“Choose For Yourselves This Day Whom You Will Serve” (Joshua 24:15)
When God created Adam and Eve, our first parents, He gave them the power to choose to love and obey Him or to turn from Him and disobey Him. He has given every human being the same right and power to choose. Nearly every moment of the day we are making some kind of choice. Some of our choices are educated and wise choices, when we seek God’s will and way. Some are ignorant and foolish choices when we choose our own will and way. From both the good and the bad choices there are like consequences. We suffer bad consequences from our bad choices or from the good choices we reap good rewards.
In this Joshua scripture we are being admonished to choose to love and serve God rather than anything else that can be a god in our lives. What or who we love most becomes our god. Yet, God gave us this freedom to choose to love Jehovah God or to choose to love another god. Dr. John Townsend said, “We are not free to love unless we are free not to love.”
The First Commandment tells us to love God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves. Love is a choice. We can choose to withhold our love by withholding our acts of forgiveness, of kindness, of giving, of helping. Any good word, thought or deed comes about because we have chosen to love. Even when that word, thought or deed is not reciprocated, we choose to return good for evil. The will to choose to love in this way can only come about through the power of God’s love flowing through us. Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.” Only with His Holy Spirit living within us and our asking to be strengthened with His love can we love the unlovely. Remember, we once were unlovely, and sometimes we still are, and we have wanted others to love us in our unloveliness, so we must in like manner choose to love others that are unlovely. By choosing to love others we are choosing to love Christ (Matt.25:31-45). The more we choose to live in God’s love and follow Jesus’ example, the easier it is to love those who may not love us.
Today I choose to walk in God’s freedom to choose to love! I choose to serve God!
I am determined to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back!
Though none go with me still I will follow, no turning back, no turning back!
The world behind me, the cross before me, no turning back, no turning back!
I am determined to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back!
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