One of the most popular Bible verses of all time is Joshua 24:15, “but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” I love this verse as a sweeping declaration. Joshua makes it clear to his family, with all the Israelites as witnesses, what his intentions are. But we often forget the thing that happens right before it, and the context only adds to the power of the statement: Joshua’s greatest concern was not whether the Israelites would choose the wrong god. His concern was whether they would choose at all. Their problem was complacency.
And so was mine. My late teens and early twenties were spent in complacency, slowly drifting. I had a vision for my life, sure. But that was all abstract, with nothing concrete in mind. I remember telling a person that my dream was to get a job that paid well enough that I could eat lunch at Chipotle everyday. I had many ideas as to how that would happen, such as getting a job in finance, but I was unable to put my feet to the pavement and do anything about it. All of my dreams had to do with what I would do once I got there and nothing to do with how to get there, if you catch my meaning.
My weeks were pretty formulaic. I went to work because I had to pay bills, but also because then I had some free money that I used on endless amounts of entertainment. From the time I got home to the time I fell asleep on my couch, my TV was on. Whether I was cooking or just vegging on the couch with a beer in my hand, that TV was on. And I thought I enjoyed it. But my life was endlessly pursuing this endless, wasteful endeavor. I just didn’t realize it yet.
I would fall asleep on the couch, then meander to my disorganized bedroom somewhere around midnight. Then snooze my alarm several times before lazily getting out of bed. Somehow I was always late to work - just barely, but still. I’d plop down at my desk and start typing away at those emails, which weren’t going to send themselves. I was still amassing a large library of books that I told myself I would get to, when I had time. I ate fast food most nights, just stopping in for a quick bite. And after a few months of this I had put on a lot of weight. I hadn’t finished a single book in months, if not years. I had made no progress educationally, financially, or physically. And much more: I had nothing to do with God.
And then I read Joshua. I don’t even know why. I just did, I read it all in one sitting at a coffee shop. And I got to this part that I recognized, “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” It was framed, posted on the wall in my parent’s house when I was young. And I remember thinking, “That’s not all the verse says.” I realized that in context it says much more: It calls out the luke-warm believers, it calls out the complacent...
It’s calling out... Me.
I closed my Bible. And I prayed for the first time in years. I asked God for forgiveness for the errs of my ways. I hadn’t done drugs, robbed anyone, or killed a person. It wasn’t some active rebellion against God, but a passive one. My sin was that I was wasting my life drifting away from His purpose. I became comfortable in my drift. I was luke-warm. And this way of living was the laziest, most addicting way to waste a life. It was seriously dangerous. I knew then: It was time to make a choice.
Enter Joshua, who was simple in his request: “Choose for yourselves this day who you will serve: The God of your ancestors or the gods of the people of this land. But for me the choice is obvious: I WILL SERVE THE LORD!”1
This all sounds overly simplified, and it probably is. The choice itself is easy, living it out is much more difficult. But you have to make a choice to choose. Because the alternative is that you will waste your life. The Drift will eat your life away, and one day you will look up at 40 years old and wonder where your life went. Don’t let that be the case. You have dreams. You desire to serve the Lord. So choose.
Just my own summation, not a direct quote.