YES AND NO

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14 NIV)

Terror seized me by the throat a few months into my engagement to be married. Ardor turned to horror. Hot pursuit suddenly got cold feet. This came with a fundamental realization: If I had this woman, I couldn't have any of the others. If I said "yes" to one, I was saying "no" to millions. Not that this was the breadth of my options, mind you -- but whatever options I might have had before I said my vows, they were no more after I said them…

Every yes contains a no. And if you can't learn to say one, you won't learn to say the other. It certainly describes the way Christians and churches can drift into heresy and confusion…

Learning to say the yes and the no: Few issues portend so much for the future of the church, because none carries so much potential to fly in the face of the spirit of the age… It's the "Who's to Say?" syndrome: Who's to say what is right? The answer, it seems, is everyone, or no one, or both. Whatever. It's cool.

Faithful stewards of the household of God must practice the discipline of saying both yes and no. It's hard, it's not fun, and it doesn't usually preach to packed houses. But believers in every age have had to learn it or lose the faith…

Saying no is part of the nature of our faith… Its narrowness is the narrowness of the birth canal, or of a path between two precipices -- or of a lifetime spent loving one woman. 

-- Excerpted from Ben Patterson in LeadershipJournal.net

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