The Shocking Truth About the Wide and Narrow Gates!

Welcome to episode 343. In this episode, I'm going to compare something currently going on that is the wide gate and something that is the narrow gate so we can get a compare and contrast. But before we get started, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to immediately get to scripture because that's what we do here. We're going to start in Matthew 7:13. Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruit. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them. And I want to stop there because we talked about last episode— if you didn't listen or didn't hear that, go back and listen to that— we were talking about that where Jesus said, I am the vine and you are the branches. But I want to tie all this together because Jesus, right before he starts talking about bad fruit and good fruit, he talks about a narrow gate and a wide gate.. And I want to bring an example because I talked about it previously, and it's that artificial intelligence that they've just released. It's open to the public, it's open to the world really, and people are saying that this is going to change the world. And I don't know about that, it's probably true because just about everybody that's talking like that is a whole lot smarter than I am, but with spiritual eyes that I'm looking at this I am looking at wide and I'm looking at narrow, and the wide way is the easy way. And if you can type in something and get an answer, and you can actually type in a prayer and have this computer-generated AI write out a prayer, and that to me is a little bit spooky, but it's kind of cool too because you can type in something and it'll give you a scripture and it it could be related. You'd have to check it with your Bible. One of the problems— and I, I'm going to go off on a tangent and I'm going to put these air quotes up— but one of the problems I have with social media, and we've talked about this too, but when someone is hurting, the Bible says to give love one to another. I think if it's in your ability, if you can go to that hurting person or to the person that needs prayer and go with them and pray with them, out loud and hold them or anoint them with oil or whatever it is they need, that's more difficult than throw up some praying emoji hands. And I'm not against you throwing up praying emoji hands, I'm just never gonna do it because I just think that's the easy way. When people see that, and I'm talking about the world, when the 80% of the people that don't know Jesus, when they see somebody throw up these praying emoji hands, what are they thinking? I've got to believe, because if you go back, and I don't even remember what episode, way back at the beginning, it's really why I started this, is I saw a bumper sticker that says, "Nothing fails like prayer." And I'm telling you, that just lit me up. And the more, but the more I thought about it, the more I was driving around getting all upset, the more I thought that the person that had that bumper sticker didn't know Jesus and probably wasn't about to come to Jesus anytime soon. Because the world is watching what we do. And if you do everything that the world is doing, then you're going to have everything that they have. And I think that's one of the biggest problems in the church, is we are trying to be more like the world instead of more like Jesus. I don't know who's supposed to hear that, maybe it's me, but we need to imitate Jesus. We need to figure out what Jesus did. I want to encourage you to read the gospels, I read them over and over and over again. I love Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I read them. I want to encourage you to read them because that is how Jesus— if God was going to walk on earth, that's what he would look like. Because Jesus was God, he was the Son of God, he did everything he saw the Father doing. And so we get a picture of how God would handle things. When we're reading this, we're thinking like God thinks. And Jesus took his time. He walked everywhere he went. He didn't get in a hurry. He stopped and prayed. He was going to a leader, synagogue's leader's house, to go pray or heal a dying daughter. And this woman with the issue of blood touched his robe, and he stopped and said, somebody touched me. Some of us in the hustle and bustle, if somebody touched you and you're focused and you're on your way to go heal this little girl or whatever it is you're doing? And are you gonna stop and take the time with somebody maybe outside your agenda for that day or outside your goal? Are you gonna stop and take the time to help them? That's one of those questions. If you look at Jesus, he never got in a hurry. This ChatGPT makes us get in a hurry and it gives us the answers within 3 or 4 seconds. And that is spooky if you think about it. If you start thinking about asking this thing questions and it starts giving you answers, and the answers aren't bad. I don't know, I just think that we just need to slow this thing down a little bit. I'm not sticking my head in the sand. I'm not telling you not to mess with it. I'm just saying we need to be in the Word of God. We need to get the Word of God in us, and we need to slow it down. There's no way to speed up a harvest, and that's one of the cool things I love about this word is that you have to plant it in your heart, and you've got to wait for God to give you the harvest. And you're not in control. When people say, well, God's in control, I believe you've got two operations in your life. You are to plant seed, and you are to harvest. Everything else is up to God. And we're going to talk about that more on different episodes. I don't want to chase that rabbit right now. But remember, in the previous episode, I talked about trees