“Come to God through the narrow gate..." Matthew 7:13-14

  

There have been so many people who have moved away from the simplicity of the gospel and have taken up an argument that being a Christian is too complicated or too restrictive, when quite the opposite is actually true.

The “narrow gate” doesn’t speak of being restrictive at all, but of being elusive and hard to find because it is spiritual, not physical.  Jesus is speaking here of the "narrow gate" which leads to eternal life. 
So what is that "narrow gate"?

As it turns out Jesus Himself is the "narrow gate" which many have missed when trying to figure out Christianity, because it doesn’t make sense, how can Jesus be a gate?

“Jesus explained, “I am the Way, I am the Truth, and I am the Life. No one comes next to the Father except through union with me. To know me is to know my Father too.”  John 14:6 (TPT)

Jesus abides in us when we receive Him into our lives and He begins to conduct His life purpose through us.  It isn’t about us attempting to become better people, if that were the case then Jesus didn’t have to come to earth and suffer on our behalf, we could have just been better people. Jesus describes that position as taking the “wide gate which leads to destruction” the contrast between these two gates is striking.

The purpose of comparing the "wide gate" to the "narrow gate" is to show that life only has two paths, which is with Jesus or without Him.  The wide gate is full of human ambition and avarice, which is not about connecting with our purpose for being alive according to our creator.  We were created to both hear and respond to the voice of God in our lives, not ignore His voice and then blame Him for our bad choices. 

Our life equals the sum total of the experiences that we encounter and our choice to interact with those opportunities, we can make a difference by listening to the voice of God and speaking the life of Christ into those moments, or by ignoring God’s voice and go the way of the natural world.

“Don’t keep hoarding for yourselves earthly treasures that can be stolen by thieves. Material wealth eventually rusts, decays, and loses its value. Instead, stockpile heavenly treasures for yourselves that cannot be stolen and will never rust, decay, or lose their value. For your heart will always pursue what you value as your treasure.” Matthew 6:19-21 (TPT)

The narrow gate requires us to die to our life itself at the altar of sacrifice, we offer our life in its entirety as a burnt offering unto the Lord every day, so that as a surrendered offering we could be brought back to life (or resurrected) to new life in Christ Jesus.  Much like Jesus dying on the cross and coming back to life again totally new and changed.

The only difficult part of this exchange is to make sure that the sacrifice of our body on the fiery alter doesn’t crawl off and begin to make personal demands once again, it’s important to make sure our old nature stays dead. 

As we have surrendered our body, Jesus desires to abide in us to change us to be like Him.  I know this sounds like the stories we have seen on television where someone is taken over by some type of spirit and they do weird things which are always evil and nefarious. This is different because Jesus is our creator who loves us desires to be part of our lives and always does good to us and through us.  

Just because we surrender our bodies we don’t become mindless zombies or automatons, (sorry, too many television references) we become the better people which we were always meant to be but could never be on our own. God wants a testimony of Himself through us to the world.

The "narrow path" is the abiding life of Christ that resides in us to make us more like our creator in many ways.  One way, in particular on this narrow path, is we begin to become creative in ways we look at life situations we encounter to demonstrate love and compassion to others.  The goal isn’t just for compassion as an end in itself, that is what the world does,  our goal is to exude the fragrance of Christ that others may see our love in what we do and see who we are and glorify our Father in Heaven.  

Another way is to pray for others, we can pray for healing and restoration for broken bodies and renewal in the lives of others that they may know Jesus and walk through that "narrow gate" with us which leads to life.

There is the fullness of life that comes from walking through this "narrow gate", a life which is knowing what our lives are all about and why we were created in the first place.  

We were created to live:

• In Christ
• In Community
• In Love
• In Fullness
• In Freedom

There are so many other reasons to following Jesus that words can barely describe all of the benefits, suffice it to say that our greatest benefit is knowing Jesus for He is our life, He is the "narrow gate" which leads to life, there is no difficulty in that at all.

Be Blessed;

Stephen Barnett

Creativity is our call, restoration is our purpose!

(Genesis 1:26-28) & (Matthew 28:19-20)