HAVING TO CHOOSE

Sometimes we have to make a choice.  We have to choose what is good, what is right, what is perfect.  The only perfect person is the Lord.  This is why, when the Holy Spirit gnaws at us, we have to choose.  He will not let us rest, He will not let us have peace.  We can no longer live the way we once did, or the way the world says is OK.  We can no longer live in the flesh and WE MUST live righteously.  We MUST walk with integrity.   Actually, at this point it no longer becomes a choice, it becomes a necessity.

Those who do not walk in the light are not able to understand this necessity, this lack of choice.  When you reach this crossroad, this is where the Ruths and Naomis are separated.  Ruth was willing to go where her mother-in-law, Naomi went.  She was willing to accept Naomi's God as her own.  She even went so far as to say please stop asking me to leave you, because she was not going.   

If we are unwilling to walk with our friend, no matter where the Lord takes him or her, then that is where our roads part.  The parting does not have to be in animosity, it does not have to even be any conflict.  It is a reality.  Two people cannot walk on different roads and still hold hands. We have to be willing to follow where the Lord is leading us, even if it means losing that friend.  We must also be willing to give our friends also the freedom to choose, to walk with us or to go their own way. 

The apostle Paul understood this the most when he wrote in Romans 7:15 "For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do".  In other words, as a Christian we do the things we know as Christians to be sinful because of the flesh, even as we try fight not to do them.

We may lose some friends along the way, we may gain some friends along the way. But wherever this choice or lack thereof choice leads us, in order to find peace, we MUST follow it.