The Narrow Way

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Thank you very much.

This is my first time ever at Awakenings, and I've known about you all and followed you from afar and cheered you on.

I love, I deeply value my friendship with Ryan, and he and Jenny are just terrific people, so take real good care of them.

And um thank you for letting me be here with you.

Ryan was telling me we were together not too long ago about how you have been walking through, he's been teaching on some of the naughtyest naughty, is that not naughty, naughty passages in the Sermon on the Mount, which is, you know, the most influential, most widely read, most widely studied, most impactful talk in the history of all humanity.

And so I thought, I I kind of like things to be pretty informal, if that's okay with you all.

I thought I would start with my own summary of the Sermon on the Mount.

It just takes about three minutes.

It's a little unusual, so I may not do it again at the next service.

We'll see how it goes here.

But this is the Sermon on the Mount in a nutshell.

Blessed are the poor and the sore and the meek.

Blessed are the pure, the unsure and the weak.

Blessed are the short, blessed are the slow.

Blessed are the dropouts and the washouts and the burnouts and the left-outs.

Blessed are you when you've been dissed and dismissed on account of me.

Be glad, be very glad.

You're living the dream.

It's mostly unseen.

Things are not what they seem.

You're the salt of the earth.

Don't lose your flavor.

Don't lose the savor.

You're the light of the world.

Let it shine.

Do not think I've come to abolish the law and the prophets.

I have not come to still them.

I have come to fulfill them.

The law is not the source of goodness, but it is forever the course of goodness.

So don't be conformed on the outside, be transformed on the inside.

People think you're good with God if you don't murder, but take it from me.

Anger will murder you.

Leave your gift at the altar.

Your heart will be an altar, or your heart will be altered by anger into a factory of hate.

People think sexual purity is scandal avoidance.

Cut off your hands, pluck out your eyes, spiritual maturity by dismemberment.

Or you could let me change your heart, give you a new start, take over each part.

I could change the course of your divorce.

I can change the force of your discourse.

Let your yes be yes, let your no be no.

Every spin or sin comes from down below.

Turn the cheek, give the shirt, go the mile.

Love leaves, love bleeds, be like that.

Don't practice your righteousness in front of others to be approved by them.

It's an addiction, it's an affliction.

You'll become a fiction.

Make giving like tying your tie, like tying your shoes.

It's not even news.

Keep your left hand in the dark.

Hypocrites pray to look good.

They want applause.

They're a lost cause.

Unseen, unknown, in secret, alone.

He hears, he's near.

When you're fasting, you can be feasting.

Don't advertise disguise.

Don't store up for yourselves treasure on earth.

Recognize worth.

Rust, moth, thief.

Put your money where your mouth is.

Your heart will follow.

Greed is hollow.

So don't worry about your life.

Look at the birds of the air.

No ulcers, no colitis, no high blood pressure, but they're fed by chef God.

Look at the lilies.

No labor, no stress, but all Kardashian and GQ in the way they dress.

I wouldn't worry.

Eliminate hurry.

Look for God.

Everywhere, every minute, because he's in it.

I wouldn't worry.

Don't judge.

Your measure will be your treasure.

Remember the speck and the plank.

Remember the pearl and the pig.

Help the pig.

Save the pearl.

Ask, seek, knock.

It's how the universe works.

Do unto others what you would have them do unto you, for this is the Bible in a tweet.

Now, choose this day.

Will you do what I say?

Will you obey?

Follow the narrow way.

Or follow the herd.

Ignore my word.

Let your heart be unwashed, uncured.

Everybody's building a house.

Everybody's facing a storm.

It will come without trying.

It will come when you're dying.

Build it strong.

Face it well.

And he finished, and they were amazed.

Salt of the earth, light of the world, second mile, birds of the air, lilies of the field, treasure in heaven, house on the rock, kingdom of God.

Ask, seek, knock.

Blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed.

Amen.

That's the Sermon of the Mount in three minutes.

So best, most sublime, most unbelievable the impact that that talk has had on humanity over 2,000 years.

I was thinking, as we were praying today for peace in Israel, there's a remarkable leader, spiritual figure there, Eliash Shakur, that you may know.

And he is a Palestinian, Israeli Arab Christian.

I think three different times.

His ministry, life seeking to bring reconciliation to that part of the world, has been extraordinary.

He started about 20 years ago a church there that's called the Church of the Sermon on the Mount.

Is that a great name for a church?

