John 14:6
The Good Way
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Matthew 7:13-14
13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Ephesians 6:12
Our Struggles Along the Way
12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Being a Follower is Not Easy
23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.
There are the two paths in life...And we get to choose everyday, which path we walk...In fact, we get to choose sometimes a different path, more than one time each day...The struggle choosing good is in our minds...The choice is ours...It is not often easy...The gate to that path is narrow...It feels not only easier, but more sometimes more desirous and pleasurable to take the wide gate and the broad road...This struggle lies in the very decisions we make each day...And often they are peppered with evil and temptations...The decisions we make everyday, all of our lives make us who we are and what people see in us (or don't see in us)...
C. S. Lewis said this about the daily decisions and the choices we make each day: “[E]very time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before...And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself...To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power...To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness...Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state of the other.” ...
God wants us to be able to defeat this power of evil and wickedness...But it takes time and patience, but mostly belief...We have His Son to thank for that...We must keep Him on our minds each day...We always must remember what He teaches...Jesus holds the armor and the necessary weapons we need to defeat evil...
But even Jesus tells us our daily decision to follow Him can be a struggle...It is not easy...Following Him we have this continuous struggle that requires us to be on guard and effort...He wants us to make the good decisions...He wants us to always have Him in and on our minds...But we sometimes drift away, slowly and gradually...At others times, temptation comes quickly...The evil one may nudge softly without us noticing the temptation or the wickedness...The evil one is clever and sly...In an unbelieving mind and an unbelieving world, we will confront the evil one and wickedness more times than we would like...
Each day this struggle is there...The struggle is in our minds, our feelings, and our will...May we pray that His Son be there with us and in us, and that God's will be done...