Choose This Day Who You Will Serve

When we allow God into our life, something huge happens. When we finally submit and say “Lord, I want to follow you and I want to serve you.”, something drastic comes out of this. We cannot stay the same. It’s simply not an option. When God, being the light that He is (1 John 1:5), comes into our life, we get a little splash of that light in our life and people are going to notice – trust me.

God begins creeping into your life and changing things until you become someone unrecognizable. He permeates into every aspect of our life – how we talk, how we dress, how we act toward others, what we spend free time doing, everything. But He will not force Himself. Because we’ve been given a choice, God will not make us change. And unfortunately, most people choose not to change. Or maybe they only change part of their life....Maybe they decide to stop cursing but they still joke about crude things. Or maybe they stop watching inappropriate movies, but they still gossip. That’s not the way it works. Are we going to mess up at times, and does it take time to grow? Absolutely. Are we going to achieve perfection on this Earth? Nope. But that is no excuse to not work at it. Perfection is what we are striving for, because Jesus is the example that we have been given (1 Peter 2:21).

You know those before and after pictures of things that used to be disgustingly dirty and then they get cleaned and they look great? That’s basically what becoming a follower of God is like. The world we live in pollutes us and corrupts us, and makes us filthy before God. And when we submit to God, He strips things away one at a time and makes us clean.

Everything that is in this lifetime on this Earth will fade away, but the word of God does not. (Isaiah 40:8) Sure, you got a great job, you have great friends, your outfits are super cute...but where’s your relationship with God? Are you reading the Bible? Like, really reading it and not just a 5 minute daily devotional? Are you spending time in prayer? How much time? 30 seconds? A minute? Do you fall on your face before God? Do you humble yourself? Do you have reverence for the God of the universe who created everything? (Hebrews 11:3)

“15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life – is not from the Father but is from the world.” (1 John 2:15-16)

The problem today is that we’ve become so blinded to the darkness that this world has to offer. It's like we’re fumbling around in a room with no lights on and expecting to safely navigate through, and things don’t work like that. We’re enslaved to the world and we don’t even realize it (Romans 6: 16-23). “I’m not enslaved to anything!” you might say. Really? Because that’s what some of the Jews said to Jesus, and he said otherwise.

“31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 33 They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”

34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:31-36)

So in this life, we have two options. We’re either slaves to sin, or slaves to righteousness. (Romans 6: 18) But Satan has blinded us and the world, why? Because he doesn’t want anyone to see the light that comes from the gospel. (2 Corinthians 4:4) The world teaches that sin is freeing. You’re made free because you don’t have all these rules to follow, you aren’t tied down to anything. Sure! Go party, let loose, live a little, be free. Welllll the Bible talks about this too. And sin does not free you.

“They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.” (2 Peter 2:19)

Of course Satan doesn’t want us to see the hope that is found in the Lord. He wants our sin to overcome us. He wants to keep us as far as possible from seeing the light that is God, because when we let God into our life He sheds light on the bars we’re sitting behind.

The bars of sin.

So now we have this light. We’ve been called out of this darkness. (1 Peter 2:9) And bit by bit we have to let things go as God reveals them to us. Now that our eyes have been opened (1 Corinthians 2:14), we see that these things we once found entertaining and fun, or part of our regular routine are contrary to God. Just think – if Jesus walked into the room right now, would he be proud of what I’m doing? Man, every time I think of that, it’s convicting. If Jesus walked into the room right now, would he be proud to call me a child of God? The Holy Spirit is going to convict you, but you have to make the choice to submit to it. (John 14:26)

I want you to look at this picture. What do you see in it? It’s a grey-ish white room, very clean. Spotless, really. I want you to look at the couch and notice the shadow. The darkness that’s underneath it. The light isn’t able to reach under there, because the couch is in the way. The light will never be able to reach there unless the couch is taken out of the room. In the same way, we all have things in our life that create darkness. Things we don’t want to let go of and don’t want to take out. But God can’t spread His light in that area of our life until we’re willing to let go.

It can be hard to change. It’s so hard to change something you’ve done your whole life, something you’re used to. And we may be weird to other people – it’s all part of being a peculiar people…emphasis on the peculiar. People may talk about us behind our back or mock us to our face (1 Peter 4:4). But it is so worth it. Because this world is fading away, and at the end all that’s going to matter is in what way we lived our life for God.

“Since everything will be dissolved in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to conduct yourselves in holiness and godliness.” ( 2 Peter 3:11)

We need to keep each other accountable because it is hard! It’s so easy to slip up and to fall back into the ways of the world, because it’s so saturated in our society. But we have to do it. Yes, we’re going to make mistakes, but we need to start being ambassadors for Christ, and a soldier for God. We need to stop making excuses and start making action.

“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)