At the end of the book of Joshua, Joshua gives a farewell address to Israel. In this farewell speech, Joshua presents Israel with a choice. “Choose this day whom you will serve,” (24:15). The choice before Israel was whether they would serve the one true God of Israel or false gods which their ancestors and the Canaanites served.
This wasn’t a choice they only had to make once on this particular day. Every single day Israel had to decide for themselves who they would serve. The same is true for you and me today. We must choose this day whom we will serve, but not just today. We must make the choice between serving God or something else every single day.
The reason we have to make this choice daily is because, if we’re not intentional, we can easily find ourselves serving a host of other things and neglecting to serve God. Our careers can easily take over our lives and push God out of the picture. The same is true of our hobbies, bank accounts, relationships, our desire for influence or power, and certainly our desire for comfort. These things and many more can easily become idols we serve instead of God. In fact, I think Scripture shows that our natural inclination is to lean toward serving these things rather than God.
So, we must make a choice. Who will we serve? I pray all of us answer like Joshua did, “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”