Just where everybody, all ethnicities, all religions are welcome.

And that is very related to what I want to talk with you about during these moments today.

And it often raises a lot of questions, a lot of red flags in people's minds about the Christian faith, religion in general, Christianity in particular.

And it's when Jesus says this enter through the narrow gate.

For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction.

And many enter through it.

But small is the gate, narrow is the way that leads to life.

And only a few find it.

And this is remarkable teaching about how things are, how life works.

But this picture of a narrow gate touches on a real deep concern a lot of thoughtful folks in our world, in our society have about Christianity and tolerance, especially on a weekend like this one, where, again, violence that seems to have so much religion at its root is taking place.

Christianity says that certain beliefs are wrong.

Christianity calls certain behaviors immoral.

And therefore, it impinges on human freedom by telling people, here's what you're supposed to think, here's how you're supposed to live.

And that's a concern for a lot of folks.

Furthermore, Christians claim that they know absolute truth.

And therefore, this thinking goes, people who disagree with them are wrong, not just wrong, but condemned before wrong, before God.

The French Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote, it is impossible to live at peace with those we regard as damned.

That's a real problem.

Therefore, again, the thinking is Christians must be intolerant to atheists and agnostics, to people of other religions, even to other kinds of Christians, Catholic versus Protestant or liberal versus conservative or so on.

Instead, often in our day it's thought that humility means giving up claims to exclusive truth.

If we could affirm that nobody can claim to know what's really true, if instead we could just say, I have my truth, you have your truth, that we're in no position to judge, then that will lead to tolerance and acceptance.

Many people think when Jesus was giving his message, the narrow gate and the narrow way are really about having a narrow mind, unthinking, irrational, blindly compliant to authority, intolerant bigots, that that's what the faith would produce.

And of course, very often, sadly, it does.

Very often, those of us who call ourselves Christians are guilty of such things.

I grew up Baptist back in the Midwest.

I'm very grateful for that heritage, but sometimes we were pretty sure we would make up almost everybody who might end up in heaven.

We thought there would be a few Lutherans there, represented by Martin Luther, and a few Wesleans represented by John Wesley, maybe a few Catholics, represented by the Pope, and then the Baptists, represented by Jesus.

Sometimes Christians can sound like they almost enjoy thinking about God keeping people out of it.

But if you really carefully examine the life and teachings of Jesus, you notice what looks in our day like a really strange paradox.

On the one hand, Jesus makes statements that strike us as outrageously, staggeringly exclusive.

He prayed one time in John chapter 17.

John 17 · chapter mention

This is eternal life.

By the way, this is the only time the Bible defines the nature of eternal life, and it's quite different than what most people think when they hear that phrase.

This is eternal life that people may know you.

The only true God.

And Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

And most famously, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

Now it's worth pointing out here, he does not say no one can go to heaven when they die unless they profess the right things about me.

That's not what he's saying here.

He's saying if you want to actually know what the Father is like and how to interact with him, how to engage in a participative relationship with him, how to experience life together with him, I am the unique authority on that one.

He doesn't present his teachings as optional suggestions for a better life.

He claims to know how things are.

Never been anybody like this before.

He claims that what he said was not just wise, but it's true, and that this truth mattered more than anything else in the world.

And often, as you will have seen, as Ryan has walked through the Sermon of the Mount, he says something other rabbis generally wouldn't say.

They would usually quote uh other rabbi authorities as uh kind of evidence for their rightness.

Jesus would just say, I say to you, I say to you.

You have heard it said, but I say.

And yet, and yet, and yet, this man who made claims that were staggeringly and breathtakingly exclusive, pursued relational connections with people, loved people, talked to people, hung out with people, ate with people, embraced people in ways that were breathtakingly and scandalously inclusive.

He deliberately touched a leper that nobody else, especially not another rabbi, would touch.

He allowed a known prostitute to bathe his feet with her tears and dry them with her hair.

He commended a hated Roman centurion.

He partied with despised tax collectors.

This was almost his signature.

I'll give you one very striking example of this.

Jesus is approached one time by ten lepers.

If you're a Bible person, you know this story.

Some of them are Jewish, but at least one of them is a Samaritan.

And Jesus heals them.

He cleansed them.

Lepers were considered unclean, so they had to be not just healed, but cleansed.

And then he gives them a command.

This is Luke 17, verse 14.

Luke 17:14

Go show yourself to the priests.

Now, the reason for going to a priest in that day is the priest was also kind of like a doctor.

