Today, I want to talk to you about a concept in psychology known as decision fatigue. Simply put the more decisions you have to make, the less likely you're gonna make quality decisions. So as quantity of decisions go up, sometimes, not always, sometimes the quality of decision making goes down. Now on a personal level, I've experienced that as we've gone through this building project, I drastically underestimated the number of decisions you have to make all the time. If, if you've been in a building project, whether for work or for a house or school or something, you understand that there's just so many decisions constantly and you find yourself getting exhausted. How would you, how do you handle stress in your life? Like how do you when you feel overwhelmed at work or relationally or financially when you're processing? How, what is your outlet? Right? Because we tend to not necessarily lean to the healthiest of options, not that everything is really bad, but we lean to things that aren't really productive in our lives, right? We we lean towards Binging Netflix or eating sweet or mindlessly scrolling and going down the rabbit hole of some random sports statistic or story, which is my stress response of choice there. And so whatever your response is, as the number of decisions go up and then the significance of the decisions go up. Sometimes our stress level or quality of decision making goes down. It's actually been shown uh Chip and Dan Heath did the study where they looked at 1100 parole cases hearings. And over the course, they want to see what was the common denominator of whether somebody received a favorable ruling or an unfavorable ruling. And the common denominator was actually the time of the sentencing is that if you were first in the morning or the first after lunch, you had a much higher percentage of getting a favorable ruling and the lowest chance of getting a favorable ruling was right before lunch and at the end of the day, right? And so, you know, the idea of being hangry, right, hungry and angry and tired is true even for judges. And that because when we get overwhelmed or we get stressed or we get tired, it gets more difficult for us to make decisions because willpower itself is a limited resource. And as humans, we're faced with thousands of decisions every day. There's several studies online that actually say if you count every single thought and then your thought to the thought, you know what I'm saying? Like you think through the decision and then you think through the option and then you make your decision and then you question your decision and then you move and then you get distracted and think about other decisions, right? This is how it goes through life. If you combine all of those together, that some estimates say that the average adult has to process 35,000 thoughts a day. And even if you just take the random thoughts out of your hand and you talk through major decisions as daily judgments on average adults have to make 27 daily judgments a day. Well, if you take the average lifespan of a person together, that equals 773,618 decisions in your lifetime. And studies show that adults tend to regret one out of five decisions and maybe it's just for lunch or what you wear or what you said or did not say. But at the end of that, if you, if you total that up, that means that in your lifetime, you're going to regret roughly 100 and 43,262 decisions, there's a lot of choices to be made and a lot of decisions to be had. What if I told you that there is one decision, we'll call this your greatest decision that if you make one right decision, it could impact all of the others. See, I believe this to be true and, and really here is this one decision, choosing God will change the direction of your life, if you can choose God now and in this moment, choosing God will impact every other decision you make in your life. And it is not just a, a results decision, but rather a direction. So instead of turning this way, you are turning this way and the direction decisions in your life impact generations to come. You see, when you choose to go in the direction of God, it's, you're choosing direction over drifting, its direction, over drifting that healthy things, healthy choices don't happen by default, that you have to be intentional and you have to say them repeatedly. There are some that are in this room that have officiated their weddings or weddings of their family members. And one of the things I commonly say when officiating a wedding is that great marriages are not made in a day but made through our daily choices. If someone asked me, hey, John, how is your marriage? I don't go December 16th. It was like, oh no, I didn't ask when the anniversary is. It is the right date, right? Yeah, I'm just kidding. No, it is. I'm confident. I think so. December 16th, right? But yet we do that with faith. Here's what I mean. Hey, how's your walk with God? I, I prayed a prayer when I was five. You know, I went to summer camp 10 years ago, right? I I went to church last year, right? Healthy relationships are not made in a day, they are made daily. And the same is true. When it comes to God, by default, you will drift. If you follow the tides of culture and choices, you will drift and you will change. We live in a finicky world and we know that because just look at the past decades of hairstyles and clothes, things change, people change. And so we can just ride along and drift along with as the world has it, or we can actually choose the direction we want our lives to go. When you choose God, not only do you choose direction over drifting, you also choose conviction over circumstance. You do not have to be defined by something that has happened to you. Because a lot of our circumstances, some of them relationally, someone