The Narrowing Road

"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

The way to Christ is a narrow road.  In my opinion, narrowing.  Getting smaller.

As of late I hear a great majority of Christians claiming that the rapture is happening soon.  I do not think this is altogether wrong, since it is said in part out of hope.  I myself look forward and have hope that the rapture will come soon.

That said, however we must remember that no one except God knows the timing of the rapture.

"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."-Matthew 24:36

Not even Jesus in His man-ness (as a friend of mine put it) knows the time when He will come back.  I can just see Jesus standing in Heaven, pacing back and forth, waiting for God to say "Go get 'em!".

Earth is God's world, but satan does have some power.  There is a spiritual battle where the angels and demons do battle but there is also the physical where the Christians do battle with the subtle and also unsubtle sinful ways of the world.

We are the resistance.

We are the warriors in the service of the King.

We fight the pretender.

We are destined for victory.

But it is not ours.  The victory is the victory of God.

Being a Christian isn't 'easy' as it is often made out to be.  It is war, and war is a bloody affair.

As a Christian we face many, many struggles.  I would go as far as to say we face more struggles and hardships then non-believers.  But we have something they don't.  Something that is brings hope to the hopeless.  Rest to the weary. Healing to the hurt.

We have God by our side.  And if we allow Him too, He'll step in front of us.

God does not tempt us-but He does test us.  The beautiful thing about both though, is that He's with us.  Whether we're being tempted or tested, He always provides a way out and if we ask Him and pray He will always reveal it to us.

We are citizens of the Kingdom of God, but we're also its army.

The funny thing about the Kingdom of God's army though is that it's unlike the armies of the earth.  If we allow Him, Christ will come and inhabit our bodies and do battle for us.  And Christ is perfect.  It’s an army of perfect warriors.  An undefeatable army.

It’s right there.  It’s not magic like fantasy magic.  It’s not a spell.  It’s not going to make you fly or have fire spit out of your hands.  But it is powerful.  It’s the power of Jesus Christ.  It’s the power of God.

We Christians have it within our grasp, but we often ignore and dismiss it.

An ex-vampire came to our youth group last week.  To say the least it was an amazing testimony.  I won’t go into the details of what he went into but two things really stuck out.

One:  He told a story about a time two teenagers had been riding bikes and had wandered off into somewhere they shouldn’t have been-a landfill.  An occult ritual was happening and when they saw this they spun around on their bikes and pedaled away.  Without going into too much detail one of the teenagers who wasn’t a Christian was taken by a being.  The other was almost taken, but when he felt a claw-like hand on his chest he screamed out the name of Jesus.  The beast retreated and didn’t bother the teenager.  (The teenager that wasn’t taken was also a Christian).

There’s power in the name of our Savior.

Two:  He told us that through his sixteen years as a vampire, a witch and many other things involved in the occult he hardly ever saw any ‘action’ such as ‘magical’ things happening.  He also said that in the time that he has been a Christian he has learned much more about the spiritual and scene many more ‘magical’ things happen.  Magical being more along the lines of miracles such as healings.

I don’t know about anyone else but I’d say we serve an awesome God.  No need to get into the dark arts to see amazing things.  The devil is weak, our God is awesome in power.

“If you’re reading this, you are the resistance."

In Victory,