Forks in the road

A man falls in love with a woman and then realises that she doesn't have a heart for God. But then he decides that he can't give her up. A preacher is prompted to speak some truth in the church, but then he keeps silent about it because he fears that some people might get offended. One man gets a job offer with a great salary, but then he will have to do some shady things. One man gets converted, and is apparently on fire for the Lord. But when he comes across the question of water baptism, he decides that he can't afford to lose the support of his family. When we make many such choices in our life, when we face a fork in our life, we may not realise that we are choosing one path at the cost of another. The Tempter tries to fool us by highlighting the advantages we will have, just as he did with Eve, when he is effectively asking us to ignore God and choose him instead. But these choices have a lot to do with the direction our life will take from there. The decision which Eve made, however innocent it might have looked at that time, led to worldwide destruction. Wrong decisions such as the examples given above will slowly take us away from the path of blessing which God had prepared for us. We may not recognise that we have made choices over God to follow earthly advantages!

God is a God of mercy. He is willing to forgive us and give us another chance. This grace was available even to the thief on the cross who had nothing from his side to plead with God. But he acknowledged his life of sin and placed his life into Jesus' hands and got saved. But what do most people do after they have made a wrong choice? They will invariably justify themselves and try to show, for example, how they have become great or rich in this world. But do they think of what they have lost in the bargain? Have we learnt to take our choices seriously, look ahead at the ways they would lead us?

Many people who consider themselves as Christians are assuming that they 'believe in Jesus' and therefore they are safe before God. But if this belief has not produced a recognition of who God is, how we stand before Him, what He expects from us, and lead us to decide to submit to Him in every part of our life, it is just like the belief in God that demons have, and which does not give us salvation. "You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?" (Jas.2:19,20).

When a man comes to the point of true conversion, he makes a clear choice for God against everything else. He realises that his problem is his sin, and he decides to turn away from sin to God. And then, every decision he makes is constrained by looking at whether it is what God wants from Him. Now we can see that many have not been born again like this, but only walked partially near to God. But it is still the time of grace, for us to make things right with God at least now.