Choosing Christ
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.
Matthew 6:24
Who is your master? We have to make a choice.
When sin gives an order and we follow it, sin becomes the master of our lives. We become its slave. The Bible says, “You are slaves of sin” (Romans 6:17). When we come to Christ the Scripture says, “Sin shall not have dominion over you” (Romans 6:14). Sin is no longer the master. Christ is.
Right here on this earth there are two worlds: a world dominated by evil and a world dominated by Christ. We have to choose between them. We have to live in this world, but we are not to be part of it. We have to be willing to be different. We have to be willing to be laughed at, sneered at, made fun of. We have to be willing to go to the cross and take a stand for Christ where we live, where we work, where we study. Everyone must know that we are of Christ.
Those of us who know Christ march to a different drumbeat. You see, most of the world goes in one direction, but the followers of Christ go the other way, marching to the drumbeat of heaven against the flood of evil. That’s the reason it’s so important for a follower of Jesus Christ to pray daily, to study the Scripture daily.
God gives people the freedom to choose. If you sense a longing for God, a desire to change and be a new person, that’s God speaking to your heart. And when you respond to Him, God will change you.
When you make that choice for Christ, you pay a price. It means that your whole life must change. You must repent, and repentance means to turn around, to change your way of living. That is what’s involved in coming to Christ.
God demands an immediate decision from each one of us. He says, “How long will you halt between two opinions?” (1 Kings 18:21). Delay makes the right decision harder. Indecision itself is a choice. If you decide that you are going to wait until some other time, that is a choice away from God. The Bible says, “He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy” (Proverbs 29:1). Nowhere in the Bible does it say, “Tomorrow.” The Bible says, “Now is the accepted time” (2 Corinthians 6:2). Make a choice for Christ now. Grow to maturity in Him, be His disciple.
Our Father and our God, You are Master of my life, and I am Your humble slave. I want to do what You would have me to do. Change my heart, O God, and cleanse my soul to reflect only Your glory. Take away my desire to be like the world, and make me in the image of Your precious Son. Amen.
Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010)..