They would give a leper a clean bill of health that would allow the leper to rejoin society.

We would expect Jesus to say, go show yourself to the nearest priest.

Singular.

Why does he use the plural?

Well, because the Jewish lepers would go to a Jewish priest, and the Samaritan leper would go to a Samaritan priest.

In other words, Jesus does not say, now I've healed you, you have to convert to the correct religion.

He enters into a healing relationship with unclean, unorthodox, untouchable, unjewish lepers, and actually sends them to their own priest.

It's almost like he thinks that a relationship with him is now transcending even human religious categories.

It's almost like the more narrow he is in his devotion to God, the more broad-minded he is in his love for, ability to be with, connect with, empathize with, care about human beings.

His followers, gang, often miss this.

The church often misses this.

There's a research group called the Barna Group.

You might know of them.

They recently did research that finds, as we all know, American culture is increasingly splintered, divided, balkanized, hostile, polarized.

Most Americans indicate they think it would be difficult to have a natural and normal conversation with minority groups who are different than them, other than them, like a Muslim or an atheist or an evangelical or a member of the LGBTQ community or a Mormon Moman.

The single group that has the hardest time having natural and normal conversations with minority groups are evangelical Christians, followers of Jesus.

In fact, not only do evangelicals have the hardest time having normal conversations with atheists or Muslims or people of a different sexual orientation, 28% of evangelicals, I'm not making this up, say they would have a hard time having a normal conversation with other evangelicals.

By contrast, the longest conversation recorded in the Bible is between Jesus and a pagan Samaritan five times married, currently living with a man, scandal-making woman, that no other rabbi ever would have gone near.

In other words, oddly, followers of the most inclusive man in human history have become the most exclusive people in American culture.

Often we can be quite lax in our devotion to God, but very narrow-minded in our relationships with other people.

Jesus was exactly the opposite.

Jesus was remarkably narrow, focused in his devotion to God, but outrageously broad-minded and inclusive in his relationships.

Why is that?

Well, maybe he was inconsistent.

Maybe he was a nice guy, but not really a serious thinker.

Didn't apply what he said that he believed.

Maybe.

Some have said that maybe those claims of Jesus' exclusive authority, authority, got made up by Paul and others and got kind of retrofitted back into the Gospels.

But maybe, just maybe, the truth that Jesus taught explains the life that Jesus led.

Maybe the possibility of finding deep truth and offering broad tolerance are not mutually incompatible.

Maybe they're actually mutually connected.

Maybe they're actually inextricable.

Now, we talk a lot about tolerance in our day.

You will notice if you read through the Sermon of the Mouth that Jesus does not command tolerance.

It never says be tolerant.

Why is that?

Well, tolerance has a kind of minimal quality to it.

It comes from a Latin word tolerantia that means to endure or put up with, bear with, but it's not actually what we all crave, to be tolerated.

When Nancy and I got married, I did not say, I promise to tolerate you from this day forward, for better or worse, rich or poor, sickness and health, to put up with you and your strange rashes until death shall bring relief.

When somebody has a birthday, parents don't sing, I tolerate you, I tolerate you, I'm stuck till you're 18.

What else can I do?

They don't sing that.

Might think it sometimes, but we don't sing it.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus didn't say tolerate your enemies, put up with those who persecute you.

He doesn't say if you're offering your gift at the altar and you remember your brother or sister has something against you and they're a difficult person, tolerate them.

He doesn't say if somebody forces you to go with them one mile, put up with it.

Tolerance is a good thing as far as it goes.

It is way better than intolerance.

We see that every day.

But tolerance is kind of a low bar.

You can tolerate somebody without loving them, but you cannot love somebody intolerantly.

And Jesus is inviting us to live in a kingdom whose central law is love.

Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

And then these remarkable kind of statements, love your enemy.

It was not widely embraced in the ancient world or in our world today.

Forgiveness was not generally recognized as a virtue.

One study of the ancient Roman world, its monograph title is Helping Friends, Hurting Enemies.

That's what was generally admired.

What Jesus was bringing to the world was something quite strange.

Now, his kingdom will certainly include the virtue of tolerance.

Jesus would reject intolerance, he would embrace tolerance, and then just keep right on going to love.

And here's a key just for you all to consider.

A real important question doesn't often get raised in our day, is the question of why should we practice tolerance?

Tolerance self-requires a foundation.

That has not been the law of the world for the most part.

The general way of the world has been take care of people who are inside our group and then take care of people that are outside our group in a whole different way.

