Simply Yes Or No

Simply let your "Yes" be "Yes," and your "No," "No"; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

 

Matthew 5:36-37

Picture for a moment that you are living in Jesus' time...

 

It is before Jesus has begun His ministry and He is a carpenter in the local town of Nazareth. Someone has asked Jesus to make a table for them and they have a deadline that He must meet in one week. They agree on a price of $100 for the table and the date of one week for completion. A week later they arrive to pick up the table, but Jesus says, "I am sorry but the table is not ready. Also, I ran into complications and can no longer honor the price I gave you. It is now $350 instead of $100."

Two years later this same Jesus is preaching to the local townspeople, but how will this person view Jesus now?

 

They probably won't give much credence to His message because of their personal experience.

 

Our lives have an ability to reinforce the message we stand for, or they can violate it and make it totally ineffective. This happens all over the world in different settings with Christian believers—our message becomes ineffective because we have not done what we said or believe in.

 

There are times when we are unable to deliver what we promised due to outside influences, but the key to turning these circumstances into a witness for God is communication. We must make or yes mean yes and our no mean no.