YES AND NO

“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.” (Matthew 7:13-14 NIV)

Terror seized me by the throat a few months into my engagement to be married. Ardor turned to horror. Hot pursuit suddenly got cold feet. This came with a fundamental realization: If I had this woman, I couldn't have any of the others. If I said "yes" to one, I was saying "no" to millions. Not that this was the breadth of my options, mind you -- but whatever options I might have had before I said my vows, they were no more after I said them…

Every yes contains a no. And if you can't learn to say one, you won't learn to say the other. It certainly describes the way Christians and churches can drift into heresy and confusion…

Learning to say the yes and the no: Few issues portend so much for the future of the church, because none carries so much potential to fly in the face of the spirit of the age… It's the "Who's to Say?" syndrome: Who's to say what is right? The answer, it seems, is everyone, or no one, or both. Whatever. It's cool.

Faithful stewards of the household of God must practice the discipline of saying both yes and no. It's hard, it's not fun, and it doesn't usually preach to packed houses. But believers in every age have had to learn it or lose the faith…

Saying no is part of the nature of our faith… Its narrowness is the narrowness of the birth canal, or of a path between two precipices -- or of a lifetime spent loving one woman. 

-- Excerpted from Ben Patterson in LeadershipJournal.net

#6231

LIFE’S FINAL CATEGORIES

Jesus said, "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."  (Matthew 7:13-14)

Vance Havner (1901-1986) once wrote that “When the Titanic sank in 1912, it was the ship that was supposed to be unsinkable. The only thing it ever did was sink. When it took off from England, all kinds of passengers were aboard -- millionaires, celebrities, people of moderate means, and poor folks down in the steerage. But a few hours later when they put the list in the Cunard office in New York, it carried only two categories -- lost and saved. Grim tragedy had leveled all distinctions.”

The Titanic's tragic tale carries a profound spiritual truth. In those dark hours as the "unsinkable" ship descended into the Atlantic's depths, all worldly distinctions -- wealth, fame, political party, social status -- dissolved into meaninglessness. In those final moments, the only distinction that mattered was between the lost and the saved.

This mirrors our spiritual reality. We spend our lives building reputations, accumulating wealth, and establishing our place in society's hierarchy. Yet in eternity's light, only one question remains: are we lost or are we saved? Just as the Titanic's passengers faced a stark binary outcome regardless of their cabin class, we too face an eternal choice that transcends all earthly categories.

The world may define us by our achievements, possessions, or social standing, but God sees only the state of our hearts. Have we accepted His salvation in Christ? Are we walking the narrow path? These are the questions that truly matter. 

-- SOUND BITES Ministry™, compiled from a variety of sources 

#6124

TWO ROADS

“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.”  (Matthew 7:13b-14 NIV)

Our culture… is all about celebrating ourselves, finding more life for ourselves, [making more happiness for ourselves]. But no matter how hard we look, none of the maps lead there.

We spend years heading down the road of living for self instead of dying to it, and it’s difficult to admit we’ve made a wrong choice. We’ve gone too many miles. We’ve invested too much in the journey. So we double down and step on the gas, [rather than repent of our ways and turn around]... When we’ve chosen the wrong road, we don’t like to acknowledge it to ourselves or to anyone else…

There are two different paths. One path is narrow, difficult, and marked “death,” but leads to life. The other path is broad, crowded, and marked “life,” but it leads to death. In Matthew 16, Jesus tells us what we can expect when we follow Him down the narrower road:

“Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will find it.” 

-- Kyle Idelman in “The End of Me: Where Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins”

#5617

A FORK IN THE ROAD

“But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”  (Joshua 24:15 NIV)

I’ve always laughed at Yogi Berra’s old dictum: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” However, it’s not very helpful in making significant decisions in life.

When we come to a fork in the road, where a decision on which way to go is required, it becomes a crucial moment in our lives and the life of the church. Crucial moment literally means "the moment of the cross." So when we face a fork in the road we need to take the path where the shadow of the cross falls, not where the culture is beating a path. I believe wholeheartedly that you'll not only see the shadow of the cross, you will see the fresh footprints of the Savior. 

-- Rev. David T. Wilkinson

#5356

THE GIFT OF CHOICE

In every age of history, on every page of Scripture, the truth is revealed: God allows us to make our own choices.

And no one delineates that more clearly than Jesus. According to Him, we can choose “a narrow gate or a wide gate… a narrow road or a wide road… the big crowd or the small crowd” (Matthew 7:13-14). We can choose to “build on rock or sand” (Matthew 7:24-27), “serve God or riches” (Matthew 6:24), “be numbered among the sheep or goats” (Matthew 25:32-33).

God gives eternal choices, and these choices have eternal consequences. “Then they [who rejected God] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:46 NIV).

Isn’t this the reminder of Calvary’s trio? Ever wonder why there were two crosses next to Christ? Why not six or ten? Ever wonder why Jesus was in the center? Why not on the far right or far left? Could it be that the two other crosses on the hill symbolize one of God’s greatest gifts? The gift of choice. 

-- Adapted from Max Lucado in “He Chose the Nails”

#5060

THE NARROW WAY

Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).

Was Jesus narrow-minded? Well, in a sense He was. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount He said, “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” (Matthew 7:13-14).

If Jesus was right about this, then He was being appropriately narrow-minded. He was being like parents who are narrow enough to insist that their children walk on the sidewalk and not in the street, or a doctor who limits his prescriptions to medicine that will actually help people rather than [a placebo that would do nothing or a poison that would harm them], or the airline pilot who restricts his landing options to that narrow path to life called a runway, rather than trying to put the airplane down in a cornfield.

You see, we really want narrow approaches -- as long as they are based on truth and point us in the direction that’s best for us.

Jesus gave us every reason to believe He was telling the truth, and that He loves us enough to lead us toward forgiveness, life and an eternity with Him.

As the apostle Peter said: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).  C. S. Lewis put it this way: "One road leads home and a thousand roads lead into the wilderness." 

-- Lee Strobel in “The Case for Christianity Answer Book”

#5049