Choose Wisely

“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”  Joshua 24:15

I have often said that our lives are the sum total of all the decisions that we make.  We make choices everyday:  what to wear, what to have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, where to go on vacation, and so on.  These are necessary decisions, but usually of no real consequence.  On Wednesday, we likely won’t remember what we wore on Monday nor what we had for lunch that day.  The more important decisions are those that we make that will have a lasting effect:  who we marry, our career, where we live, how we treat others, and those with whom we choose to associate.

However, the most important decision is whom or what we choose to worship.  To worship a person or thing is to place its value above all else.  Whatever we treasure more than anything else becomes our god.  Folks tend to think of a false god as some sort of image or idol like those that were worshiped by the heathen nations around Israel in ancient times and sometimes also worshiped by many of God’s chosen people.  In today’s verse, Joshua was imploring the people of Israel to choose whom they would worship, whether the idols of the nations around them or their Creator and Sustainer, the LORD God.  The call is still going out.

People get the mistaken idea that if they give their lives to Christ and worship Him, then they will have to give up something they deem valuable to them.  But what is really valuable?  Does living to please oneself bring one comfort, peace, contentment, joy and hope for the future?  Perhaps pleasing oneself brings a temporary joy but that joy is usually short lived because there is always something to disrupt one’s peace of mind.  As I get older, I find that there is always a new concern, a new pain with which to deal, or bad news just over the horizon.  Living life without Christ only compounds the hurt, disappointment, and sometimes anger that we experience seemingly more frequently than in earlier years.

Do we choose to worship a person, money, politics, power, drugs, or do we, like Joshua, choose the LORD.  The choice is ours.  Let’s not make the wrong choice.