Life is choices.  If you have or do one day watch The Chosen you can see in the introduction to each episode, fishes that change color and turn as they swim from swimming with the school of fish, and in so doing they swim against the larger school of fish.  I have on several occasions taught in different Christian venues a similar lesson. While we as men are sitting around a couple of joined together tables surrounded by each other on either side, I have used these tables in this similar illustration.  

If you consider the fishes, who change color as they turn; they represent the converted soul; the repentant soul.  Repentance means simply, but miraculously, a 180 degree change in direction.  Something that we alone cannot achieve without conversion.  In the same way I have used the center line formed by this joining of the tables to represent the road, which Jesus taught us was the straight and  narrow way to eternal life.  It was a way very different from the broad road, which Jesus told us leads to destruction.  I would explain how this crack running in a straight line right down the center of these two tables represents the straight and narrow way, which travels like we do when we are in Christ, but in a total opposite direction from the world and it’s broad way, that is represented in the total remaining surface of the two tabletops on either side of this straight and narrow crack, which is called the narrow way.  

This illustrates in a very feeble way just how you and I are often seen as outcasts from the world around us. When in fact it is the world that is lacking in wisdom and direction.  We are to pray for these on either side, who rebuff us, but are our neighbors, some of whom are even our enemies, but we can never again be as they are.  

We are taught many things by Jesus beginning in the Beatitudes, but one should get our attention, I believe it, summarizes what we all, who are in Christ will experience if we truly follow Him. 

Matthew 5:11  Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. (KJV)

Only other believers may understand the call on our life when we turn to follow Jesus.  If we are persecuted “falsely for Jesus sake” often only we will know it, and only in that case will we be truly blessed.  

However, I always end this illustration with the caveat, that we can for reasons of sinful acts stray from this way, and in so doing receive persecution, which is not in any way for Jesus sake, but that fact will be known often by others as it is known by us.  It is likely the Spirit of God within us, who will not allow us to stray very far, before we will surely be convicted of any sin. 

It should always be our goal to walk and not stray from this way in Christ. We find the path for our steps in His word, which is a light unto my path, as David relates Psalm 119:105. 

I bet you thought this would be about Fl Hurricanes?