“…Choose today whom you will serve…”
Joshua 24:15
In a recent heated conversation with a friend who I found fault with, I passionately (with a stern and aggressive voice) asked, “who do you want to be?!!!”
This person’s presence, whether in spirit or physically, has been prevalent in my life for almost a decade so I can say confidently that I am keen to the patterns, attitudes, behaviors, and good heart of this person.
However, the momentary discord that took place made me wonder, if my friend knew that they have grown an unhealthy and dishonoring habit of shifting from one character to another.
On one end, they would display a distinct vulnerability in the way they confessed not knowing how to relate with most people or knowing what love feels should feel like, or that they do not trust anyone in this world.
On the other hand, my friend would abruptly become nonchalant and indifferent with an air of arrogance, glorifying their own worth, and then acting as though nothing really bothered them, often appearing almost heartless sometimes.
So this time, I proclaimed my rebuke.
But also in that moment, I realized that I was not just asking my friend to choose wisdom in their becoming. Truly I was asking my friend to choose whom they will serve.
Did my friend want to serve himself? the world? or God?
As the Spirit of God would have it, our dispute was quickly settled and harmony was restored. But my questions lingered…
Friend, have you yet chosen whom you will serve? Or are you still weighing the power of God to the might of everything else?
How many masters do you serve daily?
Has your job, partner, or friendship become your master without your own knowledge?
Have you been serving these instead of the Lord your God alone?
Do you know that there can only be One master whom you ought to give all praise, honor, glory, and adoration to?
Do you know that you ought to bow down to only One master?
Do you also know that there is only One master that has the power to condemn and rebuke you?
Often times, we settle for blaming our serving of other ‘gods’ and things of this world, on the ills of society we dwell in, or the past that won’t let us go. But the Word tells me and you, that we hold the power to choose whom you will serve.
Why else would the Word ask us to choose if we did not have a choice?…
I wonder if you have allowed others to choose for you whom you will serve.
May the wisdom of God fall upon us today as we come to ourselves, the true self that we were divinely created to be, and may we seek God first in our discovery. May we once again fall to our knees and re-proclaim that God is Lord above all in Jesus name. Amen.