betrayed, someone broke something hurt, maybe physically with a health battle, maybe financially with a lost job or a global pandemic or a financial downturn. There are a lot of things in your life that you cannot control. But choosing God says I am not going to stay a victim, but I am going to be victorious that I am not just going to be simply overwhelmed the rest of my life, but through Christ, I am going to overcome. You don't have a story of perseverance unless there's an obstacle in the way. There are no movies in Hollywood that you just turn on and you sit down and it's a perfect life from beginning to end conflict is what makes the story and your life is an incredible story. And so you're don't judge the entire story by one chapter or one sentence and one chapter, what you're walking through right now does not have to be a period. It could just be a comma and years from now, the story you tell your kids and your grandkids and generations to come is gonna be based on what you choose. Now, when you make a choice to choose God, which is conviction over circumstance. The last thing here is that when you choose God, you are choosing, calling over crowd, you are listening to the voice of God and who he's called you to be and what he's called you to do versus the thousands and millions of voices of this world that change that drift that will pull you away. And I can't think of a time in my lifetime or in ministry where people are hearing more voices on a daily basis. When you talk about 24 hour news cycles, you talk about in world and missions and things that they talk about being global, meaning that everything is global and everything is local. And so it feels like do you ever turn on the news or scroll through social media? And all of a sudden you feel like you're carrying the weight of the world and then what do we do in that moment? Well, now I'm gonna go work out and eat healthy, right? Or, or we find ourselves stuck, right? But healthy things start with intentional choices. And when you understand that I'm going to choose based on my calling and not the crowd, it'll alter the direction of your life in Christian circles and in religious circles, they oftentimes debate what percentage is the sovereignty of God? And what percentage is the free will of man? It's known as Calvinism versus Armenian is just to group it together. And people ask me, ok, John, what percentage? How much of it is God? How much of it is it of us? And my response always is. Yes. Well, no John, but which one is that I go? Yes. So the Bible doesn't relieve the tension. And so I don't feel the need to relieve the tension because both things can be simultaneously true. See the sovereignty of God, the fact that God chose you, the God that draws people to himself, that God is all powerful, all present, all knowing actually leads me to sleep at night to give me peace because you can trust that God is in control. Because if it was fully up to you, you would live petrified that someone's salvation is based on your actions or even your own salvation is based on your actions. That's a lot of pressure and we could live petrified. But our job is to share God's job is to save. And when you're walking through a difficult circumstance or season in your life. You can trust that God is sovereign. God is in control and that this isn't the end. So you have these great verses where God chose God's plan. You know, all these things that we can rest at night and sleep at night because we sleep. God doesn't have to, right. God's got the whole world, the whole universe in his hands. And so that allows us to rest that he's got it. But on the flip side, along with those verses that say God chose God predestined God for new, there's also hundreds of verses that say believe, follow, obey walk. Those demonstrate, those demonstrate our choices, our choice of ringtones and of phones in there, right? We make daily choices every day of what we have, right? We're gonna talk about that one, Glenn. I don't not that it rang but that the the ringtone itself, we need to make some, we need to pray for that one. But when you think through it, we are making daily choices. God's gonna move whether we believe in Him or not. God is doing just fine. But what God is doing is by giving us free will is inviting us into a greater story. The very first story, Adam and Eve in the garden, often times people focus on the negative. Why would God put the tree of forbidden fruit in the garden? Well, if you're gonna have love, you have to have free will because if you don't choose to love, then is it really love? And what we forget is that while there is one tree of the forbidden fruit, there was thousands in an entire world of freedom available to them. But as humans, our nature is to what, what, what want, what we can't have, right? If I take a dot On a paper and I hold it up, I say, what do you see Every time someone go a dot When that dot represents maybe 1% of the paper. But we focus on that as kids don't touch the stove. What do they want to do? Touch the stove, right? All the time. We always want what we can't have. But that choice is there, meaning we have the opportunity, the invitation to walk in the love and life and blessing of God, but we've got to choose it. God's gonna write his story and God's gonna work in and through the choices of human beings. This is why it's fully God and it's also free will. It's a both and do I understand it? No, but am I grateful for it? Yes, because you can think God is all powerful and because he's all powerful, then I'm gonna love and choose to love him each and every day, right? So now as we talk about this, we're gonna talk about this idea of yes, having peace from the sovereignty of God, but also having purpose from our daily choices. The