"...choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve.” Joshua 24:15
In the United States a very unique milieu exists in which one can live as a Christian. We are not persecuted, we can freely worship, we can purchase Bibles at will, we can evangelize without fear of death, we have any Christian educational material that the world offers available to us, we are wealthy, and we can travel whenever we want and wherever we want without visas because we have the highly coveted American passport.
With that said, American Christians will travel on their paths of life and inevitably reach a spiritual fork in the road. One road is wide open and paved with gold. As you look down this road you see a comfortable home, multitudes of friends, your church and your pastor, endless sporting events to watch for hours, a two week vacation to Europe, and the summer church BBQ. There is, in fact, so much great stuff going on down this road that you can’t see what or where it leads to, and obviously you can’t focus on what you can’t see—so you focus on what you can see—and who can deny that this road looks great! How could it be anything but the right path when most of the Christians that you know are standing there and asking you what you’re waiting for?
Then you turn and look down the other path. It is very narrow and looks lonely. There are very few people on this path and you can see why—it’s difficult with thorns and a multitude of trials, and comforts are nowhere to be seen. You can’t see anyone’s face who is on this path because, unlike the open comfortable path where everyone was focused on you, everyone on this narrow path is focused on the journey’s end, and thus you can’t get any of them to look back. As you look at the end of the narrow path you see a paradise that is beyond your imagination—but the road to get there is full of sacrifice and hardship.