September 21, 2025 -- Joshua 24:15b -- Choosing to serve
/People loved by the Father, in the Spirit's power: Sh'ma ~ hear and obey Jesus!
…choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
Joshua 24:15b ESV
Choose—that is an imperative. It is a deliberate choice. It is a daily choice. It is a choice that requires effort, intentionality, confession when one has veered off course. To choose the LORD is the most important choice of one’s life.
The world chooses fame. It chooses success. It chooses this today and next week that and the week after something else new. Influencers are killing themselves to be the most popular sensation on the internet and then are forgotten as soon as the next sensation hits. It is so easy to be influenced by the trends of the world. It is easy to have a righteousness like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day; that is to be people who keep all the laws with exactitude, but in your hearts, you do not honour and bless the One Who gave the Law. A quotation attributed to Martin Luther is, “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing”. Another preacher whose name I forget just now, stated, “To be a Christian without praying is to be a good-living atheist”. Wow.
To serve the LORD is to be a man or woman of prayer.
To serve the LORD is to spend formal times in prayer and through-out the day to be aware of His presence and to speak to Him, thanking Him, blessing Him, and delighting in Him as is suitable in view of whatever is happening in your life.
To serve the LORD is to turn your back on whatever the world is proposing and to intentionally turn your yourself to God taking on a posture of willing obedience to Him.
To serve the LORD is life, because any other allegiance, any other service is death—our own history and past experiences in life have proved this over and over again.
To serve the LORD is to give to Him your time, your talents and your treasures—all of life is focused on Him. In Jesus is the light of life (John 8:12). Veering away from Him to the right or to the left is to plunge oneself back into darkness and troubles.
To serve the LORD is to delight in His salvation; it is to find pleasure in knowing Him better, it is not hard service—whereas in the past you sacrificed much for food, or pleasure, or self, or to keep up with the world—now you are sacrificing all things that are fleeting and dying in favour of Him at Whose right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).
Father in heaven, source of all that is good, blessed be Your Name. I confess I have often chosen to serve You and failed to follow through in my commitment. I confess I have at one moment chosen to serve You, and almost immediately in the next, distracted, started going here and there rather than serving you. Help me by Your powerful Spirit living in me, to anchor my commitment to serve Jesus in the powerful Spirit. Teach me to listen to the conviction of the Spirit and conquer my heart as often as is needed so that I will in all things be guided by the Spirit through the Word. Help me to find as You promised, eternal pleasures at Your right hand forever more. Amen.
https://youtu.be/R8mLTdQQXg4?si=BNhglrv-E_yrJiFO Psalm 16 Shane and Shane
Copyright © 2025 Sh'ma Christian Ministries, All rights reserved.
