THE THRESHOLD — REVISITED
Signal or noise. No or yes. Direction set.
I took this photograph in the hedge garden in my backyard, near the cross — established ground for me, the place I go when I need to feel close to Jesus and have the conversations that need to be had. The oranges are ours. In our ministry we use oranges to refresh one another — you sit down with a friend, hand him a ripe one, and tell him the wonderful things he is. That morning, the one who needed refreshing was me. So I wrote a word on each one, carried them out, and sat down with Jesus.
Sometimes life doesn’t announce the turning point with fanfare.
Sometimes it appears quietly —
a moment where a single response determines the direction that follows.
A simple yes.
Or a quiet no.
That is the nature of thresholds.
I’ve stood at this threshold before. I wrote about it once.
I’m revisiting it now — because once again, I’m at the crossroads.
As we all are, sometimes.
Sometimes we have to revisit the yes and the no — and weigh the outcome with new eyes, a new heart, a new desire…
looking for a divine outcome.
DEDICATION
To Jesus Christ — whose authority steadies every decision.
To Marty — for the conversations that challenge comfort and invite clarity.
To the men who walk beside me in this season — brothers who value truth more than image and courage more than approval.
And to the quiet work of the Holy Spirit — who teaches us that the smallest decisions often carry the greatest direction.
SCRIPTURE
“But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.” — Matthew 5:37 (NKJV)
“Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ Whenever you turn to the right hand Or whenever you turn to the left.” — Isaiah 30:21 (NKJV)
THE HOOK
The words didn’t come printed on anything.
I wrote them myself.
Two oranges.
A marker.
NO on one.
YES on the other.
I carried them out to the hedge garden and set them down in front of me.
I pulled up my Yeti chair.
And sat down across from them.
Not to take a photograph — that came after.
I sat down because I had a decision in front of me…
and I needed to see it.
A response.
A single word.
Yes.
Or no.
THE STORY
It was January.
I was scheduled — again — for another cortisone shot, this time in my neck.
Usually, that one is done by itself.
But I also have a massive tear in my right elbow, so they decided to add a PRP injection.
And because I’m a high-risk candidate for being put under, they decided to do both procedures in one.
Which added to the complications.
It also meant more hands.
One anesthesiologist. Two doctors. Working on me at the same time.
Their yeses had to be yes, too.
An orchestration of people going over and above — making decisions for my best interest.
I’ve had more than thirty of those shots over the years.
In business, in financial decisions, in most of my life — my yes has always been yes and my no has always been no. I never had a problem with that.
But my health has been different territory.
Unknown territory.
It changes daily. I never know how I’m going to feel.
So the decision is not always made in the best of circumstances.
Sometimes it’s made in desperation. Or in pain. Or in such a hope to get somewhere else… that you decide to try something.
Schedule it. Show up. Hope.
But the results were never as favorable as the hope.
And this time my body was exhausted. Chronic pain that can’t be overcome.
My body was saying no more.
My mind was saying, I don’t know.
And the calendar was saying, you’re already scheduled.
So I did for myself what we do in our ministry when a brother needs refreshing.
I wrote YES on one orange and NO on the other, carried them out to the hedge garden, and sat down and talked to Jesus.
I went out there in an emotional state. I asked Him to refresh me. And to clarify my yes and my no.
The answer came later that night.
Something was tugging at me from the gut — and I knew.
I just didn’t give it the acknowledgment I should have.
I kept the appointment.
Because life is full of these moments.
They appear in business conversations.
In family relationships.
In friendships.
In quiet thoughts we entertain when no one else is around.
Thresholds.
Places where direction is determined long before the results ever appear.
The interesting thing about thresholds is that they rarely announce themselves as such.
Most of the time they appear disguised as something ordinary.
A casual comment.
A convenient shortcut.
A harmless compromise.
A simple opportunity to adjust the truth just a little.
And in that moment the question quietly appears.
Signal…
or noise?
THE MOMENT
Jesus once said something remarkably simple.
Let your yes be yes.
Let your no be no.
That sounds almost too simple.
But simplicity is often where the greatest clarity lives.
Because every complicated justification usually begins with a small step away from that simplicity.
The moment we start adding explanations,
adjusting the narrative,
or softening the truth…
we have already stepped beyond the threshold.
The step beyond the threshold is rarely dramatic.
But the direction it sets — always is.
THE TURN
The danger is not always the decision itself.
The danger is the direction that follows.
Once the first step is taken, the path begins to form beneath our feet.
And that path rarely stays small.
What begins as a single compromise can become a pattern.
A pattern becomes a habit.
And habits eventually shape the direction of a life.
A decision lands you on your destination.
And sometimes that decision is a road to nowhere.
That is why thresholds matter.
They are not dramatic moments.
They are directional moments.
The direction may not be visible right away.
But it is already set.
THE DRIFT
One place this shows up more than we realize is in the way people answer simple questions.
“Can we meet at six?”
“Do you think you can take care of that?”
“Will you be there?”
And the response comes back like this:
That should work.
I might be able to.
Let me see.
I’ll try.
You can almost feel the hesitation in the words.
Sometimes that hesitation is honest.
Life is complex. Schedules overlap. Responsibilities compete.
But other times something different is happening.
Sometimes the answer stays soft because a person wants to leave room to move another direction later.
Sometimes the mind simply hasn’t slowed down long enough to reach clarity.
And sometimes people have become so accustomed to avoiding commitment —
that even simple decisions remain suspended in the air.
The result is subtle but real.
Someone else is left standing at the threshold…
waiting.
Here’s the deeper truth about that.
