Have you ever been right in front of something or someone and didn’t see it/them? I mean, you just completely missed it/them. Maybe you looked right past them and didn’t see them or perhaps, you saw it, but you didn’t know you were seeing it? Like when you walk past the keys you’re looking for or you just know your wallet is right there, somewhere?
I remember being at a restaurant some years ago, and this young, emerging, almost-famous basketball player walked in. Some colleagues I was having lunch with noticed him and spoke to him as he walked and sat near us. The basketball player waved and talked to us while we all sat and enjoyed our lunch. Unlike my male colleagues who noticed the near celebrity when he’d walked in, I saw him and had even spoken to him during the lunch, but I had no idea who he was.
Later that evening, I went home, and I shared with some family that I’d seen and met the basketball player, and one of them asked me, “Who told you that’s who you met today?” We both laughed because we both knew I was not so into basketball that I would notice a rising star, even if he walked right up to me, spoke to me, and told me his name. My family knew someone would have had to have told me that’s who I was seeing. So, I admitted without the help of my colleagues, I didn’t know I was seeing the near celebrity until they told me I was seeing him.
As I recall this story today, I think about something Jesus Christ says at Matthew 7:13-14 NIV, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
I think about the gate Jesus spoke of - the gate that leads to life - it’s small, the road is narrow, and only few ever find it. Yet, this narrow gate is the only way to enter the Kingdom of GOD.
The Lord then said only few find it. In response to this, I thought “Lord, surely You wouldn’t hide the right path from us?” As I meditated on this Scripture, I realized Jesus was telling the people to take the narrow path, He was telling them outright which road to take. He was not attempting to hide the right way to go from them.
In fact, I believe the Lord was telling them even more than the right way to go, I believe He was telling them what they were seeing. Right in that moment, they were standing before for that Narrow Gate that led to the Kingdom of GOD, only most of them didn’t know they were standing in front of Him.
Just like I was standing in front of that near-famous basketball player but didn’t know it. The people who had gathered to hear Jesus speak were standing right in front of the Narrow Gate, only they didn’t know we’re standing in front of it. The same is true for many of us today.
Many of us are standing before the Narrow Gate, the gate to eternal life, every day and we don’t even know it. We’re standing in front of Jesus Christ, and we don’t even know it.
Every day we’re presented with the opportunity to accept and/or draw closer to the Jesus Christ or continue in our own ways, doing what we want, how we want, and with whomever we want.
Every day we’re presented with the option to submit our lives to the Lord. Every day we’re presented with the opportunity to make a U-turn and go the way the Lord instructs us to go.
Every day we’re standing in front of the Narrow Gate, and we don’t even know it, or perhaps we don’t even see it.
Think about that.
You may be asking, if we’re standing before the Narrow Gate every day, probably more times than we realize, “Why then did Jesus Christ say it was hard to find?” Let me share with you a revelation (spiritual insight) I received while meditating on this Scripture.
What makes the gate to eternal life hard to find is faith. The Narrow Gate is only seen and accessed by faith. You must believe that Jesus Christ, the Narrow Gate, is the only way to eternal life. Along with that what causes the road to be narrow is the requirement that we live by faith and that we live a life of righteousness and holiness, through sanctification.
This is where the problem for many comes in: living by faith and living a life of holiness through sanctification.
Many people will tell you they have “faith,” by which they mean they believe in Jesus Christ, but when you talk to those same people about righteousness and holiness, that’s where the problem comes in. Most people have a misinformed concept of holiness and because of that, they reject the very idea of it.
The thought that some folks are so committed to their own destructive way of life that they’d fail to see the benefits of walking with Christ is not lost on me. People believe what they want to believe, they see what they want to see, and they don’t want to see or acknowledge a life that is structured around denying themselves or the desires of their flesh.
We live in a society and time where it’s all about what “I” choose to believe and accept. For some, accepting the call to the narrow path means admitting that one’s life is riddled with acts of selfishness, sin, and darkness. We live in a time where people are allowed to establish “their own” truth and live by it, rather than live within the norms of society or even better the parameters of the Word of GOD.
So now we have people who have become content with seeing what they want to see and doing what they want to do. This self-reliance allows them to live a life filled with self-gratification and lust: lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, and the pride of life (godlessness, false power, the love of money, the performance of evil acts, etc.). They are so content with living in darkness that they will utterly deny the existence of a way of life that is in opposition of their destructive reality. Proverbs 21:10 says “… the wicked always crave what is evil.”
Until a person is willing to choose life and accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and seek holiness through sanctification, the Narrow Gate will remain hard to find to them even though it sits right there in plain sight.
I don’t write this bash anyone or to ridicule anyone. I write this with the sole purpose of reminding us that every day, perhaps even all day, every day, we are walking along an unseen road and on this road, there are but 2 gates. The Wide Gate that leads to destruction and the Narrow Gate that leads to eternal life. As we read in the Scripture above, Jesus gives us the right gate to take. He says, “Enter through the narrow gate.”
My prayer is 1) you understand none of know how much road we have left to travel, and 2) you take advantage of the gate Narrow Gate that is being presented to you.
Whenever it is presented to you. Every time it is presented to you.
If you’ve not accepted Jesus Christ into your life, then right here, right now – even as you read this – you’re standing before the Narrow Gate. Enter through the Narrow Gate. If you’d like to know how, I’d love to help.
May you always see the Narrow Gate, hidden in plain sight.
Until next time,
Diane