Today is…

a fine day to choose.

“If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today who you will serve…”  Joshua 24:15a NASB

When Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel together at Shechem, he did it to remind them to always make a conscious choice to follow God. He made sure they understood that his personal belief was to follow God and encouraged them not to be misled by man-made idols. He stressed the importance of believing in the One who had always been there for all of them from the time God first told Joshua, “Moses My servant is dead. Therefore, the time has come for you to lead these people, the Israelites, across the Jordan River into the land I am giving them.” (Joshua 1:2 NLT).

Joshua had proved himself to be a very capable leader and a superb military tactician. He also followed the Law of Moses and worshiped only God and delivered the Israelites into the Promised Land. And now that he was nearing death, he found it necessary to remind people of the reasons they should worship only God.

Many times in our lives we ask God for His blessing on plans that we have made or hopes that we have. God hears us and helps things work out the way we wanted, but somehow we often fail to give Him credit and forget that He makes everything possible. We begin to take the credit ourselves. We get caught up in our own success and soon we are not worshiping God anymore.

Instead we pay homage to what we have and focus only on what we need to do to keep it, and to obtain even more.

Joshua made it clear to the Israelites what his position was and what the position of his family was.

“…But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15c NASB).

He made it known publicly that all he had and all he was had nothing to do with himself or man-made idols and everything to do with the Lord he had trusted from the moment he took the reins of leadership from Moses.

No one can force us to do anything we don’t want to do, or to believe anything we don’t want to believe. But if we pay attention to what great leaders like Joshua tried to teach those who followed them, we may learn a very important lesson.

Joshua challenged the Israelites to make a choice.

After listening to all he had to say, “The people said to Joshua, ‘We will serve the Lord our God and we will obey His voice.’” (Joshua 24:24 NASB).

The choice is yours, of course, and it’s a fine day to make the right one.

*******

Taken from “TODAY IS….A Gift From God”, (C) 2013 Tony Casson