“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” – Joshua 24:15 (KJV)

In this passage, Joshua is telling Israel to make up their minds; to choose who they were going to follow, and is calling them to stop living their lives halfway. In this, he made a profound statement: “but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” Joshua is declaring that regardless of their decisions, he has set his path; he knows who he serves.

This raises a question for us: Who do we serve? Where do we dwell spiritually? These two go hand in hand, you will dwell in what you serve, whether that is money, fame, yourself, or the Lord. Christ says that we cannot serve two masters (Mathew 6:24), so who will it be? It is easier to do what we want to do, to have fun without a care in the world. If God loves us so much, why doesn’t He make it easy to follow Him? Why would He allow us to suffer?

My family moved to South Sudan when I was eleven years old. For a small child, it was the perfect adventure, and I could want nothing more. I happily went along with my parents as we moved to a new house, leaving behind everything we had ever been familiar with eight-thousand miles away.

Things were fun at first. I got to experience new things such as making crude furniture from mahogany, attempting to light charcoal with gasoline, and bringing water from a nearby well by the jerry can. I learned the basics of electronics, how to start a generator, and many other things that sparked a youngster’s imagination.

Every day was an adventure, from finding chameleons in the yard to going out and meeting new people in the village. I taught chameleons to eat from my hand, caught parrots, and held races with lizards and turtles.

Eventually, the fun wore off and reality settled. I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, quite literally, and I had left all the people I knew behind. I became angry and discontent; I didn’t want to be in Africa! I would dream about the food, friends, and family that were now gone, and all the while becoming angrier and angrier at both my family and God for taking me away from it all.

One day some time later, everything came crashing down. My dad was attacked, and almost died while we were on the field, and we had to return to the US for advanced medical care. During that time, I felt lost, broken, and aimless. I realized then that I was not serving God; I was living only to serve myself. All I cared about was what happened to me, and I didn’t care about what I did for Him, what truly mattered.

Is This My Story?

I realized that day who I was serving — not God, like I claimed it was, but myself. I saw that I was not in control of things like I thought I was when my dad was attacked, and when our lives became upturned. I liked to think that I could hold things together, at least with my own life, but when that happened I had a watershed moment and found that I’m not in control of things; God is.

How can we surrender ourselves to Him, and continue drawing closer as we do so? 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18 says that we should pray continually, and (Hebrews 10:22) calls us to draw nearer to the Lord; to dwell in Him, as Psalm 27:4 puts it. What does it mean to pray continually and dwell in the Lord?

“Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” – 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18

To me, praying without ceasing has three meanings:

1. We should pray often and frequently,
2. We should have a deep dependence on God, and
3. We shouldn’t give up on prayer.

Prayer, in simple terms, is communication with God. It is a powerful tool for us to ask for help, and it also allows us to have a deep and personal relationship with Him. But without dependence on God, and love for Him, would we spend the time praying to Him? When we realize how powerful God really is, how small and sinful/insignificant we are, and how much He loves us despite who we are, that understanding humbles us, and creates a dependence on Him, as we realize that we can’t do anything ourselves. It is that dependence, that knowledge that you are nothing without Him, which draws us to Him, and inclines us to pray.

Each and every one of us has most likely had a moment in their life when they doubted the power of prayer; I know I have. Some might call prayer foolish, and others might have lost sight of its importance, but the fact of its required prominence in a Christian’s life stands. C.S. Lewis once said, “I pray because I can’t help myself. …I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.” 

Prayer in the Bible is commanded of Christ’s followers. Philippians 4:6 says, “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” While we are told in many verses to pray, such as Ephesians 6:18, it is much more than a simple rule. Prayer makes us more like Christ and reveals to us the heart and mind of God. When we spend time talking to God with an open and submissive heart, He will slowly yet assuredly adjust our will and desires to be more like His.

We see in the Bible that even Christ prayed. (Luke 6:12, 9:28) He prayed alone, with other people, and for other people as well (Matthew 19:13-14). In John, we find that God wants to have a relationship with us.

“Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” – John 17:20-21

Christ shows us through His example the importance of prayer and communication with the Father.

I have been blessed to have seen the power of prayer in my life. When I was ten years old, my parents were short on money and needed help to continue deputation. We all prayed to the Lord and wrote down the amount we had asked for on a piece of paper. We kept those papers with the date marked to see what would happen. I remember coming up with the biggest number my ten-year-old mind could muster, and in just a few days, it came. My parents told me that we had received a donation without asking for it, and when I looked at the paper again, it was the exact amount that had been written. There have been many such other examples in my life as well, from praying for healing, for another person, etc. And God had answered each and every time with either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. He knows best!

