I hope you had a wonderful week! Did you make any decisions this week? I’m sure you did in one way or another. It’s hard to get through a day, let alone a week, without making some decision about something.
Sometimes, the decisions are mundane, and can even be subconsciously made. Other times, they take careful thought and consideration. The difference between these is sometimes equated to the magnitude of the decision, but a seemingly mundane decision can have a potential to become very impactful to an individual.
But what are we really talking about here? Is it the decision itself? No, it really comes down to the consequences of a particular decision as far as what the magnitude of that decision is. For example, if you’re in a rush while you’re driving, you may decide that you need to continue through an intersection while the traffic light is more on the orange side than the red side. More than likely, you’ll make it through unharmed, but there is a slight possibility that the consequence for that decision is your vehicle is T-boned and you end up injured or in a coma in the hospital, or even dead.
So, then the question becomes, how do we move through life making the right decisions? If you analyze any given decision deeply enough, you’ll likely come to at least a slight chance that decision can result in a devastating consequence…no matter which path you choose. Your next unhealthy meal perhaps results in a heart attack, or your decision to drive to work instead of taking public transportation results in a fatal car accident. You could decide to avoid everything and live like a hermit, but even that could result in a serious injury or an untimely death.
Before moving on, it’s worth mentioning that of course, as followers of Yeshua, we are not given the spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7). All the consequences listed are things people fear, which is why they’re considered a higher magnitude of consequence. However, these are all physical consequences, so let’s take this to the spiritual aspect, where decisions really matter.
What if the decision was whether or not to give a homeless person food or clothing? According to Yeshua, this decision could result in everlasting consequences (Matthew 25:31-46). We could show up to our judgment and get either eternal life or eternal punishment, depending on what decision we made. I confess that I made this decision this past week, and I made the wrong choice. In fact, without even planning it, that action was put in my heart while writing this, and not only that, I was given the opportunity to change it in the moment and I didn’t. I thank YHWH that He gave us the ability to be forgiven through Yeshua’s sacrifice though, and I will not make that same mistake again.
This sort of a decision doesn’t necessarily happen to us every day though, does it? Of course, depending on where you live it could be more often than others might experience. In fact, I was out of town on travel when I was approached this week and I made that wrong decision.
We do make certain decisions every day, whether we realize it or not, that can translate to such an everlasting consequence. Often, the imagery created based on Yeshua’s parable of entering the narrow gate instead of the wide gate down the broad road (Matthew 7:13-14) includes a fork in a path and someone standing before it (see this week’s picture). Rarely does life give us such a clear and distinct decision, and what the imagery also fails to capture is the decisions we’ve made along the way that led to that particular fork.
Really, we go through life making a series of small decisions that either lead us down the broad path or the narrow path. Not only that, but those small decisions don’t have the obvious eternal consequences we might hope for that would help us know which way to choose. You don’t just get to a place in your life one day where you’re presented with a decision to murder someone or not, you know? If that were the case, I’m fairly confident you’d choose the narrow path. If we continue with this example, it’s more likely that there were a series of decisions you made which not only caused you to reach this decision point, but made you feel as though you have no other option than to commit the sin.
So, how do we know which way to go, which path to choose, if none of these small decisions have the obvious consequences that would help us make the right choice? Well, it’s the same way we know whether it’s the Holy Spirit telling us something or it’s some other spirit….and it involves a decision, of course! But not just one to be made once, but to be made over and over again as we live day to day.
We have to decide, every day, to have a relationship with YHWH. We talked in our marriage study about a husband and wife becoming one flesh in marriage, and if you’ve noticed those who have been married for a long time start to become more like each other in how they think and act. It’s no different for us when we are in a relationship with YHWH by reading His Word and talking with Him in prayer. And as we’ve seen multiple times previously, this helps us to also know when He’s speaking to us in various situations.
Now, you may disagree, but I believe these small decisions include way more aspects of our lives than we might initially think. We have to look at our relationship with YHWH in a completely different way than is typically presented among Christians. Of course, we’ve got the major things, like reading scripture and praying, down pat. Whether we actually do them or not, these are always touted as key aspects of having a relationship with Him.
However, what is often overlooked is the fact that He is everywhere and sees everything. He’s not just there when we pray or read His Word. He sees us when we listen to music with inappropriate lyrics. He hears us when we cuss or speak negatively about others. He feels us when we give into the spirit of anger and retaliation instead of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Each of these things are seemingly small decisions we make in life that either lead us down the narrow path to Him or down the broad path to destruction. Each of these decisions either strengthen our relationship with Him or weaken it. They either help us to better hear Him or make it harder for us to discern whether it’s Him or the enemy speaking to us. How would you feel if you saw the person you were in a relationship with being a different person at every other moment of their life except when they were spending time with you?
I have been led through some seemingly small decisions in my study of eschatology to a group of Christians that are called either Full Preterists or Hyper Preterists (this may seem like I’m on an unrelated tangent, but stick with me!). Without getting into detail on their eschatological beliefs, the long and the short of them is that they believe all scripture has been fulfilled already. In other words, prophecies like what are found in the book of Revelation, which most Christians believe are future events, were fulfilled by events that occurred in the past.
The reason this is relevant to our current topic is because at some point no matter how much I try to line up the words in Revelation to historical events, looking at all possible aspects of how they might have been fulfilled according to the Full Preterists, I have to take a step back and look at what these eschatological beliefs mean holistically and if they line up with who I have found YHWH to be through my relationship to Him. I think one of the major issues a lot of academic theologians get into is that they fail to acknowledge this piece because they focus so much on the physical words of scripture and whether or not they can prove their views using verses and the definitions of Greek and Hebrew words. You can’t defend a thesis by using your relationship with YHWH, you have to use manuscripts and historical word usage to do it.
As I looked at all the interpretations and explanations of prophecy fulfillment, something just wasn’t sitting right. Perhaps it’s a bias of the fact that I started out believing all Revelation described future events, but as I write this it seems to be more that these views don’t line up with the YHWH and Yeshua I have grown to know and love. And had I not made the series of small decisions that I have every day for the past four years, I would not have that gut feeling that something’s not right as I read full preterism interpretations of scripture.
While I will endeavor to run these interpretations to ground and prove truth versus falsehood academically, in the end, if I run out of verses and concordance entries in an attempt to prove something false, I will rest easy in my view even if it means my gut feeling has to be the last nail in the coffin. Make the small decisions every day that lead you down the narrow path and develop that gut feeling for you. It may not be eschatology that you use it for, but I guarantee that at some point you will need it for something of much greater importance. YHWH and Yeshua don’t desire relationships with us for no purpose. They love us, want to help us through life every day, and to ultimately be with us forever.
Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!
-Rob and Sara Gene
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