“You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.”

I was advising someone who just landed a huge job as the Digital Leader of a large institution with so many digital content and distribution opportunities that he doesn’t know where to start first.  Everyone in the organization has been waiting for someone just like him and now they all want to bring their projects and ideas to him to implement them all and of course, they want to hear, “Yes, Yes. Yes!” from him.  But I encouraged him that he needed to explain to them why instead they should want to hear more, “Nos”, than “Yeses”, if they really want him to succeed. You see, a “Yes” means that we are going to put time and resources on something and by the theory of displacement, something else doesn’t get done.  So, that “Yes” better be the right thing and a whole bunch of “Yeses” just create a ton of dilution of effort and resources, to the point that nothing is moving forward very fast or deliberately.  But a “No”, well a “No” has double the value of “Yes”.  That “No” stops you from working on something you should have never started and it also alleviates you taking away time and resources to something else that was a “Yes”.  So, we have to get comfortable with the double power of “No” and appreciate that we are doing ourselves, or others, a favor when we say, “No”.

God tells us over and over in His Word that we have to be willing to say “No” and that the narrow path is the way, even though it is hard.  When we evaluate where we are today in our walk with Christ, it might be helpful to go through the list of the “No’s” that we are saying to the things of our world.  If that list is hardly there, or not making a difference in strengthening your walk with Christ, then it’s probably time to convert some of those “Yeses” to “No”.  And let’s not forget that God is giving us His double power of No by keeping Him close and reliant on Him each and ever time we want to turn a “Yes” into a “No”.

Reference:  Matthew 7:13-14 (New Living Translation)