-31)

“Choose!”

“Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring.” (James 4:14)

“Choose this day!”

Join us Sunday morning at 11:00 at Greenfield, 384 Fairmont Road, Gretna or on Facebook Live on the Greenfield Baptist page.