and how the Bible symbolizes men as trees. When you see a tree in the Bible, it represents— a lot of times it represents man and mankind. And so when men are represented as trees, they say some men are good trees and some men are bad trees. And when I say men, I mean men and women. We are represented by trees. And if you're a good tree, if you have changed, if you've accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you're going to have good fruit. You've got to get in the vine. We've talked about that in a previous episode, but we get in the vine, we are the branches, and we grow the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. I may have missed one. We grow the fruit of the Spirit and we have it out on our branches. We are the branches, so we're growing the fruit, and the fruit is there for the world. When we're walking through this world and we're imitating Christ and we're trying to be as Christ-like as we possibly can, then this fruit is hanging. The world will be able to see this love or this joy or this peace or this patience or this kindness, and they will be able to partake. Your fruit is for other people. We are called to slow it down and to get into the word. And that's why I'm here. And I know you probably get tired of me thumping, beating this drum But the more you say it, the more you start going, you know, that may be right. To speed up your Christian walk and to speed up your faith walk, you've got to slow it down. And God's ways are not our ways, nor are our thoughts his thoughts. But you can see pretty clear, if you're going to get anywhere spiritually, it's going to have to be planted in you. You're just not going to be able to take on Satan by beating the fire out of him. When I say kick Satan's teeth in, I absolutely do not mean in this physical realm. Satan can mop the floor with me if he wanted to, but when I am submitted to God, when I submit my life to God as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is my reasonable service, when I submit to God, then I can resist the devil and he will flee. Because I am submitted. I've done what the Bible said, what the word of God told me to do. I put the word of God to work and I applied the word spiritually to my life, and then Satan's got to go. And that's what I want to encourage you— the more we get into this word, the more you're going to have these weapons that we're going to talk about and how we can kick the teeth out of Satan, but how we can take steps of faith. And these steps are going to move us closer, and the goal is to be Christ-like. The goal is to be like Jesus, and I am a long way away from Jesus. I'm telling you, I am not Christ-like by any means, but I'm a little bit more like Jesus today than I was yesterday. And if we can just get a 1% increase each day, we can just be a little bit more like him, and we don't have to take over the world or fill up soccer stadiums with people that just want to be in our presence. That's probably never going to happen with me or with you, but we can be more like Jesus and we can grow some fruit and allow the people that we come in contact with in our life to get some nourishment from the Holy Spirit. And that's our job. I think we are to build his kingdom and to give him glory. And just know that if you've accepted Jesus, the Bible says right here that you've got good fruit. Whether you believe it or not, you produce— a bad tree cannot produce good fruit, and a good tree cannot produce bad fruit. So you are producing good fruit, but you've got to abide in Jesus and allow Jesus to work through you. The Bible is very simple. A child can understand it. In fact, Jesus said that we— if we don't come to him as children and humbling ourselves like a little child, ask God what we are to do. That's simple, but it's not easy. Once you grow up— I'm almost 60 years old— and once you start getting some years on you, then, you know, you're starting to try to be mature. You got to act right and do all that stuff. But in the scripture, in the spirit realm, we are to come to God as little children. We don't have to know it all. In fact, when we think we know everything, we know nothing. And I just want to encourage you to come to God as a little child. Look for something simple but not easy. The world has given us easy. We can type something in, or we can hit the easy button, or we can get the fast food. But all of those things come against us physically and mentally and emotionally and spiritually. We need to slow it down, and we need to go for simple but difficult. And the difficult thing is every day, little by little, inch by inch. Life's a cinch, but it's hard by the yard. We can't try to figure out the whole year in January, but we can figure out this week, or we can figure out what we got to do today. And that's what I want to encourage you to do. It's simple. It's not easy. If it's easy, it's probably not from God, because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way. Remember, wide and easy or narrow and difficult. Let's get on this narrow road. I can feel myself going off on another tangent. Let's pray. God, I thank you so much for this listener. I thank you that you have given us your word and you have showed us in your word that we can be like little children and we don't have to understand it all to be able to apply it and to plant it in our lives. God, help us to plant this word in our hearts and help us to understand that it's not up to us to grow this, that you've made us so that when we plant this word in us, it will grow. Lord, give us the patience to allow it to grow and harvest it when it comes to fruition. Lord, we thank you, we love you, we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast at www.nodoubtonlybelieve.com. OnlyBelieve.com.