greatest choice you can make is, is described by this warrior leader Joshua. So we're wrapping up our study of Joshua today, there's 24 chapters. We weren't gonna go through all the chapters. I invite you to read that. But a quick recap, the people were enslaved. The people of Israel were enslaved in, in Egypt, Moses leads them out. They send some spies into the promised land. Joshua was one of them. He comes back. Hey, we can do it. A majority of the people go. No, we can't. So because of their unbelief, they were left wandering in the desert for 40 years. Yet God still provided food for them and they get right to the end of the promised land. And then Moses dies. God goes to Joshua and says, you're gonna lead them in and he says to be strong and courageous, that courage is not just something we do, but it's who we are. And then we last week we shared that one of their early battles was the city of Jericho where they won that battle through the praise and worship and obedience to God. They literally walked around the walls, played some praise trumpets and then shouted and the walls came down and that worship is a weapon when you walk in it and you walk in it with him. And so they go and they'd have all these battles and so they battle Jericho. They battle this city A I which I thought about, oh, that's interesting with today. A I, but I was like, no, I'm not gonna go there for now. And uh and then they go through, there's a Southern campaign, there's all kinds of battles, there's a northern campaign, then there's a conquest of the Canaanites. And so this covers really Joshua six through Joshua 13 and then the remainder of the book chapters Thirt uh 14 or really 13 and then 14 to 24 is them in possessing the land and they distribute the land and who what tribe gets what? So there's 12 tribes, they're splitting them up around the land and we get to the end of his life, Joshua is almost 100 and 10 at this point. He knows he's at the end. And if you know you're at the end, you wanna really take what you say very seriously and say, remember this, do this, don't do that. And so he gathers all the leaders in Joshua 23 and he reminds them of the promise of God from Joshua one, be strong and courageous for I am with you. And he says, be strong and courageous, do not turn from the word of God. And so they listen and they rally the people and then he gathers everybody. And in chapter 24 the first couple of verses, he walks through their history. He says, hey, remember Abraham, he wasn't following God and the people from across the river, but he called them out, changed, his name, changed his life, changed his direction. And so then he goes, he has a son. Isaac talks about him, talks about Jacob, then talks about Moses leading the people out how God was faithful to them even when they were not faithful to God for, for 40 years. And then he reminds them, hey, don't forget about all the battles we just went through. see the main character of Joshua is actually not Joshua. It's God and Joshua knows this. And so the 1st 13 verses, I invite you to read those. So you can see that he's walking through the faithfulness of God. And we get to verse 14 and we read this in verse 14. Now, therefore, every time you see a, therefore you wanna know why is it there? And so he's saying, hey, in light of all these things, we talked about Abraham Isaac Jacob Moses wandering in the desert, all these battles we faced, we are now in the promised land. It's the end of my life. Therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness, put away gods that are your fathers um that your father served beyond the river and in Egypt now pause here for a second. Why do you say the phrase put away parents? If you say to your kiddos, put away your toys, what what is obviously filled with, filled the room, toys and kids can mess up a, a clean room faster. I don't even know what like you could, you could blink an eye and the room is just completely destroyed with laundry and toys and, and stuff everywhere. And the reason you say put your toys away is because everything's out. Ok. So they are in this land, there's all these different gods and beliefs. And so now Joshua is saying fear, the Lord serve him and put away those idols. It's not for you. You don't say put away unless they're actually out and present. So in a culture where people are worshiping and people had worshiped, he said, look, this has been going on for decades and decades and decades, put away those things. And then verse verse 15, he says, and if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, then choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your father serve in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But I love this phrase here. But as for me, in my house, we will serve the Lord. So look, you do what you want. God is good, whether you choose to believe in him or not. God is just fine, but God has invited you into a greater story, a bigger story, a story of peace, a story of purpose. And if you wanna follow those other gods that lost all those battles, that left us wandering in the desert. You can do so. But for me, in my house, we're choosing God, see, choosing God really changed the direction of Joshua's life. And it starts see Joshua served God his whole life. But one thing he starts here, he doesn't say serve God. He starts by saying fear. God. What this means is that our service to God is a response to our reverence. For God fear is not simply like terrifying, but rather a respectful awe you see in the New Testament too, when the disciples first encounter Jesus, after a miraculous catch of fists, their first response is not to fist bump. What up homeboy? It was the fall of their face and say, I'm not worthy. The gospel writer John, when he wrote the