Chapter 1 A Consecrated Life - Far Eastern Bible College

straight furrow he must concentrate fully on controlling the direction of
the plough. He must keep his eyes looking in front and no where else,
otherwise he will start to veer off course. What do you think will
happen if he keeps looking back all the time? He will end up with a very
crooked or curved furrow. Good ploughing requires single-mindedness.
In the same way, our commitment to do the will of the Lord
requires us to be single-minded. Why did Jesus need to emphasise this
point to the third prospective disciple? Perhaps it is because our Lord
who is omniscient, knows every man’s heart.
He probably knew what was in this man’s heart, and could see that
his loyalties were divided, when the man said, “Let me go bid them
farewell, which are at home at my house.” Such divided loyalty would
very seriously affect his commitment and service. God’s kingdom
requires nothing less than single-minded, whole-hearted commitment.
Half-heartedness and divided loyalties makes a person unfit for
promoting God’s kingdom and doing His will. Let us ask ourselves,
“Am I unfit for promoting God’s kingdom? Are my loyalties divided
between God and something else?”
The problem with many people is that they often want to have the
best of both worlds: they want God’s best plans and blessings for their
lives and yet they also want the best of all the good things that the world
has to offer to them. They want to be successful in God’s eyes and they
also want to be successful and popular in the eyes of the world. And
they can’t decide exactly where their loyalties should lie. And so they
choose to remain somewhere in between, without wanting to give up
either of the two choices.
Sometimes this situation results in living a dual life: Six days a
week they seek to do their own will: they live the way the rest of the
world does, and their lives are no different from the lives of their non-
Christian friends. And then on Sunday they suddenly become totally
different: They become transformed into super-spiritual Christians in
church, and they seek to do God’s will. But its very hard to keep up
with this kind of life for long. They overestimate ourselves if they think
that they can maintain a full-hearted single-minded service to God while
at the same time being in full pursuit of the world’s highest
Commitment to Do the Will of God
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