You May Have A Reason But Is It A Good Reason?

When you look at groups that immigrated to the US, it’s not hard to tell they tended to congregate in certain regions or cities. As these groups took hold of a place you can see why people might flock to that area as they would share a language or might have some family ties. But how did it start?

For example, why did so many Irish immigrants to America settle in Boston rather than New York? The answer is very simple: The boat fare was $ 6.50 cheaper.

It amazes me how many decisions that are made, that turn out to have a great effect, are often made for trivial reasons. My wife chose the college, where we would eventual meet and get married, for the fact that it allowed freshman to not have a roommate. How different would my life be if she had been a little less reclusive?

The most important decision we make is our faith. How did we arrive at that decision? Is it because we considered the Bible teachings? Have we explored the teaching of our religion? Have we examined to see if what we practice is what is accordance with the word of God and with what we know to be true?

Or do we just accept our religion since it is what someone once told us? Or it just what our family has been? Or it’s the group that’s most popular in our area?

Our decision about our faith can large consequences in this life but will matter most in eternity. What will our reason be before the Lord?

"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.”

Matthew 7:21

Will our answer be ‘I followed the crowd’? Will it because it was the path of least resistance?[i] Will it be because I didn’t bother to check it out?

Will our reason have any logic or consideration or will it be a trivial reason? Is that how we want to make the most important decision of our life?

[i] Jesus told us that us that’s not the way Matthew 7:12-14

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission. It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog