Imagine, if you will, being invited to live with a dear friend. This friend of yours is close and you get along very well. Together you plan how you will divide the chores and expenses and how you will each maintain your ‘space’. Decision made, you move in, and the first days are like a honeymoon. Everything is going along nicely, each keeping to their end of the bargain, and living is easy.

Then, slowly, things begin to change. Your roommate-host has begun to reveal parts of their personality that you never knew existed. For instance, they are basically a slob and have to be reminded constantly to put away what they have taken out, or clean up after themselves. Not only that, they have begun to leave things laying around, like their socks and shoes, newspapers, magazines, and even blankets.

Tension builds in the relationship and you have many ‘discussions’ in which your roommate-host vows to change. But they don’t. Not only do they not change, new ‘offenses’ have begun to creep in. Like inviting some rather dubious characters into the house who tend to stay late, eat everything, use language and substances you would never tolerate, and turn the house upside down. In addition, the new television seems to constantly be blaring and showing scenes that make you cringe in dismay at their distaste or vulgarity.

Your happy home which you were invited into has become a cesspool that your roommate-host is completely happy with and seemingly immune to. What do you do?

Obviously your roommate-host cares more about their downward-spiral lifestyle than they do about you or the agreement you both made when you moved in. They have broken that agreement. Do you take that as an invitation to leave? Do you leave? After all, they have turned their back on you and all that you stand for, crowing about your being ‘too strict’ and ‘no fun’.

Now shift your imagination: you are the roommate-host and Christ is the invited friend who joyously responded to your invitation to live together. Is your house, which you cleaned up so diligently when you first invited Him to stay, now become a cesspool? Have you let in friends who should never have been allowed – friends like lust, greed, perversion, addiction, selfishness, pride, arrogance, laziness, slothfulness, mediocrity? Have you had many discussions with your new roommate and promised to change but then fallen back into your bad habits and immoral behavior? Do your wants and desires take precedence over your relationship with Him? Are you turning your back on Him? Are you driving Him out? Would you blame Him if He moved out?

Joshua 24:15 And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”