book of Revelation, he gets a vision from God in revelation one and his first appearance, even just a glimpse of who God could be and is falls to his face and says, I am not worthy. Our response to God is one of respect and reverence and awe. And when you have that awe, the natural inclination that is to worship and to serve. And I would say to serve God is to worship. And so, but what is served? He says, well, to serve God with sincerity and faithfulness. What is sincerity? Well, sincerity is about being genuine. It's not about being perfect but being authentic. I think one thing that is gonna be healthy in our church cultures today is that you're seeing a lot of demise of things and the bringing down of institutions when that might not be great, obviously. But some of these things that are coming to light is that they want people to be real, to be honest, to be sincere, to be authentic. Are you being genuine as a leader? Are you being genuine as a human? Not that you're being perfect, but you've made a directional decision in your life and say for me and my house, we're going this way. It's amazing what relationships will do that if somebody messes up and goes to the other person and says, hey, I messed up. I am sorry, period. Not I am sorry but and then we go and explain and rationalize and you just kind of negate the apology, right? We, we do this as humans. I know I do as well. We do this. We want to rationalize and explain ourselves if you can actually sincerely genuinely honestly come before God or come before the person that you hurt and said, you know what? This isn't good, it changes things and it heals the relationship and you can move forward. Pastor Craig Rochelle always says this in his leadership podcast. He says people will want a leader that's always real than a leader. That's always right. So are you sincere? Are you genuine? Is it who you are? Are you the same person off stage? As you are on stage. And then the second thing is about being faithful and so being faithful is about being consistent, being consistent again, not perfect, right? If you work out one time, you're not all of a sudden gonna lose all the weight and gain all the muscles. It's not like if you've seen the movie The Matrix where you can just download something. I know Kung Fu, right? Like it doesn't work that way. So are you consistent again? It's not perfect. God's not taking a checklist. We're not working for God's love. We are responding to God's love. It says in John 14 6, Jesus says I am the way the truth and the life. That means when you choose God, when you choose Jesus, you are choosing life first. John 48 says that it is not that we love God, that God first loved us for God is love. So when you choose God, you are choosing love and so we're gonna make mistakes. We didn't do anything to earn our salvation. Joshua is saying we didn't win these battles. Remember Jericho? It wasn't like we walked real good and got to Oh yeah, I like that walk, walk, come down like there's not like a strategy session for how to shout, to make walls crumble. Like here's five ways to shout to make walls fall down like it, it's what happened was God won the battle and they trusted him and they walked in it and they believed. And so I said, so therefore fear the Lord have all in reverence and then respond to that with consistent service. It's not a, it's not about perfection, it's about just being genuine and, and living out what you believe. So the question there for yourself and for myself today is, are you being genuine and consistent? Are there areas where you need to change? We need to be honest, we need to process through now. What's great is God will work with you? It's called grace receiving something that you don't deserve. This idea here is so much bigger than that. And so how did people respond to this charge to choose God? Right. The peanut butter commercials there choosy moms choose Jiff, right? Courageous Christians choose God. Like you have to understand that it is a daily choice to make that if you want a healthy relationship, you gotta make some choices daily in family and friends, but especially with God and it changes the direction. So how did the people respond? Well, verse 31 it says Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord had did for Israel. This is great. You know, everybody passed the test. This is awesome except those that know the order of the books of the Bible right? After Joshua comes a whole book called judges where everything goes downhill. And the summary of judges can be found in judges 17 verse six where it says this in those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. If there is a verse that describes our culture right now, I think it's this everyone doing what feels right. What's true for me, it must be true. You can't tell me what to believe. You can't tell me my gender, my identity. You can't tell me these things that if I believe it, if it's right in my eyes, it is right. But in a world that drifts in a world that is dark, in a world that seems changing, you can't control any of those things. But what you can do is is for me in my house, we're gonna choose God. See the thing that scares me is that you look at God being love, you look at God being life, but the church is only one generation away from removal or revival. Now, your perspective on this can really change how we approach ministry. Because if we do not follow God, if we don't make being connected to a church community a priority for us, it's definitely not gonna be a priority for our kids and it's just gonna be gone a generation away. We can look at other countries to see this countries like Britain and, and others where they were producing some of the strongest Christian based messaging and sermons, sermons and writing