🌿BREATHE TRUTH🌿
But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it. —Matthew 7:14
🌿LIVE THE REAL TRUTH🌿
Our family recently moved into a lovely house and discovered a problem. To fix it would be a Goliath task. The alternative would be to move once more into another new house. The problem itself has become a mental Goliath. As I walked into church yesterday morning, I run into a woman who mentored me before I had kids. She walks unsteadily with a walker now. She is in a different stage of life, but possesses the same enthusiasm for Christ. As we meander amongst the bustling church goers, my arms wrap around hers, and we make our way, she tells me, “Jordan, I’m moving. It will be alright.”
How could she have known I had moved? Of course she didn’t. But God did.
🍃🍃🍃
The gateway to life is very narrow.
Leave behind the wrestling of your worry and the weight of your weariness. It’s not going to fit through the narrow gate. Few things will. As fallible human beings, we want to take things with us that in the spiritual realm, have little significance to God. We can worry over something. We can put it inside our carry-on. Yet when we pull that suitcase up to the gate, the Gate Keeper is not going to let us check it in. Our concerns in this world matter to God, but they won’t make a dent of a hoot in heaven.
Beyond worry, other entities exist that we want to take with us through the gate. Relationships we desire, roads we drive, and realities we dream that won’t make the cut either.
So we need to ask ourselves this question: What can we bring with us when we come to the gateway that leads to abundant life? That which binds our faith in Christ and that which builds the kingdom of Christ for His glory.
🍃🍃🍃
The road is difficult.
More than twenty years ago, when I first met Lois, she started to pray for me. She’s prayed for everyone in my immediate family who wasn’t saved, which was everyone. She’s prayed for my brother before he was saved, and after he was saved. She’s prayed with me over kids I had not even had yet. (Never too early, right). She’s prayed for so many things that were important to me.
Yesterday, when I saw Lois, I didn’t tell her about my house problem. But I did something I hadn’t done before. As we are walking through the church hallway, with my one hand steering her walker, and my other arm sweeping her back in my embrace, I pray out loud for Lois. A prayer walk. When I’m done, I think, we’re done. But with God and prayer, Beloved, it is never done. Because Lois then proceeds to pray for me. Lois, one foot unsteadily in front of the other, and me learning to follow her pace. My children by our side. In front of us is that gate.
The road is difficult. The risks are discouraging. The reach is daunting. But we don’t get to the gateway alone. Faith is trusting that the greater the difficulty of the road, the more certain that the Gate Keeper is waiting at the end.
🍃🍃🍃
©️2019 Jordan Su