A Fork in the Road

"Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" (Amos 3:3)

"There came then His brethren and His mother, and, standing without, sent unto Him, calling Him. And the multitude sat about Him, and they said unto Him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. And He answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren? And He looked round about on them which sat about Him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother." (Mark 3:31-35)

During early church times, the natural family members that the new community of believers once had, now became strangers to them in the sense that they could not share in the joy of revelation love until they had themselves experienced it. It was as though they had arrived at a fork in the road that they had all once traveled together, but now some would take one direction that the fork led them on, and the others would take the opposite direction. They could not walk together any further, at least not in the sense of deepest companionship and utmost safety that being "family" should provide.

Jesus Himself experienced this loss of natural family.

Here He is sitting in the center of a multitude of people who continue to follow Him wherever He goes, while on the outer fringes, asking Him to come out to them, is His natural family. For three decades He was surrounded by these family members and was one of them, working in the carpentry trade of his natural step-father, Joseph, most likely right alongside His brothers. Now suddenly, He has left them and is surrounded by a throng of people following Him and calling Him the Messiah. His family tried to extricate Him, for His own good they thought, but He would not be moved from the place that His Father had called Him to. Even childhood friends who had grown up with HIm tried to do an intervention, believing Him to be suffering from some sort of mental breakdown. (Mark 3:21)

The bible tells us that eventually some of His natural family came to understand that He was indeed the Messiah. Mary, His mother, was one who believed. His brother, James, was another. But we don't know if all of his family members came to believe this. What we do know, is that until they did come to believe it, they remained on the outside of the circle, instead of inside it where they once had been. He had veered away from the direction they were walking together when they reached the fork in the road called "Faith"

At this moment in the gospel of Mark, He proclaimed who His family truly was, and it was not the natural members, but the members born of God, doing the will of the Father, who He claimed as family.

This separation from the natural family happened not only to Jesus, but to all of His followers. And it is because they are doing the will of the Father that the separation comes, like a sword dividing them (Matthew 10:34). The ways of God are not the ways of man, and natural man doesn't understand doing things God's way. So, when the new Christians began changing how they had always done things, folks thought them odd, fanatic, heretical, and ceased to associate with what they could not comprehend, even becoming fearful of it.

So, it also will happen to us. At the fork in the road there is a decision to make: to follow Jesus on a rather lonely road, or to stay with family and friends, companions of a past life. The thing is we arrive at that same fork day after day. Each day we choose again which direction we will take. Will we "do the will of the Father"? Or will we walk in agreement for that day with those who walk in unbelief and are therefore disobedient to God and subject to His wrath? The decision is about choosing between flesh and spirit.

"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus…." That's the part we remember easily. Here's the part I sometimes forget:

"…who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit…..for they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." (Romans 8:1-6)

But the early church did not forget. Once they arrived at the fork, they took the road that led them away from natural family and friends, following it even through suffering and death, even the loss of the closeness of natural family, in order to do the will of God…and all with joy.

Because whatever they gave up to follow Him, He restored a hundredfold...not in the natural, but in the spiritual.