Day 4

Day 4 – June 7, 2009

This is the day that the Lord has made and I will rejoice and be glad in it.  I have not done any exercise of the body today, but my mind has been racing laps around an issue I have to deal with.  After attending a barbeque for a friend’s father, I know more than I did before. I have a choice.  Evil presents itself, tempting you to take the “apple”.  We see only half of the coin – the pleasure side, the feel good, but never the pain and the sting that comes from indulging.  God does give us a free will and with it we have the right to choose.  “Choose today whom you will serve”, Joshua told the people of Israel.  At some point, we must take responsibility for our choices.  I choose what I am going to eat, or wear. I choose what I will allow or what I will do. I choose whether or not to submit to temptation or to take that door of escape that God provided.  I choose to live or die, by the confessions of my mouth.  I have a role to play in the balance of life.  God, my heavenly Father, has given me that right.  This in no way lessens His sovereignty or negates His deity.  He is God all by Himself and He will have mercy on whomever He so desires, making the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.  Yet, He says to me Choose.  Today I choose not to forsake His ways. Today I choose not to over indulge in the temporary pleasures set before me.  Today I choose to stand alone, leaving the main stream and the crowd behind me. Today I choose to serve the Lord. 

Joshua 24: 15 (New King James)

¹⁵ And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

Prayer:

Father, I choose to serve you.  I choose to put aside those things that are in contradiction to your mandate and will for my life.  I choose Father, to lay aside the weight that has so easily beset me.  I choose to be a light, and to remain unmoved in my stance of you.  I choose to uphold your name...I choose to be different than the rest. I choose not to bow down before the graven image of any false God.  Father, I choose to submit to you. I choose to serve you. Amen.