A Choice To Make

14 "Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. 15 But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." Joshua 24:14-15

This passage today is kind of the climax of a bigger one. I was reading Joshua 24 today, and these two verses in particular stuck out to me. Yet the whole chapter tells a story. You can read the whole chapter here at Bible Gateway if you feel so inclined. I can see it very visually in my head. I can see a very large crowd of people, with Joshua at it's center, telling this large assembly it's history. Trying to prove to them all the Lord has done for them as a people, and then he climaxes in his speech here. He tells them to choose The Lord now, or never, but to choose now. Choose to serve the Lord who has brought them out of Egypt and out of slavery. And if you read on farther, you see that the people choose wisely, and a declaration is made that lasts for several generations.

We all have the same choice to make, don't we? Whom are we going to serve? Are we going to serve ourselves? Are we going to serve our own man-made Gods, like money or work? Or are we going to choose wisely and choose to serve a Great and Mighty God? It's so easy to be caught up in serving ourselves, or the almighty quest for more money and the fake happiness it provides. Sometimes our Gods can be even simpler- it could be the computer, or the TV, or in extreme cases, I've seen parents raise their children up as god's for a time. But with God, by choosing to serve God first and foremost, everything else will fall into place as needed. By choosing to serve God, those needs for money and shelter and food and clothing will be met, God will see to that. But before he can provide our needs, and often times, even our wants, we first must make that choice.

We've made that choice as a household, just as Joshua did so many years ago. God comes first. He gets our first fruits of money, and our first fruits of time and labor as well. We not only tithe from our income, but we tithe our time as well. God gets at least 24 minutes of attention each and every day- preferably first before anything else. God also gets some labor time. The typical work week is 40 hours, God gets a tithe of that as well, and gets a 4 hour portion at his house from us as a family. 4 hours a week isn't much in the grand scheme of things, and the 24 minutes in a day is like a drop in the bucket. But what we find is that when we give God our time first, we find more of it. There is more than enough time in a day to get everything done that we want to get done, plus have plenty of time for leisure activities and enjoyment. By choosing God first, our family is being blessed with more time with each other, and that's what we cherish most of all.

"But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD." Joshua 24:15