This Day and Every Day
{GUEST POST} by Nate Whitelock
Today — Part 1 of 4
I do not always get this right. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I could finish my day feeling like some super Christian that made it through without a hitch. This walk that we’ve chosen is a struggle. We have to choose every day to either do it our way, or do it God’s way, so it’s about today that I want to speak with you.
An Example
Reading the Old Testament both fascinates and frustrates me. If ever we can watch a daily struggle over obedience to God, it’s there. His chosen nation had awesome victories, but it had some epic failures, too. I’m not sure why, but it seems that time and time again, the most epic failures directly followed events which SHOULD have served to strengthen their faith and assure them that they were on the right path. Somehow instead, those victories made them think they had everything under control, and off they went to serve their own personal gods. The book of Joshua is one of my favorites because it covers the victories really well; not a lot of frills, this is where God’s people, in His power, walked in, took everything, and established a nation right atop the dust. It also contained a well known ultimatum near the end, but I’d like to back up from it a few lines. See, what we struggle with today is much the same thing that the Israelites did. Idol worship. Sure, it looks a little different today than it did back then, I mean, I haven’t seen any brazen cattle in anyone’s homes real recently, and if I did I doubt anyone would be bowing down to it these days. Simply not a “western, first-world” problem. But we still worship idols. If you tell me you don’t, I would tell you to give me your cell phone, your social media password, and about ten minutes, and I can probably tell you what god the true God is having to contend with.
For many of us, it’s relationships. That girlfriend that we can’t get enough of. That family member that soaks up all of our time. The friend that drags you into their drama every day. Might even be something that you NEED to spend a lot of time with, like your immediate family. (Wife, kids…. Takes a lot of time and you should be there, but if you can’t balance serving them while serving God, that balance needs to change). Maybe your god is money. How much time do you spend, how much energy do you invest in trying to make it in this world, getting ahead? Maybe you have things in your life that you value so much that you would have a hard time letting them go if The Lord asked you to. Some of us worship at the altar of sex. The list could go on and on. The important thing to realize about the idols of yesterday, and the idols of today, is that they really haven’t changed. Those “graven images” of the Old Testament, even back then, represented those things. There was a god of love, god of war, gods of the “Mother Earth” or elemental type (earth, water, wind, fire), gods for worshiping money, food… The list was unending, and even went to the point of having an altar to worship “the unknown god” once, because they couldn’t even put a face to what they wanted to worship.
As the people of God rubbed shoulders with the pagan world around them, they began to expose the world to their God, but they also brought home the pagan idols. So here in Joshua, after everything has been established in this new land, Joshua gives the Israelites two things. First he gives them a history lesson. He wanted them to see where they’d come from, and remind them of everything they’d done, the places that they’d been and all the different gods they’d brought with them. And then he gave them a choice. I love the way he put it, too:
“Now fear The Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve The Lord. *BUT IF SERVING THE LORD SEEMS UNDESIRABLE TO YOU* then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the river, 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 24:14-15)
Our Turn
What’s it gonna be? What are you going to invest yourself in? Who are you going to go all in for? Are you going to chase the right now or are you going to serve the god of forever? What is first in your life? Is it your family when it should be God? Are you worshiping a substance by giving it a high place in your life? Love? Money? What preoccupies your heart? What can you not function without? Choose you this day. Today
I love that I can jump up to New Testament and hear Christ say something very similar. He said “if anyone would come after me,
he must deny himself and take up his cross DAILY and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
he must deny himself and take up his cross DAILY and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
Jesus knew that for us, this choice was going to be a day by day commitment. Every day, we are going to be faced with a choice. Are we going to serve him, be obedient to him, and follow him with everything we have, or are we going to decide to pick up our baggage instead of our crosses, clinging onto the comforts and complications that we hold so dear? There are an awful lot of things that we can place before God in our lives. Every time you prioritize someone, or something, above him, you take God off the throne in your heart, and you replace him with that thing. You need to choose, today. Tomorrow, you’ll wake up, and you’ll have to choose again. Does it mean that you wake up each morning and you have to get saved all over again? Of course not! But this is how you stay committed in your walk with The Lord. You choose this day, who you will serve. We can’t have middle ground here. Serve God, not man. Fear God, not man.
As you go about your day, may you see each choice ever clearly. May you hear the whisper of The Lord, leading your decisions. May he be the God of your life, in every circumstance, holding your hand in every choice, and may you choose to keep him on the throne. Today.
(Coming soon, Part 2)
**Nate is a singer, songwriter, and worship leader. He is a husband and a father of 2 girls. He and his wife work out of their home doing contracting and crafts. Find him here .
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