That division of us versus them, you know, tribal friction, that's the way the world has generally worked throughout history.

Tolerance itself requires a foundation, a rationale, something to stand on if it's going to be sustainable.

In our day, gang, it is sometimes argued that the claim of absolute truth leads to hatred and war.

So what we need is the practice of charity without the divisiveness of beliefs.

But the claim that all human beings are equal in dignity and that they all deserve our tolerance, that itself is a belief.

It is a moral and spiritual belief.

What makes that belief true?

Why should I believe that that's true, that everybody has worth, that everybody has dignity?

In other words, the cure for arrogance and intolerance is not that we should embrace uncertainty, it's that we should embrace humility.

You can be right about something and still be humble.

You can be uncertain and still be arrogant.

There's a wonderful Christian thinker, G.K.

Chestern, and he wrote this about 100 years ago.

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place.

He said, modesty has moved from the organ of ambition, that is the will, pride, ego, and settled upon the organ of conviction, that is the mind, logic, the ability to understand what's true, where it was never meant to be.

A person was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth.

This has been exactly reversed.

In other words, we're all terribly sure of ourselves, but unsure if we can know if anything is true.

We are on the road to producing a race of people too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.

And in fact, Jesus taught the great foundation for both tolerance and love.

People should be prized because they are loved by God, and people should be free because God gave them a will, a tiny little kingdom where they can exercise dominion.

That's what that kingdom language is about.

There's a Yale theologian, Miroslav Wolff, and he writes It's no accident that the first government in the world that broke religion and the state apart created religious freedom.

First time this happened in history, because in the ancient world, you know, there was no separation there.

Whoever was in charge was in charge of everything.

Religion.

Was kind of how you kept the state of the tribe together.

Religious freedom got created in the colony of Rhode Island in the 1600s by actually a Baptist minister named Roger Williams.

This is part of what he wrote.

It is the will and command of God that since the coming of his Son, the Lord Jesus, a permission, that is freedom, of the most paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or anti-Christian's consciences and worship be granted in all nations and country.

Everybody ought to be free to worship, however they want, or not.

And that they are only to be fought with that sword which is only in soul matters able to conquer the sword of God's Spirit, the Word of God.

In other words, the idea of the freedom of conscience didn't just appear out of thin air.

It was not apparent in the ancient world.

Williams said, it's because every human being is created equal in God's sight that forced worship, coerced worship, he said, stinks in God's nostrils.

And once again, we see it's exactly the narrowness of Roger Williams' devotion to God that led to the staggering broad-mindedness of the government that he founded.

Everybody ought to be free to worship in the way that she or he would want to.

And that brings us to the narrow gate of Jesus, which is so often misunderstood, and that I want you to see however you decide to respond to it in all of its beauty.

The narrow gate is not narrow-mindedness.

The narrow gate is not that you gotta be doctrinal correctness or you're in trouble with God.

The narrow gate is not religious intolerance or exclusive relationships.

The narrow gate is doing what Jesus said to do, what he's been talking about in the Sermon of the Mount.

Primarily all founded in love, including love for enemies.

That's the narrow gate.

The narrow gate is obeying.

Creatively, intelligently, joyfully, faltering, with relaxed hands and ungritted teeth, with ever-growing confidence in his presence and his help.

The narrow gate is obeying the one who alone has thoroughly mastered life and death, the one who knows how it is.

That's the narrow gate.

Do it, I say.

Not in a legalistic mechanical fear, just with my help, creatively, freely.

What's the broad gate?

Well, the broad gate is just doing anything else.

That's the broad gate.

And it is only in this narrow gate that we find freedom.

Another word that is so often misunderstood in our day.

Another time Jesus said, If you obey my teaching, you really are my disciples, then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Now, those words, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free, are inscribed on more university campuses than any other saying, but they often don't include the prior phrase, if you will obey my teaching.

When I was a kid, one of our pet, uh one of our first pets was a goldfish, and my sister Barbie, who is a humanitarian, felt bad for the fish being cooped up in a tiny fish bowl all day.

So one day, when my mom was in the other room, Barbie liberated that fish, took him out of his glass prison, and set him on the carpet where he could breathe the fresh air of freedom and boldly go where no fish had gone before.

Anyone want to guess what happened to that little fish?

Wasn't good.

You don't even want to hear what happened to our pet turtle nickname Cyclops.

In order to be free to live, a fish must be confined to water.

