By Shirley Rosemarie Evans
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 24:15
Delighting yourself in the Lord is a lifelong learning adventure that never gets old or samey. But as with every good journey, there is a starting point, and that starting point is a decision. I’m not just talking about the decision to follow Jesus, as significant and life-changing as that is, rather it is the point where we decide that we are all in. Jesus is truly Lord of every area of our lives, and He is all that He says He is. But I hasten to add that this is not a one-off decision; it is one we make over and over again. We consistently take stock to reflect on and review whether Jesus is still truly Lord of our lives. When things are going well, we have a good job, marriage is good, ministry is flourishing, it is easy to become complacent, or worse still, prideful. We forget that we must make every effort to seek Him and to decide daily to serve Him above all else, and indeed acknowledge that without Him I can do nothing.
Then there are the hard places in life- those moments when you sit by the hospital bed of a loved one and hear the doctors say there is nothing more they can do, so you pray desperately, asking God to heal, but the person transitions from this life anyway. Or the moments when the door closes with that final click as the husband of five years walks away for the last time. Or perhaps you have lost your job, and the bills are mounting, and you cannot see a way through, and all your desperate prayers have so far seemingly yielded no results. It’s in those moments that we still choose to trust in the sovereignty of our God and serve Him wholeheartedly.
Perhaps there is a habit or pastime that you know has become an idol; it doesn’t necessarily mean it is a bad thing, but the amount of time that you are committing to it is a problem. Are you spending so many hours working overtime that your family barely sees you, and you never have time for the ministry activities you once were so enthusiastic about? Do you have online habits that you know do not align with following Jesus? You may have an ongoing struggle to give something up for a while, only to gradually find yourself drifting back towards it.
Just like Joshua urged the children of Israel to choose for themselves who they would serve, we have the same choice that we must make. That may mean wrestling with our pride, our flesh, our desires, going against the culture, standing alone, taking the road less travelled each and every day. The thing is, we cannot do this in our own strength, and the good news is that we don’t have to. We have a community of believers who will pray us through.
There is a story told in Mark 2 of four friends digging a hole in the roof of a house to lower their paralysed friend to Jesus. This story is a great example of how, as believers, we carry each other’s burdens not so that we become burdened but that we carry them to Jesus. We present in prayer the brother or sister who is struggling. But we also lend practical assistance: they carried the sheet, dug the hole in the roof, and lowered him down. So likewise, we can offer to pick someone up and take them to their counselling session or to visit their loved one in palliative care, not because they don’t have a vehicle, but because we choose to walk with them in this season.
We have the community of believers, and we also have prayer, for we understand that prayer changes things, and the weapons of our warfare are not of this world but are mighty in Christ Jesus. We pray alone, but we also pray with others. We have the word of God reminding us who our God is and who we are in Him, and finally, we have His Holy Spirit living on the inside, empowering us to live out our decisions to serve Jesus with our whole heart.
Dear God, our Heavenly Father, help us by your grace to choose you this day and each and every day. To believe with our whole heart that you are God and help us by your Spirit to deny ourselves and to follow you. May our lives be a declaration that we choose you, and may we truly delight ourselves in you. It’s in Jesus name we pray. Amen
