QT: Manchester or Liverpool?
Manchester or Liverpool?
https://www.esv.org/Ezra9:1–15
Week 23: 30/05/2023. Tue
If your good friend or spouse had "kissed the grass" of either Old Trafford or Anfield stadium, but your loyalty is to the other football club(s), do you expect challenges as you seek to move forward your relationships?
If you don't understand what I am saying above, how are you going to understand your non-Christian friend/spouse?
It is not that it is impossible to be best of friends or spouse if we support a different hobby, sports club or have a different calling. But for a simple thing as these, tensions might flare out of nowhere. Or these might just be the sticking point that derail any future co-operation, leading to much frustration. Let's not even talk about intimacy or sincerity.
What if, instead of different clubs, it was a different God? Won't that be more challenging, if not virtually impossible?
You believe and call Jesus as LORD and God, and seek to use all of your life and resources to serve and honour Jesus. However, your "good friend" or "future potential spouse" do not even agree that your God is God at all, won't that be disastrous right at the start? How good (or bad) are other people's Christian marriages do not affect this analysis.
In Ezra 9, we see that gap in Ezra's generation of people. Ezra confessed their sin to God with remorse. Ezra's generation had failed in the area of relationships. Repentance is essential to experience His promised restoration again. We pray God's people of all time is sensitive to this and takes steps accordingly. Paul had put it this way—
2 Corinthians 6:14 - Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? (ESV)
Of course! One is going to heaven, the other to hell. How more far apart can that be?
