PLEASE READ THIS FIRST: Matthew 7
What do you sense the Lord saying to you in this passage?
“Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life.” (Matthew 7:14)
Some people say believing in Jesus is the narrow gate.
While true, it is more than this; it is Jesus’s message.
This statement is a part of an extended message on the Jesus Way.
Jesus is talking about living, not just believing.
What makes the Jesus Way narrow is that it goes the opposite way.
It goes against everything we think of as normal, natural.
Love your enemy, do not judge, don’t worry about stuff?
Turn the other cheek, blessed are the poor and persecuted?
Why does this way lead to life, not to death?
Because it does the opposite of what sin does.
Sin seeks the self, love (the Jesus Way) seeks God and others.
This is how we were made to live, and where the tree of life is.
When provoked, do we respond in the narrow way, or the easy way?
Am I choosing to trust the Jesus Way, to follow it by doing it?
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, every day I am tempted to take the easy way, the ‘natural’ way of self. You have opened the way to life by your selfless love. Help me to trust you, and to follow you in it!