Articles
The Narrow Road
Life is full of choices to make. There are things that everyone must choose to do or not to do, places to decide to go or not to go, people to become friends with or to ignore. All sorts of choices, and many of them are difficult. The Lord spoke of a choice man has to make in Matthew 7:13-14. It says there, “Enter in 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 that find it.”
Picture, if you will, you are standing at an intersection of two roads. The first road is well-paved, easy to navigate, mostly straight with very few hills to climb and several lanes for driving. The other road is a two-lane road with potholes, no shoulders, curvy and very hilly. Which road would you choose? Most people are going to take the first road because of the ease of navigation. Why would anyone willingly go down the second road with all of its difficulties?
We face the same two choices in our spiritual life as well. It is easy to do the things of this world and go down that “easy road”. There, one will meet little or no resistance if they chose to go along with what everyone else is doing. The cruise control can be set, the seat leaned back, the air conditioner cranked up, the stereo on your favorite radio station, and no cares or concerns of anything getting in your way. There is no such thing as peer pressure on this road, because everyone just does whatever is self-pleasing at the time.
The other choice, however, is not as easy. It is a difficult road. It is indeed the road less traveled (Matthew 7:14). For the most part, people do not wish to be different from the rest of the world. It is difficult to be different from the world. (II Corinthians 6:14-18)
Finally, notice also that these two roads have crossovers. There is tremendous pressure on those who take the difficult road or way to leave it and cross over to the easier way. One can go from the easy road to the difficult road through obedience to God’s will (Matthew 7:21) and trying to live a life faithful to Him (Revelation 2:10). However, most do not cross over to this way. In fact, many cross over from the difficult road to the easy road. Perhaps the road less traveled gets too difficult for them, or like Demas they “love this present world” (2 Timothy 4:10). They see that it is much easier to blend with the flow of traffic on the easier road and choose to take it. What we must do then, is consider the end of the two roads. The narrow road leads to the right destination, which is eternal life (Matthew 7:14). And the well-traveled road leads to a dead end, a destination of destruction (Matthew 7:13). Which road will you choose?
