BY JACK WARD

Two Kentucky farmers who owned racing stables had developed a keen rivalry. One spring, each of them entered a horse in a local steeplechase. Thinking that a professional rider might help him outdo his friend, one of the farmers engaged a crack jockey. The two horses led the race at the last fence, but it proved too tough. Both horses fell, unseating their riders. But this calamity did not stop the professional jockey. He quickly remounted and won the race.

Returning triumphantly to the paddock, the jockey found the farmer who had hired him fuming with rage. “What’s the matter?” the jockey asked. “I won, didn’t I?”

“Oh, yes,” roared the farmer. “You won all right, but you still don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” asked the jockey.

“You won the race on the wrong horse!”

While this situation does not often occur at horse races, it happens in every human life. Each of us, trying hard to win the race, tends to climb on the wrong horse. If we do not discover our error, we cross the finish line a triumphant failure. We are so proud of ourselves for thinking we are making it just fine. We don’t even realize that all of our lives, we have been on the wrong course, the wrong path, going the wrong way. Then, in the end, we realize our terrible mistake. What a tragedy!

The Bible says in Proverbs 14:12, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

This faulty human trait can be described with a noun from the Old Testament: sin. Isaiah 59:2: “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.”

The Old Testament verb is the only cure for it: repent. Ezekial 18:30: “Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin.” The New Testament has this word also. Acts 17:30: “And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent.”

What does it mean to repent? Repent means to change your mind. It means to go in a different direction. The word repent in the Bible means to change your mind about your sin and realize sin is against God and then to agree with God about your sin and turn from it.

Get off the wrong horse. You may be riding straight to hell. Trust in Christ. He is going the right way and He is on the right course. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” (John 14:6)

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