Response: Choose This Day – Sermon 8.25.24
By Pastor Susan Schnieders
Choices. We make them every day. Lots of them. In fact, people who have studied such things
suggest that the average adult makes 33,000 to 35,000 decisions every day. What to eat, when
to eat, what to wear, what to say or not say, how to say it, and on and on. When I look back over
a day, I can remember only a small number of those decisions that I made very consciously and
deliberately. The rest of my choices were made in a split second without much conscious
thought or weighing things out, and I only know I made them because of where I am right now.
A good number of those decisions get made based on what’s easiest, most convenient, or most
efficient. What would my life look like if those criteria were the basis of all my life’s decisions? I
imagine my life would look very, very different and not very substantive at all.
The truth is, most of those 30,000 plus decisions get made by our minds, but without a lot of
thought. If we decided what we were going to eat every day or which direction to take to the
grocery store with the same decision-making approach we take to buying a house or a car, we’d
never get anything done! It would be paralyzing. And so, it’s a good thing that most of our daily
decisions get made mostly by habit or simple criteria, especially choices with light
consequences (like eggs or cereal for breakfast). However, habits develop from repeated,
deliberate choices, so at some point early on, we do need to make a deliberate, conscious
decision about even light-consequence actions, because the decisions we make end up making
us. There’s a cumulative effect to daily choices. Habitual decisions create the rails our life’s train
will run on.
That’s why Joshua’s challenge to the Israelites in chapter 24, one of the readings from this
Sunday’s sermon, is so very, very important. “Choose you this day whom you will serve” (v. 15).
This day. This day is the only place you have influence. We can’t change what’s past nor can
we pre-construct the future. But, this day, I get to decide, and what I decide today does have an
effect on the future. I get to lay track when I flex my choosing muscles. And this is what Joshua
is saying to Israel. He says that in the past, Israel’s ancestors served other gods, and this very
moment they have power to choose God or to adopt the gods of the people in whose land they
dwell now. Choices. Big choices with big consequences. Choices that will determine what kind
of people Israel will be. The people tell Joshua they will serve God, but Joshua refutes them
saying, “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not
forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, he will
turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you” (v.19-
20). Big choice, big consequence. But the people affirm they’ll serve the LORD.
As we know, they go on to leave the LORD and come back over and over and over again. They
build a habit of faithlessness, leaving and returning (by the grace and long-suffering of the
LORD) because they forget to make the choice this day every day. They don’t build a habit of
choosing the LORD.

Among the 35,000 choices you make every day, do you think about, consciously and
deliberately, whom you will serve? Do you consciously place before you all your god choices –
ease, convenience, power, prestige, wealth, self-promotion, self-preservation – and intentionally
choose? Or do you choose once a week on Sunday, while other habits bully your Sunday
choice the rest of the week? If we believe, as Peter did, that there is nowhere else to go, no one
else who has the words of eternal life (Jn 6:68), we must build a habit based on that belief. We
have to choose daily, deliberately and consciously and intentionally, the God who promises
good to us so we don’t forget. Create a daily practice for yourself to do this. Consciously and
intentionally make it part of your daily routine. If we want to be a people who follows God, every
day we must “Choose you this day whom you will serve.” Now, what’s for breakfast?