In Psalms 27:4, David deeply sought after dwelling in the Lord, going so far as to say it was his one request of God; but what does it mean, to dwell in the Lord? Dwelling in the Lord means to live a life that is continually drawing nearer and nearer to God in love, submission and trust. It means to communicate with God all the time with the intention to glorify Him — not to be praised by people for it. Dwelling in God involves reading the word daily and spending time in prayer – specifically secret prayer away from people and just between ourselves and God. (Matthew 6:6) When we do that, we are changed into someone who is more like Christ. But it isn’t us who does the changing, that comes from God. It is God who causes us to grow, and it is God who adjusts our desires to match His, but we have to be willing to let Him.

If it is God who brings the change, then what is our role in this? As followers of Christ, we should be imitators, following His example. When we choose to follow Him, we do so with the understanding that only He saves us — not ourselves.

This is not the story of how I changed myself; this is the story of how God has worked through me, and how He grew me to be someone more like Christ.

This is God’s Story

While both God and Satan bring trials, (1 Peter 5:8-9, 1 Corinthians 10:13) their purposes for those trials are vastly different. God seeks to make believers as Christ-like as possible, something that can only happen with growth. That growth comes from the trials that He brings, and their purpose is to mature us as Christians. Satan, on the other hand, uses them to break believers down and to cause them to focus on themselves and their circumstances instead of God.

God allows trials to enter our lives, as shown in Job’s story, but He also causes them to happen (Hebrews 12:5-11). He does this to grow us to become more like Christ, but He also allows trials to bring believers back to Him, and to reveal their sin to them.

Job was a “perfect and upright” man who “feared God and eschewed evil.” (Job 1:1) He was the last person you would expect to have calamity fall upon, especially a tragedy that God explicitly allowed. But it happened nonetheless. Job 1:7 says that Satan was “going to and fro in the earth, and [was] walking up and down in it.” In other words, Satan was prowling.

After he had lost everything, Job’s wife told him to “curse God and die,” (Job 2:9) and his friends were hardly a comfort either. (Job 16:2) God used the terrible calamity that befell Job to show him that he was prideful and had forgotten his place before God. (Job 42:3)

In the same way that a plant requires water from a storm to grow, the Christian needs hardships. “Tried with fire”, as the Bible puts it (1 Peter 1:7), is not only something to expect but is something we should also rejoice in (1 Peter 4:12-13) as we are being formed, slowly yet surely, into someone who is more like Christ.

   God also sometimes uses trials to discipline believers. Hebrews 12:5-11 says, “… My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.” We should endure trials as discipline from the Lord; if we are His children then we should naturally expect to be lovingly disciplined. If we are not disciplined then we are not legitimate children of God.

So, if we are to expect this, how can we cope with it? First, we can change our perspective on trials. Peter was only able to walk on water while he kept His eyes fixed on Jesus, and when his focus shifted to the storm, he started sinking. In the desert, the Israelites could only be saved from the snakes by fixing their gaze on the staff, and when they looked away they were bitten.

Having the right perspective on hardships is very important. But Satan is on the prowl, actively searching and trying to make us think only about ourselves, and not God’s work in those hardships. The Deceiver wants us to look away from the staff, away from Christ.

Back in late 2016, we were forced to leave South Sudan because of a civil war that had broken out in the area. We moved to a city in Uganda close to the capital to make traveling for paperwork easier. It was a very stressful time, and I was sucked into video games. People often use something as a ‘crutch’ of sorts when times are hard, and video games are what I went to.

I walked away from all that I had learned while in South Sudan, leaving the responsibilities and lessons behind. It wasn’t until far later that I realized what I had done and what I had lost. During that time Satan had gotten to me and brought my focus in on myself, not on God. I neglected any spiritual growth I had received, drifted backward into crutches, and let a long period of time go to waste.

“[Redeem] the time, because the days are evil.” – Ephesians 5:16

I have chosen now who I serve, and where I dwell. If I call myself a child of God, then the Lord has commanded me to follow Him and no other (Deuteronomy 13:4). But with that comes God’s discipline, and guidance in the form of trials. I now realize that my story is not my own; it is God’s story. The story of how He changed my life and is continuing to shape it to this day.