YOUR CHOICE

But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

Joshua 24:15

From the moment you roll out of bed in the morning, you’re making decisions — some big, some small. You decide how you’ll cover your body with clothing or fuel it with food. You select people to speak to and topics of conversation. You choose between an endless variety of ways that you can spend your time.

Choices. Joshua had them too. Some small and mundane, some large. God placed him in charge of a nation of people who had to decide whether to worship idols made by human hands or to worship the One holding the entire world in his hands.

We face the same choices. Daily, we must choose where we will place our faith and whom we will serve. The only choice that brings life is to serve the living God.

Today, you may be tempted to lie on an expense report or make up an excuse as to why you can’t attend the weekly prayer meeting. Ask what it means in each situation to worship and serve the living God. Then choose.

PRAYER

God, give me the strength daily to make the right choices. Today, I choose …

God is love

Reflection

On Proverbs 6:16-19

Scripture tells us that God is love 

  1 John 4:8, 16

He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.  And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

but it also tells us there are some things he hates—

and it says so in a book of wisdom. 

That’s because wisdom is much more than getting principles and instructions from God. 

If wisdom were simply good advice—information passed on to us impersonally—we could develop some religious practices and call it righteousness. 

But in God’s kingdom, wisdom is much more relational. 

We can’t really become wise outside of personal interaction with God. 

He doesn’t just give wisdom; he is wisdom.

When we spend time with God and learn what he loves and hates, 

that affects our hearts. 

We begin to cultivate the same passions. 

We develop a distaste for pride, deception, violence and scheming, 

and we develop an affection for what he loves, including his people and his mission. 

When our passions align with God’s, wisdom happens much more naturally than when we try to absorb principles and implement them in our lives. 

A heart that beats with God’s inevitably generates thoughts and actions consistent with God’s heart.

Speak and think in the spirit,

Ephesians 4:29-32

[29] Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

[30] And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.

[31] Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:

[32] And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

Filthy words proceed from corruption in the speaker, and they corrupt the minds and manners of those who hear them:

Christians should beware of all such discourse.

It is the duty of Christians to seek, by the blessing of God, to bring persons to think seriously, and to encourage and warn believers by their conversation.

Be ye kind one to another. This sets forth the principle of love in the heart, and the outward expression of it, in a humble, courteous behaviour.

Mark how God's forgiveness causes us to forgive.

God forgives us, though we had no cause to sin against him.

We must forgive, as he has forgiven us.

All lying, and corrupt communications, that stir up evil desires and lusts, grieve the Spirit of God.

Corrupt passions of bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil-speaking, and malice, grieve the Holy Spirit.

Provoke not the holy, blessed Spirit of God to withdraw his presence and his gracious influences.

The body will be redeemed from the power of the grave at the resurrection day.

Wherever that blessed Spirit dwells as a Sanctifier, he is the earnest of all the joys and glories of that redemption day; and we should be undone, should God take away his Holy Spirit from us