And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. ~Joshua 24:15 

For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved the name Joshua. So many times I’d say “any single guy named Joshua gets a +1 in my book!” My adoration of the name was because of the above verse: Joshua chose God when not everyone was. When it wasn’t the trendiest thing to do, he chose serving the Lord over any other.

In the last few months God has been opening my eyes to the fact that life is all about choices.  As I mentioned before, when my world was falling apart God gave me a choice and I chose worship.  As my 21 day fast continued, I made an ever growing list of choices such as “Monday I chose to worship You and today Lord, I choose to worship You and to trust You.”  Let us, when events occur in our lives, through God’s strength and grace, make the choice to worship, trust, and know that God is good and His mercy endures forever and that He has EVERYTHING in His hands.  Hold on to Romans 8:28 and know that good and bad works out in the end.

I was talking with one of the guys about this concept yesterday. Honestly, it was probably one of the best conversations about God that I’ve had in a while. We ended up talking about the fact that God is okay with us being human. Jesus lets us weep and cry out to Him and it is in our choice of reaction that we forge our destiny. When my car hit the guardrail while I was driving on that mountain road, my pastor and his wife called me up and we prayed over the phone together.  We soon broke into worship and it was IN THE MIDDLE OF WORSHIPING JESUS  that I got the phone call saying that I was set up with a rental in the middle of the night so that I could go to bed worry free, knowing I had a way to get to the conference the next day! THAT is God! However, before that happened my first reaction to the accident wasn’t to jump up and worship as I looked at my car- it was:

God I’m SO FRUSTRATED!!! I thought everything was turning around! I AM SO FRUSTRATED GOD!!!!

I know that yes, I could have had a MUCH better first reaction, but I also feel like God blessed me because despite the initial frustration, I went from “pity me” to “Lord, despite it all, I trust You and I worship You.” It took me longer than it should have, but I learned a lesson in my hesitation to immediate worship- it was fruitless because in the end God did have it all in His hands!

Jesus, 

I ask that You now solidify in our hearts that with every event in our lives we have a choice. We can choose to do things our way or do things Your way. We can choose to worry or we can choose to worship.  We can decide to walk away from you because of fear and doubt or we can choose to walk towards you- hurtling ourselves in Your arms when things go wrong.  Let us choose worship. Let us choose trust. Let us believe and know that You are sovereign and above all things, even the problems of our lives.  Thank You for understanding that we are human and allow us the space to come to You when we hurt and just sit in Your presence and say “Lord, I choose to trust You, but it hurts so much right now.”  To declare, “Lord, my heart is breaking but I know it is in Your hands.”  To resolve “Lord, I am afraid, please help me with this fear for I choose to worship You even though I am so afraid right now.”  I love You Jesus with all my heart. 

Rebekah M.