God, First and Only

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Joshua called Israel to a heavy commitment. He is calling us to the same commitment today. It should be entered into with eyes wide open. "Fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth and put away the gods which your fathers served. . . and serve the Lord. . . As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." We cannot sincerely and truthfully serve God until we put our idols away!

As believers it is our main calling to serve God.  When we become a part of a church, we typically look for just the right way to serve Him.  Then we jump into ministry and determine that we are now "serving" God.  Don't take me wrong.  Serving in a ministry we feel called to certainly is service to God.  But there is a big difference between doing service to God and serving Him.  We only need look at today's verse in Joshua 24: 14-15 to realize that difference.

"Doing" ministry is easily defined.  It is actively participating in God's work by implementing our God-given gifts to further the gospel of Christ.  But by using the verse quoted above we can define what a life committed to serving God looks like.

It begins with fear, a holy reverence for God.  That fear is what stirs up inside of you as you think of the magnitude of your God.  This reverent awe understands that God is Supreme and we are nothing without Him.  So, logically we can say that before we serve the Almighty we have to utterly respect all that He is, and says, and does.

Once we find that we respect Him in those terms, we begin to have a "heart" to be obedient to Him.  It is in fearing God that we become truly sincere in our relationship with Him, and that sincerity flows out of a heart of humility that knows He is the Potter and we are merely clay being molded by His might hands.  This molding causes us to realize just how ugly our heart is.  His molding and reforming reveals the things the He desires to change in us.  In this process the ugly truth comes out and is replaced with His truth.  

It is the next line of the verse that tells the real story of our ugly, dirty, sin-stained hearts.  "Put away the gods. . ."  Do you realize that every sin you commit comes forth out of your heart, from a place inside that is worshiping and serving some other god, even if that god is you?  When you watch something on the television or computer that you know God hates, your god in that moment might be Lust.  If you must have the trendiest clothes for yourself or your children, your god is Materialism or Prestige.  When you are addicted to texting or you simply must take every call that comes in on your cell phone (even when you are on a call that you have made to someone else), your god might be Self-Importance.  When you get up in the morning and spend no time with God throughout the whole day, your god is Self.  What are your gods?  You cannot serve gods and God at the same time.  

Joshua's message is screaming at us today in 2011!  We wonder why we are not impacting the world.  We wonder why we are not spiritual growing.  We wonder why we feel so dissatisfied with our lives.  The answer is clear.  We are god-loving Christians who leave God behind for every other god that we serve.  If we want to truly and sincerely love the God we say we fear, then we must put away our gods!  

This will always be left up to our choice.  God will not do a "microwave zap" to heat up our cold hearts.  It is OUR choice.  Joshua declared without disclaimer (it mattered not who else would follow his lead), "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!"  He could not truly say this unless in his own heart he had removed any god that would keep him from serving in sincerity and truth.   "Choose for yourselves today whom you will serve!"  Will it be the gods of your past, your current gods, or the Lord God Almighty?