How far over the speed limit can you go before it becomes sin?
How much can you eat before it becomes gluttony?
When does a game change from friendly competition, to contention, strife, and pride?
At what point does aggressive salesmanship depart from truth and love?
Where’s the line where a woman’s clothing or make-up becomes immodest or worldly?
When does wanting a little more money become the love of money?
When is the music too loud, or the beat too heavy?
Gray… gray… gray… all around us every day.
Yet even these become somewhat trivial compared to knowing the line where you cross into (or out of) pride, envy, lust, covetousness, gossip, discord, doubt. Even if we’re running as hard as we can AWAY from these sins, we need to know when we’re in the clear… Where’s the line?
Don’t we all wish there were no “gray areas” in life? Gray areas create stress. They drag down your confidence. They can strain relationships. They create confusion. They just make life more difficult. Life is so much better when everything is black and white!
So gray is not good. But God is good. God is pure light, with no “shadow of turning”. He wants us all to be free from gray. He wants us to have an absolutely spotlessly clean conscience before Him… pure, and undefiled.
Thank God, He has made a way to live free from gray! It’s a one-on-one personal relationship with God, where you hear His VOICE, continually, every step of the way. Then, and only then, can God turn your gray to black and white. He wants us to live every day, walking close with Him, with a pure conscience, and if He says “Whoa”, you instantly obey, and keep that pure conscience. Life stays black and white, and you stay in the light.
That doesn’t work if you have a second-hand relationship with God. If you expect a man to make everything black and white for you, you will either end up in legalism and bondage; or questions and confusion. If you try to establish your own lines, you’re fooling yourself. Are you going to create your own religion, and set yourself up as your own god?
Here’s the key. And this is critical! If you are not 100% surrendered, and willing to do what God says, you will not hear much. If you have your spiritual headset volume turned down so you won’t hear Him dealing with you on one thing, you’re not likely to hear Him on everything else. If you are not totally willing to listen to what He’s trying to tell you, you will probably find it very convenient to pick and choose the lines that man paints, selecting the ones that match the level of commitment you’re willing to give, and think you’re OK. The tendency is to pick rules that are easily observable by others that agree with you, so they can see that you’re “keeping all the rules”, and think you’re really doing great. At that point, your quest for black and white has become self-deceptive, and self-destructive. You’ve become blind, and dull of hearing.
We need the Bible, the written Word of God. We need the strong, uncompromised preaching of the Truth. But in Matthew 5, we see religious men that had the written law concerning murder, adultery, oaths, divorce, loving your neighbor, etc.; and they certainly preached it. But then Jesus came along and showed them that the line was way, WAY farther out, in God’s eyes, than they thought and taught. Jesus wraps it all up by saying, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” [Matthew 5:48 KJV] How are you even going to know what “perfect” MEANS, for YOUR life, much less DO it, unless you’re tuned to His voice?
Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” [John 10:27 KJV]
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