It's the fish's nature, it's how life works.

Very often, when Jesus teaches, he's not, very often he's not giving directions, he's just saying this is how life is.

Freedom is not primarily about just the absence of restrictions, it's finding the right restrictions.

It is swimming in the moral and spiritual reality of God and his kingdom for which our little nature, our little kingdoms were made.

The whole issue Jesus is pushing on very hard from here to the end of this Sermon on the Mount is whose disciple will you be?

Most people think that the church exists to make Christians.

And that Christians are people who believe that you have to profess certain things.

You have to believe in the right stuff in order for a kind of narrow-minded God to let you into heaven.

That's the picture lots of folks in and outside of the church in our day have.

But Jesus never called anybody to be a Christian.

You don't believe this, go back and look at the Bible.

The word Christian is only there three times.

The word disciple is in the Bible 269 times.

Jesus called everybody to be his disciple.

And disciple, rightly understood, is not confusing or mysterious.

It's not even particularly religious.

You are a disciple.

You are somebody's disciple.

That is to say, you have learned how to live from somebody.

Somebody taught you how to walk and how to talk.

I have two little grandchildren right now.

They are so much fun.

If I knew how much fun grandchildren were, I would have skipped having kids and gone right to grandkids.

Good friend said to me, When my kids came along, I realized I would kill for my kids, but then my grandchildren were born and I would realize I would kill my kids for my grandkids.

And it's kind of that way.

Human beings are the kind of creatures where we have to learn how to walk and talk from somebody, how to relate to other people, how to navigate friendship, how to handle your time, how to handle your money.

We all have to learn this from somebody.

Who's the greatest financial expert of all time?

Take a guess.

Who's the greatest financial expert of all time?

Jesus would be the correct answer.

This is church, people.

Come on.

Wake up, it's awakenings.

In our world, as a general rule, when it comes to money, the broad way is one single word, more.

That's the broad way.

You're not content now, or you shouldn't be, but you would be if you just had more.

Buy me, use me, try me, wear me, own me, drive me, eat me, drink me, put me in your hair.

The narrow way says that between more and enough is a chasm that will never be crossed.

Who is more content?

The man with twelve children or the man with the million dollars?

The correct answer is the man with twelve children, because he doesn't want any more.

Think about that one for a minute.

Don't applaud, just think.

Now, Jesus teaches there is a way when it comes to money.

It's more blessed to give than to receive.

Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.

Consider the birds of the air.

They don't reap or sow or stow away, but your heavenly father feeds them.

Consider the lilies of the field.

Be rich towards God.

Now, to be somebody's disciple means to choose to be with them, to learn from them how to do what they do.

You are somebody's disciple right now.

We all are.

Generally our parents at first, and then maybe peers or teachers or somebody.

But Jesus comes to say, now you can evaluate the results of that discipleship in your life and perhaps choose a different master, perhaps a better one, one master above all.

The narrow way and the broad way, again, are just a picture of how life works.

If you want the freedom to make great music, you must arrange your life around practicing and lessons and scales and studies and so.

If you want the freedom to play great basketball, you must arrange your life around certain exercises and drills and dribbling and coaching and practicing and shooting.

If you're an alcoholic and you want to be free to be sober, you must arrange your life around surrendering your will and to fearless moral inventory and going to meetings and having.

The narrow way of life is just the way of life through which you receive the power to live the vision, whatever the vision is.

And the broad way is just do anything else.

Just do what you feel like doing.

Just drift.

That's the broad.

Jesus is an unbelievably brilliant person.

Not, he is the farthest thing from narrow minded, and he was in the way that he lived.

He just knew how it was.

And he taught it, and that's why his teachings have had unparalleled impact in the world.

When he says that many take the broad road and few take the narrow road, he is not predicting how many people will end up in heaven.

He is simply noting that the broad way is the default mode of life.

I'll do what I feel like doing.

Generally, people tend to drift by habit and by preference.

So, at least this is a great question.

Have you become a disciple of Jesus?

Have you gone through the narrow gate?

Is living the way that Jesus would live if he were in your place your top priority?

Or are you a disciple of success, work, money, security, power, addiction, image, safety?

And the grand invitation lies before you.

If you're willing to run an experiment, give it an actual try.

I'll tell you a real simple way.

A guy named Doug Coe told me this story many years ago now.

He was talking with, Doug Coe had a ministry in Washington, D.C.

Doug passed away a few years ago.

