<\/p>\n
Matthew 7:13-29<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0“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.”<\/p>\n We are given one life with the choice of two paths and two gates – one narrow and one wide – and how we respond has eternal consequences. There is a way that seems right in the eyes of every person. There is a broad path of indulgence and worldly and fleshly pleasure yielding selfishness, hate, anger, fear, pride, arrogance, greed, and the like. \u00a0There is a narrow path of belief, faith, trust, reliance, hope, and patient obedience yielding self-denial, self-control, self-discipline, patience, love, generosity, kindness, peace, and joy.<\/p>\n There are many people on the broad path that leads to eternal torment in hell. In fact, every single person is born on this path and equipped to follow it.<\/p>\n The narrow path that leads to eternal life has fewer people on it. Though people are born with desire for the broad path the Gospel of Jesus Christ explains the need to follow the narrow path to eternal life. Without Jesus there would be no path and no gate to eternal life.<\/p>\n The truth of the\u00a0difficulty of entrance\u00a0<\/em>into the kingdom – There are two roads through this world and two gates into the eternal world. One of these roads is broad and easy, with a descending grade, leading to a wide gate. It requires no exertion, no struggle, and no sacrifice to go this way. The other road is narrow and difficult – and leads to a narrow gate. To go this way one has to leave the crowd and walk almost alone – leave the broad, plain, easy road – and go on a hard, rugged road that often gets difficult and steep, entering by a gate too small to admit any bundles of worldliness or self-righteousness, or any of the trappings of the old life. If we get to heaven, we must make up our minds that it can be only by this\u00a0narrow way of self – denial.\u00a0<\/em>There is a gate – but it is narrow and hard to pass through if we are trying to bring any worldly baggage along, or trying to buy our way in, or trying to be good enough to earn our way through.<\/p>\n There is much in this world to poison the mind and fill people with doubt and need of response to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We do well to live in such a way that our life is a living road map of the narrow path to eternal life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Matthew 7:13-29\u00a0 \u00a0“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.” We are given one life with the choice of … Continue reading “70.z. Matthew 7:13-29”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-prayers"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200119"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200122,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200119\/revisions\/200122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}