in the world that 100 years later, less than 2% you're claiming Christianity. When we see this all around the world, we see it in our culture, right? Do we really think our culture is being more or becoming more or less Christian? But at the same time, there are also remnants and revivals like things this last year about the Asbury revival that when people are genuine and sincere and consistent and faithful in their faith, God is moving. I'm not worried about God and I'm not worried about the church because I've read the end and guess what God wins. But where I'm concerned is that I want our family, I want our church to be a part of this revival in this story. And then when we understand the urgency of the gospel and the message that we are one generation from being removed or revival, it gives us this idea to choose God because when you choose God, it'll change the direction of your life. So, but what do I mean? When I, when I actually say to choose God, what I mean? Well, three things on a practical basis. Number one is to remember what God's done. Remember what God's done. We can read scriptures, read the stories. But then think about what God's done in your own life. I think about all that God has done for mission growth in the process of launching a church right before a pandemic in the locations that we've met, the conversations that we've had to, the celebration. It's a, it's a praise and miracle that we got chairs. I can tell you that story too. I mean, everything. And so I to remember all that God has done changes your mindset. And the second thing we can do then is to then recognize God's presence because God is all present. God is here. It's about recognizing that he's here. Do we acknowledge his existence? You know, in my former life of youth pastoring when I'd go to schools, I'd bring pizza and stuff. So elementary schools and middle schools, high schools when I go into elementary school or middle schools, man, you were like a rock star, like you'd walk into the school. They're like pastor John w like high five. It's my bastard. He's got pizza. It's the greatest day ever. Right? High school. Not so much. I think the best I ever got walking into a high school cafeteria in my youth past days was one of these, what's up like people that on Sundays were praising God hands up, praying with leaders in bible studies. You put them in a different context. So like not now, do you acknowledge God's existence? Are we sitting here on a Sunday in a service where there is lighting and there is music like, wow, God, you are here. But then we get into that business meeting and that email and that following, we're like, ok, God, where are you? Because God is here, God is present. We have to acknowledge it because when you remember what God's done, when you recognize that He is here with you, not just here today, but on Monday and Tuesday and in that meeting with your family, when you're on a walk alone, wherever you are, whatever you're walking through, then that gives you the final thing which is you can respond to God's grace, to respond to God's grace. What is it as a church that we're called to do that? It says in Mark 1230 31 it says that you shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul or with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. And that the second command is just like this, that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. That there is no other commandment greater than these. What does it mean to choose God? It's to love him and to love others. I try to do something regularly with my kids is that when we do bedtime and we tuck them in, I've done this since I was little. And I would say if daddy could line up all the kids in the world and he could choose three, who would he choose and say Jackson Carter Chloe and say why? And at first they got excited and by the end of like because you love us. Yeah, daddy loves you. And when we pray, we always end prayers with God, help us to love you more every day and to love others the way that you do because see, here's the thing God has chosen us. But the question is, will you choose Him? You see, by default, by drifting, the world goes to grumbling. But we can choose gratitude by default. The world world chooses anger, but we can choose forgiveness. The world will choose and default to worry. But we can choose God and choose to worship. The world will say, choose yourself. God says, choose to serve the rules, say it's all about greed and what you can get. He says, no, it's not based on what you can get but what you can give and the world say just keep trying, do what you can. It's all about self and God says it's not about trying. It's about trusting. So choose me, choose me. Because if you choose God to be the center of your life, it will change the direction of every other decision of your life. Will you pray with me dear heavenly Father, we love you. We praise. You gotta pray that if there's someone there who has never believed in you as Lord and Savior, we can commit our lives today to you. Yeah, that you died on the cross for our sins, that you rose again to provide forgiveness. And eternal life and purpose and peace. And so God, we choose you today. We commit our lives to you. We respond to you. We believe in you Jesus and we choose you today and tomorrow. Because this one choice, this one decision to put our life and our faith and you can change the direction for all eternity, help us love you more every day. You love others the way that you do. And he says, then we pray amen. Church. I don't know the direction of the world. I can tell you it's probably gonna be dark. I don't know the choices others are gonna make. But for me and for our house and for this church, we're choosing God, will you stand and sing with us today.