Today's encouragement comes from Joshua 24:15a, where we read these words:
"And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve . . . “Good leaders do not “beat around the bush”; but, instead, they get right to the point. Joshua knew that all his hearers would end up serving the true God, or a myriad of idols. He also knew that the fallen heart of man was *so* wicked, that it [the fallen heart] would conceive of serving the living God as an “evil” thing.
. . . Therefore, Joshua simply cut through all the evasions and pretenses, and called the people of Israel to honestly own the God (or gods) that they would inevitably and unavoidably serve. All the regenerated saints of Christ’s church have chosen, by grace, to serve the Lord Jesus Christ—(and this is because God first chose them).
[Puritan quote of the day: "What is the reason why carnal hearts seek up and down for comfort in this and another lust? It is because they do not have enough in God.” —Jeremiah Burroughs, in, "Hope"]