Every one of us carries filters shaped by past experiences, disappointments, and environments we’ve lived in for years.
Sometimes people have heard so many uncertain answers in life that a clear one almost sounds unusual.
So the mind checks again.
Not because the words were unclear —
but because the programming behind the ears is still sorting them out.
Clear words matter.
But so does patience.
Because not everyone standing across from us has walked the same road.
And sometimes two people can hear the exact same sentence —
and process it through two completely different journeys.
That voice that keeps you soft when clarity is needed?
It sounds like flexibility.
It isn’t.
Wisdom speaks clearly.
Fear hedges.
I know. Because I hedged. For years.
THE REFLECTION
Here is the honest part.
I already knew. God had told me, and I went against it.
The morning of the procedure, I knew getting out of the car. Goosebumps. The hair standing up on the back of my neck.
I sat on the medical bed while they put the IVs in my arms, talking to me the way they always do — going through the records, walking me through what the procedure would entail, how long I’d be out.
I was numb. In a daze. Just listening to what was going on around me.
And underneath all of it, something kept saying: If you don’t want to do this, all you have to do is say so.
But I wasn’t really listening.
The pain in my body overwhelmed everything.
My body was saying no more — and in the same breath, what’s next? Do something. I can’t take much more of this.
Sometimes your hope is so high for something more that you chase the wrong path and listen to the wrong voices.
The outcome wasn’t favorable.
My body had an extreme reaction.
Typically it takes me a week to get through the side effects of a shot. This time it took almost four weeks — and they got worse before they got better.
Sleepless nights. Massive headaches. Sensations I couldn’t name, and no position I could get comfortable in.
My body was done with these shots. It let me know in every way possible.
By the end of it, I wished I hadn’t chosen it.
And because I’m on blood thinners, the PRP didn’t take.
A total failure.
The weight I carry, no one knows. My wife knows to a degree. God knows. My friends don’t even know the level of it.
Marty is the one who keeps me grounded in these decisions.
She reminds me that it’s me and her, no matter what. That we’ll get through it. That she’ll support me.
But she wants me to take the time to make considerate decisions — especially when it comes to my health.
That’s the credit she’s owed in this story.
I’ve learned something else on this road.
Doctors and medical institutions sometimes have agendas of their own. What they offer is not always in your best interest — and sometimes it is.
That’s why the relationship with your professionals matters so much. The communication.
They’re giving their best — their skills, their resources, to the degree they can.
But when a doctor says something, I have to really think about it now. Ponder the yes or the no.
Because in the end, I’m the one who pays the consequence.
Over time I have learned something about these moments.
Clarity almost always arrives before compromise does.
There is usually a quiet signal inside us that already knows the right direction.
The challenge is not recognizing the signal.
The challenge is choosing whether we will follow it.
Because once we begin explaining away the signal…
we slowly replace it with noise.
Noise that grows louder each time we ignore the original clarity.
Until eventually we can no longer remember what the signal sounded like.
That is the cost of stepping beyond the threshold.
Every life is shaped by these moments.
And the moments that shape us most —
are rarely the ones we saw coming.
I brought the oranges back into the house.
They sat in the bowl for the longest time.
Until one day I decided to eat one — and made a commitment as I did.
My yes means yes.
My no means no.
Those two oranges carry great substance in my life now.
I can’t eat an orange without thinking of it.
That was January. I’m seven months out now.
Finally through the worst of it. I’ve gained a little ground — maybe twenty-five percent in some areas. In others, not so much.
And my elbow is not well.
The doctor says the only thing left is surgery.
Six to eight months of recovery, because of the complications. My arm in a cast for a long, long time — the tendon reattached to the bone, the muscle reattached as well. All the muscle tone lost, and an arm rebuilt from scratch.
And sometimes that surgery only succeeds half the time.
And there’s a similar thing going on in my right knee.
My plate is full.
So once again, I find myself at the threshold.
Which means I’ll be going back out to that garden.
Two more oranges. A bigger conversation.
Pondering the yes and the no — not knowing yet which way I’m going to go.
But I do know this.
When I make that decision — that yes or that no — it will be the best I can make.
Jesus will be right in front of it, and behind it, all the way.
This time I will listen to my gut.
This time I will listen for that voice — the one I feel when I set a thing before God. The one that says: okay. This is what you’re going to do.
And I’m going to do it.
My yes will be yes.
My no will be no.
WALKAWAY LINE
Direction is rarely decided in dramatic moments — it is decided in the quiet ones.
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
Which voice will you follow — the signal or the noise?
How many yeses and noes have you made without much thought — and how many do you wish you could make again, because the outcome didn’t serve you?
Before the next one… will you take the time to sit down with God first?
MY PRAYER
Heavenly Father,
Thank You for meeting me in the garden — and for every place You meet the one reading this.
I pray for them now.
Give them ears to hear what they need to hear — not what is loudest, but what is Yours.
Teach them to pause. To wait. To listen before they respond.
When the quiet moments come — the ones where direction is set — let them recognize Your voice in the middle of them.
Give them the courage to answer honestly.
Let their yes be yes.
Let their no be no.
And whatever threshold they are standing at today — be right in front of it, and behind it, all the way.
Keep our hearts aligned with Your truth, so the path beneath our feet leads where You intend.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
ABOUT G~
G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.
If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.
G~
A thought I had about decision making. Are you making the decision for yourself, what you know is right for you, or for someone else or what others will think. Inside your heart, or outside in the world as jesus illustrates. Love
Many lessons learned from my brother Greg..one is, clarity, clarity clarity, translation, YES or NO. Will sit with some oranges now that I will never look at them the same way. Love