“Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates 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 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 24:14-15
Yesterday, we talked about the first thing Joshua did to lead his family to serve the Lord. There are two more things Joshua exemplified in his family leadership that I want to point out to you today in hopes that you will implement the same methods in the leadership of your own family.
The second thing you can do to lead your family to serve the Lord is to lead your family to forsake other gods. Everybody is going to serve some god, and everybody is going to believe in some religion - it may be the god of self, the god of ego, the god of success, the god of sex, the god of money, or the god of pleasure. Everybody serves one or the other. So as leaders of our families, we need to not only teach our children how to forsake other gods, but we need to model what it looks like to forsake all other gods for the sake of the Lord God Almighty.
Finally, the third thing you can do is to lead your family to follow the only God. What god are you and your family going to serve? You cannot avoid making this choice. You can claim to be agnostic, open-minded, indifferent, or say you really haven’t made a choice, but you really have. After all, making decisions is a funny thing, because to not make a decision is to make a decision. You either choose to worship and follow the only God or you choose not to.
Let me warn you. If you choose to follow the Lord, you will be in the minority in your community, in your city, in your state, in your nation, and in the world. Do you know what Joshua was saying in today’s key verses? He was saying in effect, “If I have to stand alone, if it is just me and my household and nobody else, we are going to serve the Lord.”
I believe more and more that many of us are going to have to be more willing to stand alone – those of us who are true followers of Jesus, who believe in the word of God, who believe that what is right is right even if everyone is against it and what is wrong is wrong even if everyone is for it. Therefore, we need to prepare our children that they may have to stand alone as well.
Dear Lord, I want nothing more than to lead my family to love and follow you. Give me the guidance, the boldness, and the strength to lead them in a life of serving you, even if that means we’re standing alone. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Topics: Family