But he had a ministry there, worked with a lot of people in government and statecraft.

But one time he met a guy who was in insurance, not particularly connected or anything, named Bob, who became a Christian and saw where Jesus said, if you're my disciple, you can ask anything in my name, and I'll do it.

And Bob asked, Doug, is that really true?

And Doug said, Well, you know, it's not a blank check.

You can't use it to be selfish or so on.

Um, but yeah, it's teaching God loves to answer prayer.

And so Doug said to Bob, You ought to do that.

And Bob said, Oh, I've never done that before.

What would it look like?

And and so Doug issued him a challenge.

He said, Um, Bob, what would you like to pray for?

And Bob said, Africa.

And Doug said, You narrow it down a little bit?

Okay, Uganda.

And Bob asked him, Have you ever been there?

You know somebody?

No, I just want to pray for it.

So Doug made a challenge to Bob.

Doug said, You pray every day for 45 days for Uganda.

And if God doesn't clearly answer your prayers, if something clearly doesn't happen there, I will pay you$500.

But if something does happen, if God does answer your prayers, you pay me$500.

And if you don't pray every day for 45 days, the deal's off.

So Bob felt, well, that's kind of weird, you know, praying for$500, but okay, I'll do it.

So he starts praying for a long time, about a month, nothing really happens.

He's at a dinner one night, and there's a woman at his table, and it turns out she helps to run the largest kind of orphanage slash medical clinic in Uganda.

So Bob, who's just been silent up to this point, starts pounding her with questions.

She finally asks, You're very interested in what I do.

You've been to my country?

Nope.

Well, you know people in Uganda?

Nope.

Well, why are you so interested?

Again, Doug told me the story.

Bob said, Well, this guy's kind of paying me$500 to pray.

So she said, Would you like to come over and see what we're doing?

And he said, Yeah.

So Bob flies all the way over to Uganda and sees this facility, comes back, and he's just appalled by the poverty and the uh pain and suffering.

So he starts to write, uh, among others, big multinational pharmaceutical companies, because Bob hadn't been a Christian long enough to know you don't actually do stuff.

And say to them, there's this tremendous need.

You guys throw away millions of dollars of supplies every year.

You ought to send it to this place.

And some of them do, and the place ends up getting over a million dollars worth of supplies, and they write back to Bob again and tell him what's happened.

We want to have a big celebration, we want you to come.

Would you come back?

So Bob does.

And while he's there, the president of Uganda, it's not a real large country, and this is the largest facility of its kind, meets with Bob and takes him on a little tour of the Capitol.

And at one point they see a group of people there, and Bob asks, What's the story with those guys?

And the president tells him, These are political prisoners.

And Bob says, Oh, that's not a good idea.

You ought to let them go.

Finishes his tour, goes back to the States.

A couple of months later, he gets a phone call from somebody from the U.S.

State Department.

Is this Bob?

Yeah?

Bob, you've been to Uganda recently?

Yeah?

Make any statements to the president while you were there?

Say anything about political prisoners?

Yeah?

Guy from the State Department goes on to tell him, again, Doug told me this story.

Uh, that the U.S.

government had just been found out, had just found out that a group of political prisoners in Uganda had been freed, and we're told that it was partly because of Bob.

Sometime later, gets another call from the president who is gonna select a new cabinet and ask Bob if Bob will come over and pray for him while he is selecting a new cabinet.

That's doesn't have to look dramatic, doesn't have to be a scale, but something happens when people begin to follow Jesus.

So that's the challenge I want to present to you for the next 45 days.

I want to challenge you.

Narrow gate, narrow way, pick something in your life and pray and ask God to be at work.

Not a selfish thing, but something that you're generally concerned about.

And pray for it every day for the next 45 days.

And if God doesn't clearly move in that area, Ryan will pay you$500.

No, not really, not really.

But but I'd love to hear what that's the invitation.

Just just pick some area in your life, start praying, pray for 45 days, see if God doesn't show up.

So I'm gonna ask the band if they would come back out.

I'm a little bit over time.

Would you pray together with me as they come up and and we get ready to worship, close out this service, and then and then go out, follow the narrow way.

God, thank you for Jesus and uh his unique person and presence and offer for the kingdom that he came to bring that is real.

And I pray for everybody here, pray for our world.

We pray again for people in the Gaza Strip, for people in Africa, for where there is hunger, for where there is need.

Would your kingdom come, your kingdom come.

Help us to understand him better so we can love him better, so we can follow him better.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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