Joshua 24:15 "Choose this day whom you will serve..."

“Choose this day whom you will serve ... but as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).

Question:

 I’m preparing a Sunday message on the topic of choosing and would like to include this passage and an interpretation compatible with New Thought teaching.

Comment:

This passage is one of my personal favorites; it represents one of the earliest understandings of the spiritual law under which our shared human experience unfolds. The Israelites have stumbled through their wilderness experience as we often stumble through ours—by divine grace, without clearly understanding the spiritual energies at work. Their basic needs were met; those who could not release their focus on the past had to perish in the wilderness—as our own “thought people,” insistent on clinging to the past, must dissolve through human challenges. They crossed the Jordan River into a new relationship with the power of God, and have to this point been pretty reactive, fighting necessary battles and still relying on God to provide. 

Now, Joshua is introducing a deeper expression of spiritual truth. From now on, the Israelites’ lives will express according to the choices they make. If they want to continue to claim and enjoy the love and abundance of the Lord of their being—their indwelling Oneness with the Allness of God—they must make that choice. If they make other choices, they must expect other results. We are not here, as spiritual beings in human form, to be blindly obedient to the dictates of a distant God and accept whatever we receive as God’s will. We are here to create our life experiences according to the choices we make. God as infinite grace carries us through wilderness experiences of our own creation. But there comes a time when we must claim our own creative power if we are to move forward in spiritual expression.

Blessings!

Rev. Ed