Experiencing God - 200 Surrender

"Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will try to enter, and will not be able."
Gospel of Luke

In my late twenties, I went through what I would call a difficult time, a time of struggle.  Although I was succeeding in most of my goals -- I had an excellent job, good opportunities; I was happily married with three children; I had or could have had most of the things I wanted -- however, I continued to feel empty.  As a result, I felt like a failure.  Since my wife and I were connected with church, I started to move towards greater involvement in volunteering in search for an answer as to why I was feeling this way.  I started to teach Sunday school, and eventually joined a prayer group.  None of these activities seem to work, to take away the emptiness I was feeling until one evening.  I was at the prayer meeting, feeling very low, when in my desperation I reached out to Jesus and cried for help.  That moment of surrender changed everything.

When speaking about the narrow door, we must understand, first of all, that Jesus is the door through which we must enter.  Jesus is the way through. As Jesus says in Revelation: "I stand at the door and knock.  If you answer, if you open the door, I will come and sup with you." 

But we have a resistance to opening that door. 

This "resistance" makes the "way" narrow, because we battle with an alternative way of thinking, of believing that it has something to do with us.  Many, including myself, attempt to find an alternative route to God through the exercise of our self-will, through doing something ourselves through our own effort.

Jesus makes it clear in the above Gospel that we must strive to enter through the narrow gate.  We confuse this"striving" to "doing it ourselves", when it is not that at all.  The Greek word for "striving" is to agonize.  The implication here is that those who seek to enter the narrow gate must do so by struggle.  Unfortunately, we often interpret this struggle with something that we must accomplish.  This only hinders the process of surrendering to God's more perfect plan for our lives.

The narrow gate is difficult because of the resistance we experience from our own human pride, our natural attraction to doing things on our own, mostly because of our need to maintain personal control over our lives and the lives of others.  Surrender is a process of letting go of that.

The exhortation by Jesus to "strive" is a command to repent, to surrender to Him; not just stand and think about it, or complain that it's too hard or too small.  We are not to ask why others are not entering. We are not to be concerned with the number who will or will not enter.  We are to plow ahead, despite the resistance; and in doing so, we become liberated. We become the source of encouragement for others to follow.