WALKING THE FENCE
Matthew 6:24
"No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.
I love hunting the high country of the Rocky Mountains. I've been on a few ridges where completely different basins fells off to either side. Occasionally you would hear or see elk in one side and off we would go. Sometimes it was a wrong choice and we wasted a full day of hunting. Life can be like that at times. Going off into the wrong valley can be a very expensive.
The date was 30 December 1899. First Mate Payton, on the passenger steamship Warrimoo, broke in to see Captain John Phillips, "we're only a few miles from the intersection of the Equator and the International Date Line." Captain Phillips took full advantage of the opportunity for achieving the navigational oddity of a lifetime. You see the ship was just a short distance from where the equator and the national date line crossed. He called his navigators to the bridge to check and double check the ships position. He changed course slightly so as to bear directly on his mark. Then he adjusted the engine speed. The calm weather and clear night worked in his favor. At midnight the Warrimoo lay on the Equator at exactly the point where it crossed the International Date Line!
What happened next is one of the most unique nautical experiences ever... The bow of the ship was in the Southern Hemisphere and the middle of summer. The stern was in the Northern Hemisphere and in the middle of winter. The date in the back part of the ship was 31 December 1899. Forward it was 1 January 1900.
This ship was therefore not only in two different days, two different months, two different seasons and two different years but in two different centuries-all at the same time.
This time of the year, many people affirm their belief in Jesus. They call Him a great teacher. a prophet, a great man. Some even call Him a Messiah. They might even confess Him as Lord and Master. They believe in Jesus.
However, many of these same people don't truly BELIEVE ON Jesus. Though they believe He is a great teacher, prophet, man, a Messiah, and even Lord and Master, yet they have not shifted their true devotion to only Him in a way that truly affects their lives. They do not obey His commands. They do not submit to His authority in all areas of their lives. They do not find their significance, satisfaction, and security in Jesus Christ alone. In short they do not BELIEVE on Him. The real question is whether or not you have placed Christ at the very center of your life. Is He the center of your identity and existence?
So many of us know the way through life with God... but we chose to struggle day after day on our own. We don't commit to a life with Him at the wheel. We instead want our own way and so the struggle continues. We like "riding the fence* and we pay a price.
Too often we're like the Warrimoo. We're right on the line between where we know we should be and where our old sin nature wants to hang out. If we stay there long enough, we will always fall back into where it looks easier and more fun. Like that ship on the international time line, that if it had stayed there long enough, the passengers would have died from lack of nutrition, we would do the same when we stay away from God.
If you straddle the fence long enough eventually you will fall and get hurt. There are costs and consequences to straddling the fence and the cost is high. In Matthew 10:32, Jesus encourages us, saying, "Therefore, everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven."
If you've been walking the fence between believing in God and believing on God (while living for Him).... It's time to choose which side you're on. You can only stay in the middle for so long. If we don't choose soon, our world today will certainly knock you off the fence and pull you into their side.
We have a choice as they did in Joshua 24:15
"choose you this day who you will serv
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