Can I Have It My Way?

Do you remember Burger King's popular slogan back in the day? "Have it your way" helped Burger King reach the pinnacle of business success and recognizably.

The idea of having a hamburger exactly the way you want it has spread like a grass fire in our culture. Self-determination is our national identity. Even shopping for a simple item has become a confusing maze. Every item has a hundred options: colors, flavors, sizes, low-fat, high-energy, super volume, extra-butter... We consider choice a right and expect it to apply to every situation.

Unfortunately, this also applies to seeking God. We assume we can pick and choose what we like about God or Christianity and leave the rest. Even modern evangelicalism has sunk into this mire of "have it your way."

Grace has become the buzzword of the new slew of evangelical preachers and has been spread thickly like mortar over every lifestyle. A chirpy little client of mine announced with confidence that she knew her live-in relationship with her boyfriend was not "the best," but was certain God understood and did not mind. "It's just the grace of God, you know!"

Really? Didn't the Apostle Paul deal with this very subject in the sixth chapter of Romans? How many professing Christians in our day have ever read it?

Since when did obedience to the stated standard of God become optional?

When we set ourselves up as the final authority on our own lives and morality, we have effectively removed God and replaced him with Self. We become our own gods.

And that is not biblical Christianity. Nowhere in the New Testament will you find any precedent that resembles this ideology. The pattern set by those who received Christ as Lord was to forsake sin, forsake worldly lust, and take up whatever cross was necessary to follow him. Jesus said, "Why do you call me Lord and do not do what I say?" (Luke 6:46)

Have you bought into this pseudo-Christian message? Have you decided that you can have God your way? It's not true. We come to him his way, or we don't come at all.

Repentance is the doorway to freedom. It's standing wide open. Be sure you walk through it.